Do you like MUDs? Play regularly?
Morbus Iff — Thu, 2005-01-27 15:20
So, for various secret and treasonous reasons, I've been investigating MUDs lately, and the process of setting one up. Since I know nothing about them, I've been asking around and trusting people at their word, based on a shared knowledge on what we're trying to build. This resulted in a suggestion of an LPMud using Skylib/MudOS (am I even saying that right? I have no idea). Is this a good choice?
Or do any Gamegrene readers even play MUDs? Or would want to? This should probably be a poll.
- 2210 reads
No responses? Mudding must be a dying art.....
Morbus, seriously, why? Ive helped with a couple of mud start ups and worked as admin on a couple of pay to play muds and the sum total of my knowledge is this - Its Hell!
I wrote areas for a mud called Calmar, slaved away adding 50 0dd locations a day, setting up quests and encounter details for them. Then upon opening them up to players watched as a string of players told me the ccc's (computer controlled characters) were easy to kill and had spelling mistakes in their attack strings. When asked about the descriptions or the locations, they all had Brief set so didnt read them and didnt really care either.
When working just as admin, half the time your listening to complaints about people cheating and the other half your explaining that 'No we arnt recruiting builders/immortals/coders at the moment thank you'.
Using an existing mud engine rather than having someone code from scratch means your kinda locked into someone elses idea of what a mud should be and using a home baked system means you spen most of your time chasing down bugs and explaining to players why you havent as yet got a system to do xy or z.
And then theres the sinking knowledge that text muds are a dying breed as mmorpg's eat away at your player base slowly but surely.
I guess i sound jaded huh....
But on the plus side it can be a giggle, its hideously adictive. And its still more of a roleplaying enviroment than an mmorpg.
So if your determined to do it, good luck. My best advice tho would be to find someone who can build you an engine from the ground up. You can start with an existing engine, but youll begin to chaff under its restrictions fairly early on. With a home baked engine, it takes longer, but its a lot more satisfying.
K.
Ultimately, I was planning on building a PARANOIA MUD, until I was informed that Skotos has the rights for it. I've since decided that something more integrated into the Gamegrene site/backend would be more interesting, and that idea has been percolating in my head (codename: Wuddershins).
Neat.
Your a glutton for punishment mate (g).
If you can find yourself a php coder they could knock you up something that looks like a chat room and you could VERY SLOWLY expand from there.
Historically a young student with too much time on his/her hands will do.
And tbh your better off just getting stuck into it rather than planning too much. Believe me, 90% of everything your considering will change compleatly the second it comes to implementation. Your better off finding out what you can and cant do before you decide what youd like to do and get frustrated trying to crowbar it in. I cant stress this one enough, the amount of wonderfull ideas that got watered down and ruined by the constraints of the code are without number.
K.
What makes you think I'm not a coder? I've written software that has been downloaded more than a 100,000 times, have written books for O'Reilly (the number one computer book publisher), wrote a tech column for a year, and have also done a few things for Apple. I know exactly what I'm getting into, mate ;)
Hah! They all say that, and a few nervous breakdowns and no hair later they cave and return to the nice safe world of.... whatever it was they did before they started.
Seriously tho, Ive been an admin and builder on muds for the best part of twelve years, i know what your getting into too. So if you can code, i stick to my origonal piece of advice. Write it from the ground up.
K.
Welp, "write it from the ground up" is definitely the way it's gonna be. I'm talking "when you come to Gamegrene, you're already playing" sorta integration, not a "click here to play" thing (per Ghyll, a Lexicon based game hosted by Gamegrene).
Interesting... So each area of the web page as is becomes a location that can be manipulated.... Deeper interaction with the other denizens of Gamegrene.... Hmmm...
K.
oh...i see there ARE people with too much free time on their hands :)
People with too much free time on their hands make the world go round.
How is this going? Did it die a slow and miserable death, or has it been quietly hatching in a cold, dark, wet place where nobody is likely to notice until it is too late?
I play MUDs, or at least I used to play the Discworld MUD.
Dfaran, the MUD idea has pretty much died, as I'm more interested in integrating something with Gamegrene, as opposed to a separate entity. I've had the same ideas in my head for roughly six years now - one of the first articles published for Gamegrene include ruminations about the same sorta design (as per the comments re: Wuddershins, not the MUD). But, as things always do, things have gotten in the way. I've since been doing a ton of stuff with Fudge, also Ghyll (naturally), and blah blah blah. Too many ideas, too little time (the latest has been a Ghyll/Fudge conversion). For the past few months, I've been spending a lot of time mentally designing an XML based format for a collectible card game based on Fudge. I may write about it on Gamegrene eventually once I codify it some more.
I have tried out various MUDs and even helped work on two so far and have found them to be often more enjoyable to play than graphical MMORPGs. If only because you dont need the latest cutting edge computer to play one nore a net connection that would suck the brains out of a KRAY... heh.
The best MUD I've come across so far is unfortunately also the worst one. This being CthulhuMUD. As you might guess its bades on the H.P. Lovecraft mythos stories and in this case it pulls heavily from Chaosium's RPG. (Without permission.) Unlike other "theme" MUDs, CthulhuMUD is not just a renaming of some monsters and professions. This is a heavy reworkig of the system and a remarkable setting of of the world circa 1920-30. Complete with sanity loss and the Dreamlands.
The MUD looks good too and plays well though the EXP vs Level balance is as off kilter as any other MUD I have seen.
Where things broke down was with the moderators and owners. Half of which were a shady lot up to no good. Over powered alts of the moderators went on periodic killing and just plain harassment sprees against the MUD simply to make life miserable for everyone. Eventually the MUD succomb to its own bile and a likely impending lawsuit from Chaosium.
CthulhuMUD is back now with new owners and they seem to so far be a much more agreeable lot than the previous. There are still some problems old and new. But only a fraction of the troubles of the old.
Waiting to see what develops with BattleMUD, a Battletech based system in the works.
Currently waiting to restart work on an awesome space-based MUD with starships and vehicles, (and maybee even mecha.)
Omega
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