I know the trend today is to create simple 2d Games work you way up, build experience and then work into 3d and build from there. Some people jump into 3d and do very well and just go from there... There''s a saying that history repeats itself, so I was thinking. Maybe it''s time for a revival. Has anyone thought of working on a MUD? And I don''t mean mixing a pile of dirt w/ some water. What I''m talking about are those online text adventure games. Some of them are mini-MMORPGs and actually have graphics. Have any of you played them? What do you think. The idea is pretty simple, using telnet protocol you build a game that accepts strings from the player which are commands and process them, outputing descriptions for rooms, providing interplayer chat, whatever. Original MUDs are based on (A)D&D Rulesets and even today, while some MUDs are very original, many stick to that foundation. This is understandable because many people that create original "codebases" or MUD engines either run a pay-2-play service or are very secretive and don''t want other stealing their code. Therefore the majority and often lazy/undedicated or unexperienced "coders" only have those old codebases to work with. While I''m not saying the community needs people to build them new codebases with original ideas, it''d be nice to see more original MUDs out there to weed out all those "stock" games that people often just download, change the name, and load. Places where you can learn more about muds include: The Mud Connector Kyndig These sites have large mud databases and semi-active forums. Some nice examples include: Dragonball Z: Evolution - telnet://ozma.kyndig.com:1874 Not the best MUD but it''s DBZ! Just kinda a nice place to waste time trying to get transformations, so you can get the next one, so you can get money, so you can get etc... Star Wars: Revenge of the Jedi - telnet://jedi.betterbox.net:9400 Last time I played it was a very nice CIRCLE mud, heavily modified. Unfortunatly pushes away casual gamers with it''s "rent" save system. Where you use in-game money to save you character based on your equipment. Stay too long and you lose all money and equipment . Legends of Terris - www.legendsofterris.com Great original fantasy MUD. Only problem w/ this game is it isn''t free. After a very short free trial you must register in order to continue playing. Try it though, no personal/billing information is required to test . I suggest you try those MUDs and visit the sites to find out more but from a programmer''s point of view, I''ll link a few codebases for reference. They are all in C/C++ AIME - aime.sourceforge.net One of the newer codebases and not widely used just yet. It runs under windows very well and it''s written in C I believe. It''s the one codebase I want to learn how to modify . Circle - www.circlemud.org Most of my favorite MUDs are modified Circle muds. Must circle muds are easy to get into and fun to play. It''s written in C can''t say how well though. ROM - www.rom.org Rivers of MUD is a more popular codebase that many people also use. While I don''t like it as much as Circle it does look like the basic game offers a little more depth or at least a change. That should be enough information to get people started. What do you think? I just kinda want feedback on what people think about MUDs and if they think they''d enjoy making one.

I''ve honestly been thinking of looking into MUD development, though in all honesty I''m sure I haven''t yet the knowledge of C/C++ to really jump into anything just yet. Not to mention my campaign to become relatively competent in asm. Thanks a lot for the links and such, and I look forward to further discussion of this topic.

[edited by - ChildOfKordova on October 11, 2017 10:32:23 AM]
weird

I have also (obviously) looked into MUD development and am in the same situation. Goes to show you don''t have to be a expert programmer just to join this topic. More people have to be interested. There a plenty more themes as well then just fantasy and movies/tv. Cyberpunk, Modern, Heavy Roleplay, and some are just basically chat rooms. If anyone wants something specific to interest them ask me, I''ll do some digging.

I haven''t looked into mud developement much, but I find MUDs extremely boring. I''ve played 5 or 6, all suggested to me by friends as excellent MUDs, and only 1 of them had anything resembling role playing at all. In all of them, the game basically consists of going to a certain location (depending on the skill you want to learn) and either repeatedly sending the command to do the skill or using a special practice command over and over.
Also, its against the rules to automate practice for almost every MUD(why is pressing ''enter'' over and over{ZMUD saves the last command you sent in the text box so pressing enter resends it} better than reading a help file, learning to script in whatever language, and then creating a button that turns on automatic training?), but you can still get away with it in many cases if you are carefull.
The only reason for playing one that I can think of is to try to make an AI bot smart enough to not get detected as an AI bot by anybody. That might be a fun project if you can get some decent natural language processing and a system behind it to respond and act intelligently, but it might just be more fun to make one for IRC and have it talk to all the people in various channels, always win at trivia, etc.

[edited by - Big Brother on January 1, 1984 12:00:00 AM]

I run 1 MUD already, and am developing a ''next-generation'' MUD engine as my main game project. MUDs can indeed be boring, but I don''t think that they have any less roleplaying than any other computer ''roleplaying'' game. I know there are several where it''s against the rules to do anything but roleplay.

One of the great things about MUDs is that they make great testbeds for complex algorithms. You can really push the boundaries without having to worry about getting the models or sprites for it. Characters can perform 101 different actions and adding a new one takes no more than a day and some inspiration. It took me just 2 days to add Baldur''s Gate-style conversations into the engine, including the capability to add and edit conversations while the game is running, and now they''re a fully-working and useful aspect of the game. It took no more than 2 weeks to add my own scripting language and expression parser, plus again online editing facilities. Later this week I''m adding procedural terrain generation. Next week I might add the combat system I talk about in this thread.

Of course, they will never reach the mass-market in the way that ProgressQuest 7 or whatever will, but that''s ok. Being a big fish in a small pond is just as lucrative, if not more so, than being a small fish in a big pond. Did I mention minimal running costs? No patches to download? Perfectly playable on high-ping low-bandwidth connections?

I would recommend though, to anyone considering starting MUD development now... don''t use C++. I did, and although it''s turned out well, I''d have developed it much quicker with Python. Since the only real downside of Python is executable speed, and performance is rarely an issue with MUDs, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by using a higher level language such as that.

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