Dark Legacy MUD Forum

I have played mostly fantasy style games since the 70's and was looking for a change and wanted to play some sci-fi types. I quickly found out that there are almost no muds out there that are sci-fi themed and not a rip off from a book, movie, or T.V. show. Orginial thinking was not to be found. Don't get me wrong, I like these shows, I just don't want to play in that kind of world.

So I thought about creating my own mud, and started looking for mud servers. My programming skills are somewhat outdated being an old fart, Basic, Fortran, Forth, and Java 1.2, in that order of skill. I found a java based mud server called CoffeeMud that could be set up as a stock fantasy mud. Moo Java, a very basic moo server wrote in java, but no code or help on how to design a moo based world. Netbeans 5.0 has the jakarta-tomcat-5.5.9 server wrote in java, plus a few others.

However I can not find any info on how someone should design a mud or moo based core program for use with these servers. So my question is, does anyone know of a guide, help file, ect. that would enlighten me on how mapping of rooms, time,determining location of players ect. are handled in mud and moo core programs, or does every programmer come up with their own soulations to these aspects, meaning that there is no standard to follow.

Given the options that I have found out there, those who would like to have their own mud, have only a few options.
First, get a stock mud and run it as such. Second, get a stock mud and modify it. Third, build your own from scratch.
There are too many mud clones out there already, so the first is out. Modifying other peoples code can be a real pain, as much or more so than starting from scratch.

One thing I have learned is a greater appreation for Celeborn, the Imm's and others that have made DL one of the most unique, indepth, and interesting muds I have ever run across, or fantasy based games period for that matter, reguardless of platform.

Well if anyone can point me in the right direction, I would appreicate the help in my hopeless quest to build a custom mud,

Arureal
High Lord of Newbies

Heres a list of newer mud codebases to look at:

http://www.andreasen.org/newmud/

building a brand new codebase from scratch not easy,

here are some guidelines and things to remember when attempting such a thing -->

http://mischiefbox.com/cjones/newbook/

Also, you may note that all the normal codebases, smaug, merc, diku, etc all have websites and mailing lists dedicated to code development, also, when you download these muds, they will always come with the source code readily available.

merc - http://www.andreasen.org/mud.shtml

various source codes - http://www.mudmagic.com/codes/


or if you like smaug, go to

http://www.smaug.org/

and just download it, generally the source code will be placed in the src directory, and you go from there.

I think I can help you, somewhat.

If you are experienced at designing programs on paper and able to put what you write into code without effort and are willing to code for a year straight without seeing any happy thankful faces (or angry ones! whee!) I would advise starting from scratch. Otherwise there is a lot to gain from using an existing framework that handles the basics: connection handling, account management, terminal stuff and if possible some form of structured object storage handling.

I just jumped into Smaug because it was the codebase I was used to play on. With hindsight I can say I wished I looked around first. If I were to pick a codebase now I would consider the following:
- Is the codebase of high quality OO? This is most important and also hardest to gauge if you lack OO experience. Play around with at least a few to see which you can adept for your purposes. Avoid non-OO code as the plague. You need it to keep large projects uniform and managable.
- Is there a community, and if so, how large is it? what kind of people are in it? is it alive? This will help you assess if the codebase is solid, going to survive for the next few years and if you are going to get the help you need.
- Does the license suit me? In my case, smaug's license prevents a commercial setup and is so viral I cannot use any part of DL without having to adhere to the smaug license.

There really isn't an always win method to code a mud; they are simply too diverse to have one solution, and depends a lot on your personal skill level. I would highly recommend learning OO beyond basic 'procedural units placed in objects' level, and make sure you know everything about (when and how to use) linked lists, hashed lists and binary trees.

All this said, if you lack the time or things like hashed lists and binary trees seem too intimidating, there is nothing wrong with pulling a stock mud off the shelf and learning as you go.

http://sourceforge.net/ is a huge repository for open source applications and probably a good place to look for mud codebases.

Hope this helps!

Cele

Thank you very much for the help you gave me. they are quite informative, and should keep me busy for a while.
Here is a list of the servers I had looked at if anyone is interested.

Moo Java: http://www.gwerdy.com/products/moo_java/ (A very basic moo server)

WolfMUD: http://www.btinternet.com/~wolfmud/docu ... index.html (A stock mud)

JBoss: http://www.jboss.com/products/jbossas

Jetty Java: http://jetty.mortbay.org/jetty/index.html

Jigsaw: http://www.w3.org/Jigsaw/

CoffeeMud: http://www.zimmers.net/home/mud/ (A stock mud that can import areas from other mud types)

I also have another reason for wanting to learn this field. My daughter, Catra, wants to learn how to design games and program them. She is not ready for that yet, but if I start now, I may be able to help her when she is ready.

Thanks again for the help.
Arureal
High Lord of Lowbies