For entertainment I watched the video for around 30 seconds. When the guy could not remember what he called the variable for mana, well that just kind of killed it for me. If you are going to make a video for showing people C++, Jesus Christ at least do a dry run first.

Saw that, initialized as mana then set as mhp = rand()%50+60;

Edit: Continued watching and he said "and" and put ||, haha.

Edit 2: The blind teaching the blind in that video, to say the least.

I caught that too, I think it was right around the time he could not remember the variable name. I am not intentionally trying to be critical but if you are teaching, especially if you have a chance to perfect the video, get it right.

Meh. He did it before he was ready, and appears to be something of a beginner himself. Fresh out of a college course, perhaps.

I gotta give someone props for the gumption to do it and put it online at all, without talking himself up or being super irritating.

Dry run would definitely have been helpful. Even coding up the whole thing beforehand, then starting again from scratch for the video with potential logical and structural pitfalls figured out beforehand and fresh in memory.

Better than nothing, though. That video was from 2013, too. Wonder if he's improved. Too lazy to check for other videos, though. lol

I remember that whole Dikumud thing from way back.

Here are some impressions I've gotten from reading about this over the years.

1) McQuaid played a Dikumud pretty heavily.

2) They spit this whole project out in a hurry. I mean it came out at rocket speed (whether anyone justifiably thinks it was a paid beta for the first six months or so), compared to anything they or anyone else did later.

Althought to counteract that I remember reading somewhere that Sony had been working on a MMORPG for a while before McQuaid (and Smedley?) came on board, and however Verant came to be.

3) As someone mentioned there was stuff from the Dikumud in question in the database. Only I had thought it went beyond things like descriptions, I thought it included phrases like "You've ruined your own lands, you'll not ruin mine!"

4) The class structure and I guess gameplay were derived from the Mud in question (as much as a reasonably 3d game can derive from a text mud).

This is something that interests me. At one time there were some EQ players who had played both. I thought that the names like "Shadowknight," and the distinction of having pets, along with necros being different from mages being different from enchanters and so forth came about.

I'd be pretty cheerful about being corrected, at this point who has any skin in that game?

But whether Verant copied code (and it is hard to see how that is possible given the difference between a text and graphics game like this), my take is there is a lot more derivation than what anyone would gather from reading this thread.

And just to cut and paste from wikipedia (though I know that proves nothing):

"EverQuest began as a concept by John Smedley in 1996. The original design is credited to Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost. It was developed by Sony's 989 Studios and its early-1999 spin-off Verant Interactive, and published by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE).[3]

Since its acquisition of Verant in late 1999, EverQuest was developed by Sony Online Entertainment.[4]

The design and concept of EverQuest is heavily indebted to text-based MUDs, in particular DikuMUD, and as such EverQuest is considered a 3D evolution of the text MUD genre like some of the MMOs that preceded it, such as Meridian 59 and The Realm Online. John Smedley, Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover and Bill Trost, who jointly are credited with creating the world of EverQuest, have repeatedly pointed to their shared experiences playing MUDs such as Sojourn and TorilMUD as the inspiration for the game.[5] Famed book cover illustrator Keith Parkinson created the box covers for earlier installments of EverQuest.[6]

Development of EverQuest began in 1996 when Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA) executive John Smedley secured funding for a 3D game like text-based MUDs following the successful launch of Meridian 59 the previous year.[citation needed] To implement the design, Smedley hired programmers Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover, who had come to Smedley's attention through their work on the single player RPG Warwizard. McQuaid soon rose through the ranks to become executive producer for the EverQuest franchise and emerged during development of EverQuest as a popular figure among the fan community through his in-game avatar, Aradune.[citation needed] Other key members of the development team included Bill Trost, who created the history, lore and major characters of Norrath (including EverQuest protagonist Firiona Vie), Geoffrey "GZ" Zatkin, who implemented the spell system, and artist Milo D. Cooper, who did the original character modeling in the game."

Now for some reason, I remember reading the original game was done in 18 months. That doesn't jibe with those dates I'll assume to be true, the ball was started by Smedley in 96, and he hired McQuaid that year.

Still these guys got a whole heck of a lot done in a short time, as opposed to Everquest 2, WoW, or any of the others.

I wouldn't be surprised if the first year 96 were more planning and setting up milestones than anything else, with serious work, including art, not starting till 97; maybe even halfway through 97 to go with 18 month thing I think I remember from somewhere.

Just saying I'm not so sure Everquest isn't more derivative of "Torilmud" (after seeing the name I remembered that was the one McQuaid played heavily), particularly given the short dev cycle of this thing (or maybe the more advanced graphics on the later games slowed them down in comparison?).

If anyone ever played that mud, can they comment on any similarities? These things change and evolve all the time, so I guess it would have to be a late 90's player to really be accurate, and Torilmud to boot.

Otherwise I have no idea who Marcus is or what is up with this thread.

But these have always been my thoughts on the whole thing, whether accurate or not, and more to the point important at all.

So what kind of progress have you made MarcusD?