Swords of Freeport

Freeport is the biggest, most infamous city on the Trantic Seaboard. The only city-state free of monarchs and unelected officials, it has been infested with something arguably even worse - capitalists. The perfect place to make your fortune... or get your throat cut trying.

Venture forth and pick pockets! Avoid the city constabulary! Join guilds! Explore the city! Hunt the mighty Bloatalope, the dangerous Flaymonkey, and the Sharp-Toothed Chargebeast! Sleep in flea-infested beds! Only in the democratic citystate of FREEPORT! (No taxation until 100 gold crowns per week.)

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Swords of Freeport is a text-mode social RPG heavily inspired by the style of Bulletin Board System door games from back in the '90s. It is part MUD and part BBS Game - but without the need for a BBS. You can play it on your home machine alone, or play/install it on an internet-accessible machine where others can join you - anywhere they have terminal access.

It is heavily inspired by games such as Legend of the Red Dragon, with a certain numbers of turns per day. Select a profession, join a guild, and make a name for yourself today!

Features include:

• Retro play once-a-day style mechanics
• Three core starting professions with options for cross-skilling
• A whole city and the countryside around it to explore!
• Witty, smart humour throughout the game *
• All 24 characters and many words of the English language are used to evoke the feeling of really being in a squalid Victorian-adjacent fantasy city!
• Addictive turn-based gameplay which limits how much time you can sink into it
• Look, it has the Bloatalope - you want to hunt a Bloatalope, don't you? **

* This is subjective, of course. But my mum thinks it's funny.

** That'd be something to brag about to your friends. "Gary," you'd say. "You won't BELIEVE what I hunted last night in a text game I've been addicted to!" Gary would no doubt respond with, "My goodness, Charlene, don't tell me it's a BLOATALOPE you went hunting? That's very impressive. Let me buy you a coffee!"

More information can be found here.

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 Q&A:

So the game is multiplayer?

In the strictest technical sense... sort of. Players can see each other's progress via the in-game news board, chat via in-game message boards found in taverns (and other places), and can see when each other is logged in. There is no player vs player mode, and the multiplayer components of the game are presented (as 'social RPG' suggests) for social reasons.

Can I play it single-player?

Absolutely. In fact if you download it and run the binary, the game will seamlessly kick into single-player mode. Keep in mind however, that the game is very much designed to give the best experience when you are playing with other people on a shared instance.

When I run the executable on Windows (probably 11), it shows some text and stops.

This is a text mode program, designed to run a terminal window. Open a terminal window where the game is located, and run sfp.exe.

I want to learn more about the game. Where can I read more about it than just what's on this page?

The game's help file is available online here here.

Where can I see the latest patch notes?

They are provided in the game folder, viewable when you log in or by reading the markdown file 'help.md' in the data/help directory. However, you can also always view the latest patch notes here.

What kind of support can I expect if I buy this game?

I am a solo developer, and I am working on the project in the spare time I have outside of both a day job and another side project. So I will provide support as I can, but especially if there's a bunch of replies at once... it may take some time.

Does it run in its own server, like a MUD?

No. While that is technically possible in future if the game gets enough attention, this game is very intentionally designed to operate within the basic restrictions and form of a BBS Door. By this I mean that each player runs their own copy of the binary file on a shared computer, with numerous data files acting as drop points for information that needs to be shared between players.

What is it coded in?

C++17. It uses termcap and some ANSI codes, but otherwise uses no other libraries or middleware to make it run on as many systems as possible. It was made mostly on macOS with VS Code & make/clang, but the test instance was run on a Linux From Scratch machine, built using make and the GNU C Compiler.

What different operating systems does it run on, or could it run on?

SFP was build primarily on macOS, with the most testing done on our test server, Grissom, which runs Linux from Scratch on an x86_64 machine. We have done limited testing on linux for arm64 and windows, and limited testing on arm32. If you want to use one of these less tested OSs, reach out and I'll help how I can. If your OS/architecture is not amongst the supported, it's even possible I could make builds for other systems. If it doesn't exist - it's because I don't have such a system to build on. Keep in mind, I am a solo dev, with a small volunteer testing team helping me work out the bugs on a rather complex game.

What are your future plans for additional features and content?

A little up in the air right now as it will depending on a combination of my own personal interest in the project, and the support and interest I get from players.

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Platforms: macOS (Apple Silicon, x86_64), Linux (x86_64, arm aarch64, arm32), Windows 10/11 (single player only, AMD64)