A Brief History of RetroEQ
The first time I saw RetroEQ it was a Windows-only Visual Basic application that used a Microsoft Access database. It had an in-app picture of a humanoid torso that you could click on to configure your slots and save equipment sets. I'm not exactly sure who started it, but at the time it was maintained by Moriant, a former staff member who had returned to playing as one of the primary EQ tanks of the era.
Somewhere along the way Froggy picked up the project and it turned into a web application which later ended up in the hands of Nyen who then passed it over to me.
Here it is almost 20 years later and RetroEQ has come into its own as an officially sponsored tool created and maintained by the playerbase. It's time for the next phase of its evolution.
Growing RetroEQ
I asked Loktai, Kumog, and Taos to work with the community and assemble a list of desired features for RetroEQ. The feature list continues to grow and I'd like to thank those three for helping out and to the following community members whose names were noted down so far in the collaboration document:
- Azamir
- Ghalt
- Madrados
- Nazghlxu
- Zeratuel
- Ithgirbefink
- Vanagandr
- Carter
- Galon
What was interesting to me in reading all the notes so far is how some of the requests were actually features in that earlier version of RetroEQ that didn't make it to the web application. One example that struck me, because I used it all the time, is a way to put together equipment sets and see the calculated results of the bonuses for your character.
RetroEQ: For the Community, by the Community
One thing that's always been integral to RetroEQ is that it is a community run and owned project. The move to the web application added an extra step - the community has to ask someone for a user account and password. We can do better! I'd like to rework the codebase for the next twenty years of RetroMud and add a couple features that are sorely lacking:
- Allow people to make their own user accounts.
- Update public game data from the game instead of relying on third party scraping tools.
- Establish community moderators so more people than just the people with access to the server can help with the site.
- Get the sourcecode into the open so technically minded players can contribute to the RetroEQ platform.
Now, for those who don't know, RetroEQ is currently written in PHP. I'd like to move it into Ruby on Rails on the backend and re-design the main interface to support some of the requested features and make it both easier to use and mobile device friendly. It's still very much in the design phase, so there's plenty of time to throw ideas into the ring both for features in the application or for the technology used to build it.
Get involved and help us build out the next 20 years of RetroEQ!