Forgive if this isn't the proper forum for this topic, but our team has been toying with an idea for a while and has completed a PoC of the following. We are looking for any feedback on the high level idea before we pursue it further.
Summary: a basic grindy multiplayer RPG designed to be played persistently via APIs.
Value Props
- Educational: Teaches web socket programming / reactive programming / state machine programming.
- Entertainment: While the game CAN be played via direct user interaction, it is intended to be driven via automation and appeals to an audience that (while admittedly small) is largely under-served.
Target Auditence
- #1 - Students and hobbyists looking to develop and practice ‘robotic’ type programming constructs where they design logic that reacts to a constant stream of environmental stimulus.
- #2 - Gamers that find joy in the sub-genre of games that support automation more than direct play. (MMO scripters, Minecraft modders, auto-battlers, sim players)
Technical / Design Notes
- The server maintains the global world state and streams a JSON feed to the clients. Clients respond by sending action requests to the server.
- Only the core server is proprietary code. The client API and example UI implementation are open source. Users could (and hopefully will) design their own UI implementations and libraries around the server API.
- Zones, gear, and NPC mechanics are configured via open configuration files that the community can (and hopefully will) manipulate and submit.
- Individual players are encouraged to script and control multiple in-game characters at once. A single player can control an entire RPG party by running three or more concurrent scripts for tank / healer / DPS.
Questions:
- Is this too niche of an idea to be practical?
- Google doesn't return any results, but has anyone heard of a similar product already existing?
- How viable do you think the "(and hopefully will)" sections in the Technical / Design Notes are?
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