Planet M.U.L.E.

First off, you guys are awesome.  My friend introduced me to M.U.L.E. this past week and I really enjoyed it.  Afterwards I looked online to see if there were any remakes.  That's when we found Planet Mule and there was a countdown for Saturday nights.  My friends and I got really excited.  Tonight we played 1 full game and here's what we found.

The Mac Client:

• The display doesn't work until you go full screen and then return from full full screen when you first join a game.
• The game doesn't quit when you use the system menu or CMD + Q.  Hitting the red X does quit the game
• Even in full screen, the border doesn't go away so your view is cut off.

In 3 games on a mix of 2 mac clients and 1 windows client with one A.I. the game stopped updating correctly on myself (not host) and eventually during auction phase, the timer stopped and we had to abort the game.  So 3 games out of 3 stopped running.  We were all talking on Skype so we could communicate what was going on.

After several attempts we thought the Mac client might be bugged so we all switched to Windows.  We played one more game and had the same results.  In our last game I begged everyone to try one more time and we got a guy from Poland to fill in the last slot and the game played to completion.  We noticed some changes and bugs that we wanted to bring to your attention.

• Wumpus doesn't appear once you're put a MULE on land.  It's just a difference from the Atari 800 version with which we're accustomed to.  The Wumpus isn't that big of a money maker later on but it really helps out the player who had some bad luck and needs one MULE to get back on their feet.  We also argued that it makes sense the Wumpus would disappear once the land was cultivated.  The counter argument was that it does make sense, it's just called poaching.  What were your reasons for changing it?  Or is this an actual bug?
• Exploit:  We found that if you take a MULE and put it on land, the icons for the amount of resources it would generate automatically pop up.  So you can run from plot to plot, throwing a Crystite Mule down and it will automatically show the icons indicating how much that plot will produce.  This works for all resources.  It renders Assay useless and can be easily exploited to find Crystite or figure out which Mules can do better where.
• Exploit:  You can buy a Mule and set it free almost immediately.  You can purchase a Mule, take it outside, hit your button and set it free and repeat.  In one turn I was able to do this 12 times and dump the entire stock of Mules before other players had a chance.  I imagine you can do this first turn too.  The Atari 800 version made it so that if you had 4 or less Mules the turn order would reverse.  In addition you had to equip Mules before you set them free.  Unequipped Mules could not leave town.  The amount of time it takes to equip a Mule means that you can do it, but it's probably impossible to dump an entire stock of 12.

The three of us who played are ex game testers so we notice these sorts of things.  This is a brilliant product and despite free being awesome, we all hope you guys have plans to monetize this.  The graphics are great and pay homage to the original, the music is fantastic and the only complaint about sound Drakfyre had was that the Wumpus sound wasn't very loud.  (We noticed the Wumpus change but we're kinda ok with it).

Thanks for giving the world this gift and Drakfyre, VGSlave and myself thank you very much!

Thanks a lot. This is golden stuff, keep it coming.

neat observation! I was wondering why the productivity indicator showed immediately rather than wait until production... didn't know you could exploit it though.

Hello Hijynx,

thanks for the points raised, we will fix them with the next release.
The Wampus hunting is actually no bug, but the reason is once all mountains are taken, the natural habit of the wampus dissapeared and the wampus with it.

In 3 games on a mix of 2 mac clients and 1 windows client with one A.I. the game stopped updating correctly on myself (not host) and eventually during auction phase, the timer stopped and we had to abort the game.  So 3 games out of 3 stopped running.  We were all talking on Skype so we could communicate what was going on.


I can confirm this. 5 out of 5 4 player games had the game stop in one of the auction phases. Unless everyone retired behind the no sale line, the timer would stop but no one could sell anything. This would continue for every auction making the game unplayable. I had one two player game where this diud not happen. It happened both when I (windows vista) was hosting and when another player on linux was hosting.