#Lost soul aside game software#
#Lost soul aside game code#

It also increases the maximum skill level the player can have for that particular skill. The more specialty points that are allocated for a certain skill, the faster the skill can be learned and improved. For example, higher dexterity allows the user to allocate more specialty points to the use of swords. The higher their attribute in a given area, more specialization points are available to allocate for a certain skill. The Lost Souls skill system is based on a value assigned to each of the character's attributes, such as strength, agility, and ego. Examples of affiliations range from the Aligned, a group of artists and poets attuned to cosmic order, to Ordo Zephyrius Mutatoris, magicians who control air and weather, to the Erisian Liberation Front, Discordians described as 'guerrilla theologians' who invoke an array of gods in the name of chaos.

These organizations are numerous and often highly idiosyncratic, offering abilities and challenges specific to the individual group. Most often, affiliations can be left as well, allowing the character to explore new avenues of development. Lost Souls does not have the ' character class' mechanic common to fantasy role-playing games its nearest equivalent is guilds and associations, which are organizations that a character joins after creation. Among the more unusual races are the nyloc (magickally created shadow-beings), zuth (giant centaur-shaped reptiles), rachnei (anthropomorphic spiders), and phaethon (bronze-skinned elves with wings of fire). Thirty-two can be chosen from by a new player, ten more are unlocked by normal play, and another nineteen can be played under exotic circumstances. Lost Souls has a broad variety of races, some deviating wildly from the human baseline. This is a significant barrier to new players, though experienced players often see the learning curve as a rite of passage and appreciate the greater depth that the extensive system brings to their later gameplay. Lost Souls's command structure and character model are unusually extensive for a game, however, and are noted as presenting a considerable amount of information to be learned. The basic game structure follows common RPG conventions, with characters fighting, exploring, and questing to gain experience, gold and items.

The interface is text-based, in what is often thought of as the Zork style. Lost Souls, as typical for MUDs, is accessed through a telnet client or specialized MUD client. In December of 2019, Matthew 'Chaos' Sheahan retired from his position as owner and lead developer of Lost Souls, passing the responsibilities to Wesley 'Starhound' Reid.Ī screenshot from Lost Souls depicting a combat sequence Overview The game's Web presence has become an important part of its service offering, including an extensive, mostly player-edited wiki and spawning several players' character blogs. As a result, it is one of the four sites cited in the LPMud FAQ (now a frozen document), only two of which are still online and MUD-related (the other being BatMUD's site). Lost Souls was an early mover into the Web among MUDs, registering its domain in April 1995, after previously maintaining a Web presence at.

#Lost soul aside game code#

Subsequent developments have included the atman (an account system through which players can manage multiple characters, improving on the typical MUD arrangement where the character is the account), a detailed model of the physical makeup of objects and the organs of living beings, a 3D evolution of the 'overland map' allowing free flight across the world, use of A* search for pathfinding (and publishing the code for doing so), a detailed skill model, an innovative system for psychic wild talents, accessibility support for vision-impaired players using screen reader software, and character development through exploration rather than combat.

#Lost soul aside game software#

It distinguished itself early on with software features, then innovative among MUDs (and still less than ubiquitous), such as an overland-map-style environment, realistic combat, a language barrier, and a limb model for characters supporting anatomies significantly different from that of humans, that earned it positive critical response. Lost Souls was founded in 1990 by Michael 'Almior' Rice and several associates. One of several login screens that Lost Souls displays, this one depicting a chaotic plane called the Exoma