M.U.L.E. Is Back 110
jmp_nyc writes "The developers at Turborilla have remade the 1983 classic game M.U.L.E. The game is free, and has slightly updated graphics, but more or less the same gameplay as the original version. As with the original game, up to four players can play against each other (or fewer than four with AI players taking the other spots). Unlike the original version, the four players can play against each other online. For those of you not familiar with M.U.L.E., it was one of the earliest economic simulation games, revolving around the colonization of the fictitious planet Irata (Atari spelled backwards). I have fond memories of spending what seemed like days at a time playing the game, as it's quite addictive, with the gameplay seeming simpler than it turns out to be. I'm sure I'm not the only Slashdotter who had a nasty M.U.L.E. addiction back in the day and would like a dose of nostalgia every now and then."
Nice...but no intro music? (Score:4, Informative)
Just downloaded it....COOL...but where's the intro and intro music??? It was 8-bit sweetness on the C=64.
Glad somebody did it though!
Re:Nice...but no intro music? (Score:5, Informative)
Intro in question.... [youtube.com] :)
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I just downloaded the Windows version. It has intro and intro music.
Now if someone would do BallBlazer... (Score:2)
I'd be set!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_Blazer [wikipedia.org]
never can get enough of the theme song. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6L6MhSgpgo [youtube.com]
Some of the best home computer music of the time. This song is the number 1 reason I fire up SIDplay (followed closely by many things by David Whittaker).
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And I'm sure the young'n's will be looking at us like we have three heads. :)
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As one of "the young'n's" I wholeheartedly support your love of this catchy chiptune. Although I still prefer Anaconda [youtube.com].
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I always preferred the Atari 800 version of the music- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWvQQuLPmzg&feature=related
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Yep. One of many games that these days are always attributed to the C64 but were actually ports from the Atari 800 or the Atari 800 version came first.
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Yes, the Atari version was first. A great deal of the game's design was dictated by the limitations and strengths of the hardware (4 players, the arrangement of mountains, etc). Dan Bunten, M.U.L.E.'s creator, deftly exploited almost every feature that made the Atari 8-bits great.
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That sounds great too, it might even be better from some objective level. But it's just not what I'm used to so it sounds funny to me. I always wanted an Atari 800, but you can't always get what you want.
The trills in the final segment sound discordant to me.
And to the other poster:
I knew the game came from the 800, the 800 was the only machine which had 4 joystick play (on the C64 two players had to use the keyboard during trading). But the C64 version is what's familiar to me.
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OMG. It's the sound of "humanization" (tones are slightly off here and there to sound less machine-like). This is some great nostalgia.
I had a C=64, but I always envied the four joysticks of the Atari 800 series. We got stuck using keys for collusion.
--
Toro
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The Atari original, played at NTSC rate, with more harmony (4-voice sound chip):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z48FWWCG4dU
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I couldn't agree more. Any mention of the word "mule" and I start hearing that music. It's a shame that it isn't in this version.
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Dude, Parallax. Parallax, Dude. Martin Galway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igVxjCecmEg [youtube.com]
M.U.L.E. sucks.
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Just noticed the YouTube movie cut out about a minute and a half of the song. Not a huge deal, really, but I put the full version in MP3 format on my website: http://blakeyrat.com/commodore-64-sound-rips/ [blakeyrat.com]
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Oh, I am so ready... (Score:1)
Re:Oh, I am so ready... (Score:4, Interesting)
If Dani Bunten were still alive I'm sure lots of people would be glad to donate quite some amount of money to make up for lost and long time overdue revenue.
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I was working in the first computer store in my hometown and bought it (using my wages - heh). This and Archon... I lost entire weeks to the two of them.
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Welcome Blue Leggite! (Score:2)
I'm 15 and I ask, is this worth playing? (Score:1)
I've read many times how big an affect it had on games, but I don't really care for Sim type games...
So I ask my (MUCH) older fellow geeks, is this really worth the time to learn to play it?
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It is more like a table top game than a simulation. Easy to learn, hard to master...
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I can't answer that for you. I've played it fairly consistantly since it's release (I'm 42 now). It's addictive -- and particularly fun against human players.
I think the hardest part you'd have with the game is that it's TURN based -- which means you sit and wait while the 3 other players take their turns (auction not withstanding).
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Especially with with collusion!
MULE Manual [muttoo.on.ca]
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Sorry, and thank you for correcting me. :)
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If you want to understand modern gaming's roots, then yes.
Danielle Bunten should have been credited (Score:5, Informative)
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Someone posted some links to a couple pages, one of them Wikipedia. That page then linked to this one and honestly, I'd say she didn't make it as clear as you think she did.
http://www.anticlockwise.com/dani/personal/changes/dont.htm
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Genitals are not the same as gender identification. One can identify as female and still have male genitals, just as one can identify as male and have female genitals.
She's not saying that she regrets changing her name and assuming her gender identity. She's saying that she regrets changing her genitals.
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*plonk*
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Confirmation: YES, is as awesome as you remenber. (Score:4, Informative)
I play the planetMule version of MULE, and I can confirm that is still a awesome game. MULE has this ability to make you play crazy in 2 turns, 3 turns... Is a deep game, and you meet different skills and ideas about how to play. The planetMULE version is both tryiing to make a faithfull version (and is a SUCCESS as that), and make tiny improvements that don't change the gameplay.
RECOMENDED!!!
Love it! (Score:2)
What a great game and great remake. The updated graphics are actually a little easier to make out than the original.
There's an OSS version (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.codenautics.com/openmule/ [codenautics.com] ... although development appears to have stalled in 1997.
Re:There's an OSS version (Score:5, Funny)
So, pretty active by OSS game development standards?
64k - 36Mb (Score:4, Informative)
This was one of my favorite games in college on the C-64. I expected to find a slim flash game, instead it's a 36Mb installer (Win). A bit better on Max/Linux (16Mb), but still, WTF? I'm guessing these guys used to make printer drivers for HP.
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The filesize is very small for nowdays standards, but has nowdays features. Flash games, true, use much less space, but because most are optimized to get downloaded from the net, so 26+ megs will not do it.
The features that these 36 megs provide are way beyond what you can get with a simple Flash game.
Kudos (Score:4, Informative)
How to play MULE, for newbies. (Score:5, Informative)
MULE is a strategic economic simulator for 4 players. A long game (12 turns) take about 90 minutes.
The first thing you will see wen you join, is the surface of the planet. The surface is divided into "plots", that later can be taken by the players. You will put "mules" (multi use labor element robots) in these plots to craft raw metal (smithore), precious luxuries (cristite), energy or food. Your mules to work need energy, you need food or you will be unable to manage your mules.
First phase, a cursor move trough the planet, simply pressing space take a plot. The "river" plots are specially good for food, the desert for energy, and the mountains for smithore.
Next phase, the players move his character, and have the option to take a mule, and move it to a specialization house (energy, food, smithore...) then move that mule to his plot, and press space again to place the mule.
After all players have placed his mules, theres a "production" phase. You will produce based on your mule type, type of terrain, and some economy of scale bonus.
Next phase is selling/buying. You need to secure energy, if you don't have, and food, if you want to place mules.
The tournamente mode (somewhat like the 'full experience') is 12 complete turns of this. With some random bonus and malus events for the players.
The game is some sort of economic sandbox, most people "play to win", but is possible to "play to make the colony a success".
More info:
http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=379.0 [planetmule.com]
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I loved the way they implemented the commodity trading phase! Each player first chooses to buy or sell, then the sellers appear at the top of the screen and the buyers at the bottom. Sellers can move down (lowering their price), buyers move up (raising the bid), and when the highest bidder meets the lowest seller in the middle, they begin trading until they run out of money or goods, or until
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In particular it needs to be pointed out that "play to win" often means "play to make the colony a success." In the old 8-bit versions where it kept a consistent high score, you would always get a better personal score by being (mostly) a team player than being a selfish twit. That isn't to say you can't be selfish sometimes and do better but if selling energy to Mr. Smithore computer player nets the colony more MULEs it needs it can be worth it even at a loss.
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I'm trying to play an A.I. game but after grabbing some land it just keeps looping turns for each player, where there's only enough time to run to the pub and grab some cash. How do you get the game to actually continue to the next part of the round?
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Ok, but how do I get food if all I can do each turn is run to the pub?
I'm accumulating money, but I don't seem to have time to spend it.
Anyways I'll try that.. :) Thanks.
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on the auction phase = buy food to the other players or the shop
LWJGL... Java based (Score:1)
Hmm... If it uses lwjgl, its java based... so why not just have a downloadable and executable jar?
Still, gives lax coders like me hope.
Lessons from M.U.L.E (Score:4, Informative)
OK so maybe some aspects of the game are more plausible than others.
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I think we, as a community, can learn a lot from the ancient and wise game ...
If you go to the pub to gamble, you always win something.
Another version (Score:3, Interesting)
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M.U.L.E. (Score:3, Insightful)
Rose-Colored nostalgia, +1.
Yes, I played MULE. I also played Doom, and going before that I played Empire, Sword of Aragon, Ancient Art of War, Star Viking, Star Raiders, Wizardry, Ultima, and Oregon Trail (on a MECC line terminal) as well as a host of other games that are stored fondly in my nostalgia-vault as 'awesome games'.
But do you know what? My suggestion is DON'T PLAY THEM AGAIN. Like watching the original Star Wars, the memory of "greatness" is tied inextricably with context - the state of tech of the time, my age, and the whole novelty of the thing. They don't age very well.
Go to the abondonware sites, you can (thankfully) find all these games - play them, and then you can (if you're honest) admit "Meh, this is unappealing". Yes, diehards will whinge about 'gameplay over graphics' and to a point that's true; but ultimately that's not the whole story - there are a heck of a lot of advances in things other than graphics that go a LONG way toward making a game fun: credible AI that's not easily gamed, UI usability, ease of patching, online play, and (usually) a whole host of rationalizations that we accepted at the time because it was such a huge step forward from where we'd been, and it was cool just to be using a computer in the FIRST place.
I'm not saying that these games weren't great IN THEIR TIME. They were. But, like these ancient much-remembered games, just because my grandpa was cool doesn't mean I need to drag his corpse out and re-animate him today because I've got no ideas of my own.
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Like watching the original Star Wars,
Actually the whole original Star Wars trilogy holds up very well. That's the benefit of having a very strong design-- since your design isn't tied to the contemporary styles, it'll still be current long after the bell bottoms have been relegated to the junkheap.
For a counter-example, see Star Trek: The Movie. You can tell what decade it was made in 10 seconds.
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I'm sorry, but I can't imagine a universe where "Ewoks" hold up well. The entire idea seemed like Lucas took a fucked up childhood dream about teddy bears and ran with it. He even went so far as having the teddy bears getting together to brush out Leia's long hair. Talk about sexually repressed childhood fantasies! The entire 3rd movie was nothing but a cry for help by Lucas!
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Well...
Point taken. But the ART DESIGN holds up well.
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The entire 3rd movie was nothing but a cry for help by Lucas!
Based on the 4th, 5th, and 6th movies, he didn't get any.
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I think MULE is the exception, because the game play is timeless. MULE is not to be measured by the modern game benchmarks of fps, in-game advertisements and number of frags.
Also, there is something to learn from the early good games as far as creating engaging gaming (as opposed to fps and fragging). Play a game like Atari's Adventure. Although it is simplistic, short, and pretty lame compared to something like Drake's Fortune, it's good to understand how game development evolves based on the constraints p
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I dunno, I played Oregon Trail semi-recently and found it still to be engaging and entertaining. And what about classics like Tetris or Dr. Mario? Some of those old games I see similar to Monoply, chess, checkers, etc. Games that are fundamentally fun no matter how old they are.
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That's a pretty broad statement, isn't it?
I think video games are like any other product, in that most of them aren't going to stand the test of time -- but some will. Take movies, for instance. For every "timeless classic" that we still enjoy watching 50 years after it came out, there were a hundred or more that deserve to rot in some film vault.
It's the same with video games.
Pac-Man, Tetris, and Galaga will always be good games.
As for M.U.L.E., it always appealed to only a subset of gamers. It's about
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CoCoNet (Score:2)
http://bringerp.free.fr/forum/viewforum.php?f=2
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Pascal Bringer (Kroah) is currently beta testing a Windows version that plays like the original without the bugs. It will be good, this guy knows what he's doing and loves his work.
Go here immediately.
http://bringerp.free.fr/forum/viewforum.php?f=2 [bringerp.free.fr]
(screwed up my tags the first time)
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I just spent a few hours playing the NES version of MULE with a few friends while snowed in a few weeks ago. It was just as great as ever. Some of the games you mention really haven't aged well; this is not the case for MULE at all.
I was a little disappointed by some of the gameplay changes in this new version. They were so close to having a perfect remake, then changed some things that I shift the gameplay balance in a way I didn't think was an improvement. If you're going to try and remake a game this
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"There are a heck of a lot of advances in things other than graphics ... [such as] AI ... UI ... online play ..."
I think you'll find a many of those developments are part of Planet MULE.
And no matter how much you winge about people having fun, you can't stop them by trolling about it on Slashdot.
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MULE never gets old. I've been playing since not long after getting out of diapers, and now I'm changing my own kid's diaper (no not while typing). MULE never left. Well, to be fair it wasn't as good around the late 90s up until PlanetMULE, because it was hard to get any friends to play on emulators...and when I tried the network play would always screw up, so I only played about once or twice per year. Still fun just not as good without the human element. Now I can play PlanetMULE with them, and there's ex
MULE!!!!! Happy 2010 to me! (Score:1)
M.U.L.E. -- Great times (Score:1)
Remember playing it for hours and hours with friends in college.
I remember M.U.L.E. being the place where I first learned about (and heard the word) "Collusion".
Hunting the wumpus, trying to get the mountainous regions to get crystite...
And the only true way to play was the long 90 minute 12 turn game.
Wacka-Chika Wacka-Chika Wacka-Chika (Score:2, Funny)
That's all I have to say. One of the actual PURCHASED games I had for the C=64. Good Times.
Gotta go hunt down a Wumpus.
Sweetness! (Score:2)
OMG, the best video game in history is back!
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Or, according to a lot of your posts, was never really gone, but at least it's now available on my OSX box without futzing around with arcade emulators...
IBM PCjr MULE (Score:2, Interesting)
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I hope people saw that despite your AC posting, it really needed to be modded up more. This is the Holy Grail of M.U.L.E. disks. The lack of a ripped disk image of the PCjr version of M.U.L.E. represents an important and dismaying gap in the historical pr
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Please make sure to get your facts straight on this sensible topic before condemming anyone...
First, at the time the game was made, it was credited to Dan Bunten and no one else,
so citing the original copyright, this may very well fit into the overall scheme of things as they were.
Second, the "new holders of Ozark Softscape" are not mere strangers nor disrespectful people:
These are Dan's children, foremost Dan's daugther Melanie, and she surely was born at the time the game hit the stores, although may have
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Copyright belongs to Person, not the name.. When people change their name (for whatever reason) they still own to that right and have rights. If Mule were released today (and she still lived) it would be copyrighted by Danielle Bunten.
What annoys me most is the way this "ozark softscape" page is made. It's quite obvious they want people to forget essential part of that person who made this game, yes she was also their father (and later mother) a lot longer than they want to let us know. She was a lot more t
Re:Insult towards original author.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Transgender etiquette 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, I think that most if not all transgender people and those who appreciate transgender issues would have a problem with the way this is being handled.
The standard etiquette for referring to a transgender person is to use the name and pronouns they prefer, even when referring to the past. If you don't know the person's preference, use the pronouns that correspond to how they live publicly. This, as well as being the courteous and respectful thing to do, is also agreed upon by the Associated Press Stylebook.
It's the same courtesy we give anyone when they change their name, except that in these cases you're changing the pronouns, too. For example, everyone refers to Laura Bush as Laura Bush, not Laura Welch, even if you're talking about her childhood. If you need to clarify, you still treat the person's current name as the primary name, as in "Laura Bush (born Laura Welch) fell off the swing when she was 5."
The difference is that with transgender people, it's a bigger deal to disrespect their name and pronoun change. It's effectively saying "I don't care what gender you think you are, I know better than you." That's incredibly insulting, demeaning, and disempowering.
It's understandable to be confused the first time you encounter a transgender person, because in over 99% of the population, sex and gender match one-to-one, and they're static final. I mean, they don't ever change. (: So it's understandable to assume that it's a one-to-one unchanging relationship -- until you find a counterexample. At that point, how do you adjust your worldview? Do you dogmatically stick to your view that sex and gender must match one-to-one and must never change? Or do you expand your worldview to account for the counterexamples? It seems to me that both the scientific method and human kindness suggest the latter.