6 ms·

love it! i spent YEARS playing and coding for MUDs and ran a few games as a solo admin/coder. imo it is so very satisfying to watch the global chat channels af

love it! i spent YEARS playing and coding for MUDs and ran a few games as a solo admin/coder. imo it is so very satisfying to watch the global chat channels after a new feature/area/weapon/mob gets rolled out...and what the community thinks of it. i can recall more than one occasion where a well planned quest resulted in interesting dynamics after players started interacting with it. an example; one quest would add an "invisible" token object to a player's inventory. quest stages would check for and modify the state of the token when it was "present". in this particular MUD there was PK...and eventually someone decided to carry the corpse of someone on the quest into an area where you must have the token to enter...and they "walked" right in. none of us had thought of that potential "use-case"...and it exposed a really interesting game play mechanic that we never knew existed...the equivalent of cutting off the guards finger to pass biometric locks in a spy story... ...damn...its hard not to want to start another MUD... EDIT: i know this post is NOT a MUD project...but the solo-MMO dev story just struck a nostalgia chord in me

Diederich 7y ago
Awesome...I also spent years playing/coding/admining MUDs, though the one I was writing never got very large. The mechanics you mentioned are interesting; what kind of MUD was it? I got hooked on DIKU MUDs in 1990 or so, and still play https://mume.org:4143/ https://mume.org:4143/ from time to time.
- crtlaltdel 7y ago
  i did a good amount of work on merc/rom based games...but it was lpmud that i really got into!
  - Diederich 7y ago
    > lpmud Yes, I remember those, and played with them a bit. They were a far more flexible, dynamic environment, but 'back then' (in the early 90s), as I recall, the performance hit associated with LP MUDs (inherently dynamic) vs. DIKU MUDs (inherently static) was pretty large, and available memory/CPU cycles were at a premium. Mostly though I think I preferred DIKU MUDs because I happened to start with them, just by chance. Good times, thanks for sharing!
  - TrueDuality 7y ago
    An LPMud was my jams as well. I actually had reason to go back to DGD and it's technically a really interesting project. Embedded text editor (a modified version of ed), live code reloading, JIT compilation to a VM byte code, translating data automatically between old objects and their new freshly compiled code...
    - crtlaltdel 7y ago
      dgd was a cool project. i remember when dworkin was talking about persisting the world state to disc. i was pretty sure that ldmud also supported `ed`. super fun stuff!
cabaalis 7y ago
Any suggestions on protecting credential transfer in a MUD? I have been wanting to build one but honestly I'm used to the convenience of HTTPS and the passing of credentials over a socket is preventing me from starting.
- TheJoYo 7y ago
  mbedtls is a bit annoying at first but the windows build process is less painful than openssl. ```powershell New-Item "temp" -ItemType "directory" -Force $client = New-Object System.Net.WebClient $client.DownloadFile("https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbedtls/archive/mbedtls-master.zip" https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbedtls/archive/mbedtls-master.zi..., "temp\C:\temp\mbedtls-master.zip") Expand-Archive -Path C:\temp\mbedtls-master.zip -DestinationPath C:\temp\; Move-Item C:\temp\mbedtls-mbedtls-master\ C:\mbedtls\ MSBuild.exe C:\mbedtls\visualc\VS2010\mbedTLS.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64 MSBuild.exe C:\mbedtls\visualc\VS2010\mbedTLS.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=Win32 ```
  - TheJoYo 7y ago
    lets try that again https://git.thejoyo.com/JoYo/snippets/src/branch/master/mbedtls_msvc.ps1 https://git.thejoyo.com/JoYo/snippets/src/branch/master/mbed...
- gtaylor 7y ago
  Mudlet and a number of other maintained clients now support TLS!
- crtlaltdel 7y ago
  if you ran it over a websocket it seems like that could help the situation you mention. back in the day, honestly, as mostly 14-16yo kids....we really didn't think about that!
- popotamonga 7y ago
  Make a small api in whatever language for the login in https and return a token or something.
- 7y ago
nickjj 7y ago
On the topic of MUDs. There's a 1 man developer who wrote not only his own MUD but tools to create and find MUDs to play[0]. It's all written in Elixir and open source[1]. He's given a couple of talks[2] about it and does some living code on Twitch. I have no affiliation with the author but I did watch some of his talks just for fun. [0]: https://grapevine.haus https://grapevine.haus [1]: https://exventure.org/ https://exventure.org/ [2]: https://youtu.be/Ef_fG5pd5TY?t=36 https://youtu.be/Ef_fG5pd5TY?t=36
- mercer 7y ago
  There's also some good interviews with him on the various Elixir podcasts. I'm blanking on the one he was recently on, but I suppose listennotes.com(?) might help out.
- pugworthy 7y ago
  Another one person MUD project is Bo Zimmerman's CoffeeMUD. It's been around for some time. See http://www.coffeemud.org/ http://www.coffeemud.org/ I always felt that a MUD would be a fantastic design approach for a graphical MMO. Specifically, start by creating a text (MUD) version of your world and the basic interactions, and only when you've created a compelling story and experience with words do you translate that into visuals. It also would be pretty intriguing to create a MUD that could work in multiple media: text, 2d graphics (think point and click adventure), and perhaps 3d graphics. Theoretically it would be doable. A pretty interesting advantage would be that an MMO with a text option would really open it up from the perspective of accessibility.
PatrolX 7y ago
"...damn...its hard not to want to start another MUD..." Or you could just play the best MUD there ever was, and still is. http://www.realmsofdespair.com/ http://www.realmsofdespair.com/
- crtlaltdel 7y ago
  rod??!? wow! yes! edit: i spent many hours on genesis[0] and did my first lpc scripting (area building) there 0: https://www.genesismud.org/ https://www.genesismud.org/
- the_real_sparky 7y ago
  RoD absorbed an absurd amount of my early teenage life. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.
  - edoo 7y ago
    I can thank RoD/smaug for my coding career. I had some fun on the star wars MUDs too where you got the xyz coords of your ship on the prompt to know where you were.
shagie 7y ago
> ...damn...its hard not to want to start another MUD... docker run -it --rm -p 4000:4000 -p 4001:4001 -p 4002:4002 --rm -v $PWD:/usr/src/game evennia/evennia evennia start -l docker run --name dreamland -p 8001:9001 -it dreamland/local curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ClockworkSoul/dead-souls-docker/master/docker-compose.yml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ClockworkSoul/dead-souls-d... > docker-compose.yaml docker-compose up -d
voldacar 7y ago
Maybe you should have used monads instead of mutating inventory state

Diederich 7y ago

Awesome...I also spent years playing/coding/admining MUDs, though the one I was writing never got very large. The mechanics you mentioned are interesting; what kind of MUD was it? I got hooked on DIKU MUDs in 1990 or so, and still play https://mume.org:4143/ https://mume.org:4143/ from time to time.

crtlaltdel 7y ago
i did a good amount of work on merc/rom based games...but it was lpmud that i really got into!
- Diederich 7y ago
  > lpmud Yes, I remember those, and played with them a bit. They were a far more flexible, dynamic environment, but 'back then' (in the early 90s), as I recall, the performance hit associated with LP MUDs (inherently dynamic) vs. DIKU MUDs (inherently static) was pretty large, and available memory/CPU cycles were at a premium. Mostly though I think I preferred DIKU MUDs because I happened to start with them, just by chance. Good times, thanks for sharing!
- TrueDuality 7y ago
  An LPMud was my jams as well. I actually had reason to go back to DGD and it's technically a really interesting project. Embedded text editor (a modified version of ed), live code reloading, JIT compilation to a VM byte code, translating data automatically between old objects and their new freshly compiled code...
  - crtlaltdel 7y ago
    dgd was a cool project. i remember when dworkin was talking about persisting the world state to disc. i was pretty sure that ldmud also supported `ed`. super fun stuff!

cabaalis 7y ago

Any suggestions on protecting credential transfer in a MUD? I have been wanting to build one but honestly I'm used to the convenience of HTTPS and the passing of credentials over a socket is preventing me from starting.

TheJoYo 7y ago
mbedtls is a bit annoying at first but the windows build process is less painful than openssl. ```powershell New-Item "temp" -ItemType "directory" -Force $client = New-Object System.Net.WebClient $client.DownloadFile("https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbedtls/archive/mbedtls-master.zip" https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbedtls/archive/mbedtls-master.zi..., "temp\C:\temp\mbedtls-master.zip") Expand-Archive -Path C:\temp\mbedtls-master.zip -DestinationPath C:\temp\; Move-Item C:\temp\mbedtls-mbedtls-master\ C:\mbedtls\ MSBuild.exe C:\mbedtls\visualc\VS2010\mbedTLS.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64 MSBuild.exe C:\mbedtls\visualc\VS2010\mbedTLS.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=Win32 ```
- TheJoYo 7y ago
  lets try that again https://git.thejoyo.com/JoYo/snippets/src/branch/master/mbedtls_msvc.ps1 https://git.thejoyo.com/JoYo/snippets/src/branch/master/mbed...
gtaylor 7y ago
Mudlet and a number of other maintained clients now support TLS!
crtlaltdel 7y ago
if you ran it over a websocket it seems like that could help the situation you mention. back in the day, honestly, as mostly 14-16yo kids....we really didn't think about that!
popotamonga 7y ago
Make a small api in whatever language for the login in https and return a token or something.
7y ago

nickjj 7y ago

On the topic of MUDs. There's a 1 man developer who wrote not only his own MUD but tools to create and find MUDs to play[0]. It's all written in Elixir and open source[1]. He's given a couple of talks[2] about it and does some living code on Twitch. I have no affiliation with the author but I did watch some of his talks just for fun. [0]: https://grapevine.haus https://grapevine.haus [1]: https://exventure.org/ https://exventure.org/ [2]: https://youtu.be/Ef_fG5pd5TY?t=36 https://youtu.be/Ef_fG5pd5TY?t=36

mercer 7y ago
There's also some good interviews with him on the various Elixir podcasts. I'm blanking on the one he was recently on, but I suppose listennotes.com(?) might help out.
pugworthy 7y ago
Another one person MUD project is Bo Zimmerman's CoffeeMUD. It's been around for some time. See http://www.coffeemud.org/ http://www.coffeemud.org/ I always felt that a MUD would be a fantastic design approach for a graphical MMO. Specifically, start by creating a text (MUD) version of your world and the basic interactions, and only when you've created a compelling story and experience with words do you translate that into visuals. It also would be pretty intriguing to create a MUD that could work in multiple media: text, 2d graphics (think point and click adventure), and perhaps 3d graphics. Theoretically it would be doable. A pretty interesting advantage would be that an MMO with a text option would really open it up from the perspective of accessibility.

PatrolX 7y ago

"...damn...its hard not to want to start another MUD..." Or you could just play the best MUD there ever was, and still is. http://www.realmsofdespair.com/ http://www.realmsofdespair.com/

crtlaltdel 7y ago
rod??!? wow! yes! edit: i spent many hours on genesis[0] and did my first lpc scripting (area building) there 0: https://www.genesismud.org/ https://www.genesismud.org/
the_real_sparky 7y ago
RoD absorbed an absurd amount of my early teenage life. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.
- edoo 7y ago
  I can thank RoD/smaug for my coding career. I had some fun on the star wars MUDs too where you got the xyz coords of your ship on the prompt to know where you were.

shagie 7y ago

> ...damn...its hard not to want to start another MUD... docker run -it --rm -p 4000:4000 -p 4001:4001 -p 4002:4002 --rm -v $PWD:/usr/src/game evennia/evennia evennia start -l docker run --name dreamland -p 8001:9001 -it dreamland/local curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ClockworkSoul/dead-souls-docker/master/docker-compose.yml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ClockworkSoul/dead-souls-d... > docker-compose.yaml docker-compose up -d

voldacar 7y ago

Maybe you should have used monads instead of mutating inventory state