Alter Aeon
This entry is a work in progress, draft to be completed 06 June 2009
Welcome to Alter Aeon!
Dare you enter a world of magic and dragons? With hundreds of areas to explore, quests to complete, and monsters to vanquish you'll never run out of things to do in the world of Alter Aeon.
Blind players - please see our Blind and Visually Impaired Player Support page. The game is blind-friendly for the visually impaired, but finding a client that works well with your reader can be difficult.
New Player, and advanced gamers are all welcome at Alter Aeon. New players will find custom low level areas and quests specifically designed to help thier character take on the world of Alter Aeon. Advanced players will find a huge custom world ever expanding areas, quest, and game play. Extensive help getting connected, online FAQs, and user submitted work is available at Alter Aeon's Website.
Game Development and Platform
Alter Aeon is a multi-user dungeon, or text based adventure game, which has been running since 1996. Alter Aeon has support for blind and visually impaired players using screen-readers. A custom client for the sighted with enchanced map support is also available on the web site, however the game can still be played using telnet or ordinary MUD clients.
The game is hosted by the creator and developer "Dentin" on a dedicated co-located server in Texas. The code base, DentinMud, is completely original with inspiration from Diku and Merc. The code is currently at v2.05 and maintains a stable and cohearent gameplay enviroment while being regularly updated and expanded. All players may view recent changes with the in-game command "changes"
or the web page
"Alter Aeon Recent Changes and Additions".
Gameplay
Alter Aeon is a medieval fantasy role-playing game, with occasional sci-fi and other fantasy references.
The character system is multi-class level-based. The classes are the standard magic user, cleric, thief, and warrior, and may be leveled at any time assuming fame and experience requirements are met. At and above level 30, 'fame' points are required to gain levels in addition to experience. Fame points are only given by killing various difficult creatures in the game; the rationale given by Dentin is that this tends to increase exploration at high levels.
The skill and spell system is broken up loosely into groups with dependencies, with a large number of isolated standalone spells and skills. The thief and warrior classes have much smaller skill trees than spellcasters.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
There is in-game support for clans and clan property. Players in most cases can create clans and modify clan areas without administrative support. Clans also time out and self-destruct if not maintained. Clan dues must be paid in gold, the in-game currency, though purchase of dues with US currency is available from Dentin.
Player killing is only allowed on an 'opt-in' basis, and opposing players must both opt-in to the desired PK type to fight. Permanent PK is regulated by a karma based system that is widely considered by the players to be only marginally functional. To prevent unwanted karma effects from building up, permanent PK players will often fight in arenas or while flagged as temporary PK.
The game supports server-side spam filters and aliases, as well as alias/tty stop using Control-C; the ability to halt an alias and clear the command queue is unusual and very useful for players using simple clients or screen readers. The spam filters are used primarily by blind players to reduce the load on screen readers.
The communication system allows for player-created channels which support access lists, password protection, and player ownership. Unused channels tend to self-delete due to inactivity, but there are several channels owned by Dentin and other gods which have been granted permanence.
The channel system also provides communication to the builders port and the sister mud, Banished Lands. There is also a communications port (port 3011) that shows only communication, which is useful for displaying communication that may have been missed by the player if they are heavily spammed, although the recent addition of the 'replay' command almost accomplishes the same thing.
The game is partially supported by donations from the players.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> A number of things are available for purchase, most commonly name changes, clan dues, and weightless containers for carrying equipment. Weaponry or other useful items that would confer an in-game advantage are not available for sale, though the argument has been made that weightless containers provide the owners a definite advantage. This is partly because it increases the amount of equipment the player can have online and partly because the items can be transferred via auction or private sale in-game. The removal of the 'permanent' PK flag can be purchased as well.
External links
- The official Alter Aeon web page.
- Banished Lands, forked in 1995 from Alter Aeon's code base.
