I think they are all good ideas and they make my original vision more practical to include in MULE 2.  They seem to be using my land grab idea, and I hope they are willing to try out Butenol as well to make the game more dynamic.

I agree with your assessment. It probably was to complex as I created it. That's why I put it out there, so people can take that idea and come up with improvements like you did.
 

I vote for it.  But then again, I'd love to skip the auctions in turn 12.

Regarding the First Founder special effect, I miss that as well - it's just jumping up and down in this version.  However, I should say that the height-extension thing is the c64 - on the Atari 800 - the First Founder got big and fat, which I like even better - it's kind of the "abundance of excess".

I noticed the missing messages about shortages - it's a major thing that should be added, and there are many others, but that all goes into making the as close to the original as possible. 

I remember the developers saying they took collusion out because there was no face to face contact, and that makes sense, though I think there could be a way to implement it.  However, I should say that having played dozens of games back in the day, there was an inherent flaw: you couldn't stop someone else who was sitting there from jumping in - they just had to press the button at the same time, and the only solution was to tell the person to stop.  Not a well implemented feature in the original game.  You could also use collusion if you were selling a plot of land, which we never used, as far as I know.  In that scenario, the seller would actually choose who to sell the land to.  Perhaps that would be a better way to proceed in the goods auction - the seller chooses who to collude with.

The reason the winning character was "double-wide" on the Atari version is that on the Atari hardware, you could have 4 "players" (their name for sprites), and one of the built-in features for them was doubling the width.  You could also make them turn into a vertical beam that stretched from the top to the bottom of the screen (like it was teleporting).  "Players" could only be one color. In games where they needed 2-color players, each player had a "missile" associated with it which could be another color.  Many Atari games used this method to have 2-color player sprites.  And if you really wanted, you could combine all 4 players and 4 missiles into one 8 color player.  And yes, I am fully aware this is rather boring.  But then I've been known to sit in on Classic Video Game Expo conferences where they talk about using tricks for Atari 2600 games like using the actual code as fodder for "random" looking bitmaps for things like rocket thrust.  I need to get out more...

FWIW, I'm still working on "modern" video games. My 20th published title is www.leagueoflegends.com

It's bad enough the A.I. puts energy on almost every plot. I just played a game where an A.I. who already had 5 energy plots had one destroyed by a meteor. Instead of putting crystite there, it put an energy MULE there!  Unbelievable!

It's bad enough the A.I. puts energy on almost every plot. I just played a game where an A.I. who already had 5 energy plots had one destroyed by a meteor. Instead of putting crystite there, it put an energy MULE there!  Unbelievable!

I think the goal should be to get STANDARD and TOURNAMENT as close to the 1983 MULE as possible.  But it would be great to have a new mode like UPDATED to utilize the good ideas brought up here and by the designers of Planet MULE.

Actually I think this is one of the best new gameplay ideas I have seen so far.
But there are couple of more things we have to think about:

- Do you want a distribution of between 1-4 buntenol (nice name btw) per plot, or between 0-4?
0-4 would be more like in real life. Just like crystite cannot be mined on every plot. And what about the Assay bot? Would it give you the amount of buntenol in the plot, or only the depth? Is the well located on one layer in the ground, or the deeper you go the more buntenol you can produce?*
- Several MULE needed to dig deeper: what would happen if you remove MULE's from the plot? Do you remove them 1 by 1? Or do you only remove 1 MULE before the plot is empty again (other MULE's are deep in the ground and cannot be recovered anymore)? Removing 1 by 1 doesn't look like a nice idea to me, because then you can use a plot to store MULE's. You strategy can then be: install a couple of your plots with all the remaining MULE's so there are none available for the rest, and every next turn I can get one of my cheap MULE's from those plots to further develop.
- Nice idea of the filling station. But what would the price be? Are you selling your produced Buntenol to the shop and the shop gives you the availability to fill up your MULE's if you pay the shop (like outfitting your MULE)? Or do players need their own amount of Buntenol which they use for their MULE's themselves?

*Graphical example of buntenol in plot.
surface
0    1
4 or 3
0    4

You are right, the amount should be from 0-4.  But that being the case, a player would be foolish to drill for buntenol without assaying the land. It could be expensive to keep drilling down if there's nothing there.  The assay bot will never tell you the depth the buntenol is at.  It is your choice to keep digging for that gusher or to give up and use the plot for something else.

You don't get any buntenol out of your plot until you reach the depth it is at, so it would be like this
0
4
x

The x is because once you reach the depth of the buntenol deposit in that plot, you can't add more MULES to drill.

As far as your question about what happens when you pull a MULE off that plot. When you put a second MULE on a drilling plot, the first MULE is completely converted to driilling shaft and is no longer a MULE. So no matter how many MULEs you added to the first, there is still only one MULE on the surface. If you changed the plot to energy and then later back to drilling, those other MULEs would still be there and it could be used as a buntenol plot with just one MULE.

Buntenol must be refined into MULEfuel at the colony base to be used in MULEs. It takes 2 units of Buntenol to make 1 unit of MULEfuel.  So when you buy buntenol in the market auction, you are buying futures or speculating.  You are not buying what you can put in your MULE any more than buying smithore lets you have MULEs instead of buying them at the store. When you fill up a MULE in the base, the cost of a unit of MULEfuel is calculated on the current price of buntenol, just like the price of MULEs are based on the current price of smithore.  If it is selling at $130 per unit, that's what you pay to fill up.  If the price falls to $40 per unit, you might use the turn to fill a bunch of your MULEs while the price is cheap.

Thanks for your support of my idea. Like I said, I've actually had it bumping around in my head for 25 years.

I wasn't calling someone a troll. I was saying that when discussing in a thread which by its very nature is about what IDEAS people have to change the game, to come in and try to say no changes should be made MIGHT be construed as being a troll.

Of course a discussion of any new proposal includes people expressing whatever thoughts they have, so let's not call someone a troll, if he/she likes to see an updated version still with an original gameplay feature left intact.

Yes. Perhaps it would allow players to DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!

DRINK IT UP!!!

use FRAPS

This was a tribute posted on a tribute site for Dan after his death.

From Joe Ybarra of Eclipse Entertainment

    In the fall of 1982, I became the producer at Electronic Arts for Dan Bunten.

    On my first day on the job at EA, the total headcount for EA was 7 people. Trip Hawkins held a draft of prospective developers amongst the 3 producers. We randomly chose the draft order, and I picked third. Dave Evans picked first; he “selected” Bill Budge and Pinball Construction Set. Pat Marriott picked second, and selected Jon Freeman and Anne Westfall, who in turn developed Archon and Murder On The Zinderneuf as their 2 titles. I was left with selecting our only remaining pre-established developer connection, Dan Bunten. I wasn’t terribly happy about this; Dan had only previously published Cartels And Cutthroats for SSI, and a small multiplayer, self-published auction game. Additionally, Dan was located in Little Rock, Arkansas, making for what I assumed would be some unpleasant travel. Last, but not least, Trip’s idea was to build another economic “simulation” based on the design/code base of Cartels And Cutthroats. I had lots of misgivings about this product concept.

    Thus began a fruitful, enjoyable, and highly creative relationship between myself and Ozark Softscape which was to last around 3 years and produced M.U.L.E., Seven Cities Of Gold, and Heart Of Africa. I could go on about the history of the creation of these products, but it would take a lot of writing. Instead, here are a couple of my favorite moments with Dan during this period.

    During the Alpha to Beta transition of M.U.L.E., we had a serious problem with play balance in the later stages of the game in single player mode. I had spent over 150 hours playtesting M.U.L.E., and between Dan and I we were struggling to fix the design flaw. I flew out to Little Rock to meet with the team and nail down this problem. Dan and I enjoyed walking and talking, so we went for a walk around the pond in front of their “clubhouse” office. We paced around the pond discussing the internal design and play-flow of M.U.L.E. After a couple of hours, several laps, and lots of intense problem solving, we figured out the solution. We couldn’t wait to get back into the clubhouse to alter the code (which was written in BASIC) and test the simulation. We practically ran back to join the rest of the team, who had patiently waited for Dan and I to return. It took about 15 minutes to make the changes, recompile, and get a build to start testing. It worked.

    This moment in the development of M.U.L.E. was especially memorable because of the interchange between Dan and myself. Dan was always open minded about game design, a joy to work with, and a sharp, analytic thinker. The problem we were solving was very subtle and required insight about game flow and mechanics which I found to be quite rare. My respect and admiration for Dan was firmly established as a result of this dialogue. In the future this working relationship and friendship would be needed to fight some of the even more complex problems we were to face.

    Of the products I produced at EA, Seven Cities Of Gold was my favorite. One of the great moments of my EA career took place early in the development of SCOG. Alan Watson and Dan were developing as an early milestone the random continent generator. After a lot of work, maps were being generated in about 40 minutes and written to the Atari 800 floppy (all of 88K). Unfortunately, every continent, no matter what parameters were selected, looked like a peanut. We struggled for weeks trying to get the generator to create ANYTHING that didn’t look like a peanut. The frustration level was extremely high for everyone.

    Each Friday at EA there was a company meeting where Trip would pull everyone together to discuss the events of the week and the state of the business. About an hour prior to one of these meetings, I received a call from Dan, who was very excited. They had found a bug in the random number generator. Dan wanted to transmit to me a map data file showing a map which wasn’t a peanut. At the time, 2400 baud was the fastest we could transmit (this took place in 1983). It would take over an hour to get the map, and another ½ hour to create a build and see the results.

    I grabbed a beer from the company meeting, and while everyone else at EA was attending the meeting, I was in the test center downloading code/data. Just as I was seeing the results of Alan/Dan’s success, everyone in the company meeting started cheering and making a bunch of noise. I too was cheering and making noise in celebration of seeing our first “truly random” continent. The coincidence of all this celebration brought chills down my spine ... I knew at the time something special had just happened. I jumped on the phone to call Dan, and while he was on the phone people started to come into the test center to see what I was doing. For the first time anyone could tell we were creating another masterpiece. The energy and excitement was terrific. Dan was both elated and burnt out, but you could “hear” him grinning on the other side of the phone.

    Although he and I hadn’t worked together in over 12 years, we stayed in touch. We always enjoyed spending time together discussing game development, publishing, family life; anything and everything we found interesting. Dan was always more interested in people and how they behave than in technology or even pure game design. His interest in multiplayer games clearly reinforces this. Dan enriched my life, taught me a bunch about game design and products, and gave me some of the best moments in my career.

Dan, I hope you are happy, wherever you are.

I will miss you.

I've had this idea since 1984.  What if there was petroleum-like liquid below the surface of Irata called Buntenol.  Each plot would have two factors regarding this new commodity, amount and depth.  Some plots would have lots of it (4 pips) and others would have very little (1 pip). Some plots would have it at a depth that one MULE could drill down to and other would need several MULES outfitted to drill in order to get to it.  The deeper the well, the more energy that plot consumes every turn to produce its Buntenol.

Here's the kicker: There would be a filling station in the base where you can fill up MULEs with Buntenol. Since MULEs with a secondary energy source can work faster/longer per day, each unit of Buntenol allows a MULE to produce 25%-50% more for one turn.  So you could outfit a MULE for food, then bring it over to the filling station and fill it with 4 units of Buntenol, then drop it on your food plot.  For the next 4 turns it will produce 25%-50% more food.  You can always grab a MULE off your plot and bring it in to the base for a refill or to top it off.  This way there is a demand for Buntenol within the base so it's not purely a luxury item like Crystite is, but rather a necessary commodity to remain competitive.

The thing about Buntenol is that it does not have as predictable a pattern as crystite.  Sometimes it follows an X pattern, sometimes it follows an O pattern (there the center plots have very little but the ring around the center has a lot), and sometimes it has a diamond pattern like crystite does.  You never know until you start seeing the pattern.  The assay robot can tell you how much Buntenol is below the surface, but not how deep you have to drill to get to it.  A MULE can drill one layer down.  When you place a drilling MULE on a plot if you reach Buntenol, it gushes up like an oil derrick. This way you can keep outfitting drilling MULEs and placing them on the plot during your turn until you strike Buntenol and you don't have to wait until the production phase to know if you succeeded.  Of course, if you didn't already know how much Buntenol was on that plot, only then will you find out how fruitful your well will be.

I think this could add a deeper (no pun intended) element to the game. Perhaps there could be a mode beyond Tournament that uses it.  It will increase energy usage, which will help that commodity grow in value, and it will use up time during turns which should increase food value as well.

I gotta chime in and vote for the status quo. It's part of the feel of the game that makes it fun.

I love the feel of a retro-game, let's not change it into another game.

Sorry if you think I'm a crotchety old fuddy duddy...

-BC

The topic of this thread is Gameplay Ideas.  By its very nature it is asking what could be added to a "MULE 2" as it were.  There is no need to call for status quo in such a thread.  Doing so might even classify someone a troll.

In the original MULE, if a player decides to buy from another player selling to the store (or to sell to another player buying from the store), he simply moved his line to meet the transaction and all units bought and sold would involve him instead of the store. Currently moving up to the transaction line doesn't allow you to cut in front of the store. It only gets to you when that transaction is finished and if there is another transaction.