Melanie Bunten - Ozark Softscape

[melaniebunten]

Hey guys.  I check in periodically to see how the games are going and if the fans are enjoying themselves.  Thanks to all of you for continuing to support the legacy of our dad, Dan Bunten and the Ozark Softscape team.  I am very thankful to the team that maintains Planet M.U.L.E.  They do so tirelessly and without much thanks, but appear to receive plenty of criticism.  I want to let you know as the license holders that it wouldn't be possible to play this game for free if it weren't for their efforts, so please send some encouraging words their way when you get a chance.

Changing topics - It sounds like some of you need to behave yourselves (I'll mention no names).  It just a game after all:)

Thanks for being a faithful fan!

Melanie Bunten

[RedwoodTall]

The game is fun and the people that put/keep it together did/do good work. I'd still be playing, but I'm out from technical problems.

[Chuckie Chuck]

Melanie, we do very much appreciate what the guys at Turborilla have done, but for about the last year about they only thing we have seen is a server reboot about twice a week from frequent lock ups, which were not a problem previously.

The developers are not active in the forum at this point.  If they are doing anything, we can't tell.

A few of us (myself included) have offered and asked to be a volunteer to help in the upkeep of the server and possibly even be involved in improving game play and playability and updating it to run under the new Java release, along with modifying the host configuration to make it simpler for novice users to host a game.

We even offered donations or to put up money for a redundant master server.  There are enough of us here with interest and the skills to get this done.  We just need the go ahead and the access to do it. (Source code, server access, etc.)  There are at least two of us that would like to be involved as player/volunteers on that level.  Myself (as a basic IT troubleshooter) and C-128 (As a programmer, updater, bug fixer.)  A larger number would like to offer additional support, such as supply server space for a second server or donations toward that effort.

We are at the point of loosing participation because the game isn't keeping up with new technology and have entered an arena where new computers can't run the game, at least not without difficult research and testing and reconfiguration.

So yes, we do appreciate what's been done, but we feel a bit stranded.

[sjleader]

Crickets...

[C-128]

What Chuckie is saying is we all greatly appreciate everything Osark has done.  We would like to see this go the way of "Open Source" in addition to "free to play" so that we can become a user-community to maintain and update the game going forward!

[KingOfMule]

I agree, if this was 'refreshed' to the new platforms and maybe given a new feature or two, we could toss out some free marketing opps to the folks that remember MULE and maybe get some more players in the community?  In order for this to work however, there would have to be some agreement from existing members to be noob-friendly .

[Noctournis]

Melanie,

     M.U.L.E. was one of my favorite games when I was a kid, and another of my favorites was Seven Cities of Gold.  A friend of mine liked those two games so much that we both made inside jokes referencing the games for 20 years afterward.

    Your dad lives on in the hearts of all of us, who were inspired, entertained and educated by those games.  All my love to you and your family.

[sjleader]

Once again.... nothing.