Planet M.U.L.E.

By: Paul Eres

On: February 16th, 2010

Planet M.U.L.E. is a remake of the classic economic multiplayer game M.U.L.E., and done with permission of the Bunten family. If you didn’t play the original the video above explains some of the basics. I’ve really been having a lot of fun with this game; it’s most fun if you play with people you know (I’ve been playing with #tigirc folk Mr. Podunkian, Eva-Jolli, Ortoslon, BlademasterBobo, Dragonmaw, etc. — thanks for helping me learn the game). It’s a beautiful design, it’s one of the few games that feels like it takes intelligence to do well in.

There’s quite a lot of complexity and that comes out of the game’s rules, with a large number of possible strategies. There are a few optimum strategies that you’ll gravitate towards after you’ve seen how the experts play the game, but even those tend to be undermined by the actions of new players who don’t really get the game (or parts of it), so sometimes the player who winds up winning is the person who can figure out the psychology of the worst player and take advantage of that player. Alternatively, sometimes a bad player can ruin the game for everyone else by having the entire colony fail (although that’s rare).

There are a lot of cosmetic and minor rule changes from the original, but for the most part I think they make sense and are improvements. For instance, the time counter during auctions now counts down faster if nobody is moving, instead of forcing everyone to wait when it’s clear nothing else will get done that auction. And the game seems to be (from its blog) in active development, with more improvements released periodically.

The main negatives are inherent in it being multiplayer-only: you sometimes have to wait ages for strangers to play with if you don’t know anyone willing to play it with you, and when someone loses their connection or leaves the game they’re replaced with a boring bot (which seem to have only basic AI and will always lose if you know what you’re doing). The ranking system is also kind if simplistic; it’s based on total wins rather than any kind of Elo-style rating system, which I think would be more appropriate.

If any of you are interested in playing the game with other people but don’t know anyone with the patience to learn such a nonstandard game, come to the chatroom #tigirc on irc.esper.net and see if anyone there is interested.

Posted in Freeware, Highly Recommended, Linux, Macintosh, Multiplayer, Sim, Strategy, Windows | Tags: Turborilla

zentropa

Hmm, I’ll bite. I haven’t played M.U.L.E. since middle school. All I remember are the fucking space pirates that would ruin your day.
Mr. Podunkian

did you just clump me with the tigirc crowd.
http://www.nfopocalypse.com/ ErdTirdMans

This game is sufficiently badass enough for me to post a comment stating its badassery.

Glad I followed this recommendation.
Alehkhs

Holy fuck… M.U.L.E?!

Mother of moles this is a good day!
Tei

Is kinda not-multiplayer-only. Theres a mod where you can play against bots. Somewhat like a skirmish mode.

MULE is mostly a better version computerrized and smart of Settler of Catan.

And planetMULE not only is new, but the best version available.

Is the awesome.
Emerlan

Fun but terribly slow
Skofo

Like I said on the forums, I wish that they had done a lot more on the remake than simply switch the graphics and add bugs.
splotki

MULE is the best and this remake is awesome.

Also, check out this box art:

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/gallery/Document/Mule_box_f.jpg

Yep, so good in every way.
Vania

I like it, but the controls make the game very slow.
Jad

Oooh, the song in the tutorial video is totally rad! ‘ 3 ‘
http://jamesgecko.com James

This would be a better LAN game if everyone took their turns at once. Not that hotseat style turns are bad, but the game is pretty slow for what it is.
Mr. Podunkian

@james — it wouldn’t work because playing the game requires you to consider your turn order as well, since there is a limited supply of MULES and because a lot of the game is contingent on seeing what the other players do any reacting to it.
http://www.klikscene.com Radix

I don’t think you can compare MULE and Catan. I guess the trading part is superficially similar, but the underlying game is significantly different. The social aspect of IRL Catan would almost make me place it closer to poker than MULE.
Anthony Flack

Dani Bunten was trying to get an online version of M.U.L.E. up before her death, and since she was extremely outspoken about people adding features to the game that she didn’t like, I think it’s appropriate that a largely-vanilla version of M.U.L.E. has been presented here.

Other people are free to take the game’s concepts and evolve it into other forms, but that would be better done outside the M.U.L.E. name I think.
Mooseral

Is it just me, or is there no hot seat play here? Seems like that would be somewhat silly for a MULE game, although as of the moment it appears to be the case. Adding online play whilst removing hot seat would seem to be a step sideways.
paul eres

@mooseral: i think you can just open multiple copies of the client program, with each player having their own program, and each signed in under a different account; people could then play against each other on one computer in that fashion, as long as they have internet connectivity
http://player1-gameblog.blogspot.com/ Player1

Well, this is kind of old, several months already. Unfortunately there is no hot seat mode, what for many was the clue of playing Mule. Playing this game online is online half the fun. Many have asked for a hot seat mode in the forums, but the devs seem to want to stick to the online formula, but as you can see on their site only a handful of people is online at any time.
http://unspeakableevil.wordpress.com/ Forte Dante

How would hotseat work with the auctions? Don’t they happen for all players at the same time?
paul eres

you can adjust the controls of each client separately, i think (under settings) — not sure it’d work, but it might. still, another option is to just play multiple people on multiple computers in the same room (a lot of people have their own laptops).
Mooseral

The original MULE used multiple input devices. Still a more than decent idea, as it’s both more likely and more convenient for one to get four game pads set up rather than four entire computers. And besides, having people staring at separate screens isn’t exactly conducive to the whole social aspect either.
xot

This is supposed to be GPL open source, so it should be possible for anyone to alter it for local multiplayer, or add and remove whatever features they want, or build a more robust AI. For the life of me I can’t find the source code though.
James

It’s not open source, nor does it sound like there are plans to make it so, sadly.

http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=378.0
xot

Actually, after looking through their forums they seem to have reversed their open source position. I’m pretty disappointed because the producer was absolutely adamant about making it GPL when I was hired as a programmer. That said, I did NOT work on the Java version, and things could have easily changed when they sought approval from the Bunten family.
Mr. Podunkian

pretentious

Strict censorship existed in the Eastern Bloc.[2] Throughout the bloc, the various ministries of culture held a tight rein on their writers.[3] Cultural products there reflected the propaganda needs of the state.[3] Party-approved censors exercised strict control in the early years.[4] In the Stalinist period, even the weather forecasts were changed if they had the temerity to suggest that the sun might not shine on May Day.[4] Under Nicolae Ceau?escu in Romania, weather reports were doctored so that the temperatures were not seen to rise above or fall below the levels which dictated that work must stop.[4]
xot

WTF? Time traveling post from James? Po’dunk snarking in the wrong thread? Madness!