rec.games.mud.admin: reading list

Reading forums like The MUD Connector, MUD Lab, Top MUD Sites and so forth, there are not a lot of posts covering original subjects.

... Are MUDs getting less popular? Allusion to a feature which needs implementing, implicit request for people to design it (or something). Description about yet another MUD programming language which someone is creating, appeal for ideas or comments. ...

I've always wanted to make a set of notes where I can just post summaries of and links to existing discussions on these topics. There's a range of resources, whether the MUD-Dev mail archive or newsgroup posts.

Given a little spare time, this is my initial effort. I am going through the Google groups archive of the rec.games.mud.admin newsgroup from the beginning onwards. Not reading the posts at this stage, but making a list of interesting looking threads. It is surprising how few threads of note (excluding crap like bickering over licensing) there are over the early years, 1992-1995 at least.

1992-07-04: Discworld MUDS

Terry Pratchett encouraging MUDs based on Discworld to step forward and be legitimised.

1992-07-31: Admin Burnout and the TMI Dilemma

Several posts which relate to my own MUD development experiences where it is all very well for people to have ideas, but when it comes down to it, you need programmers who are willing to code it.

1992-09-10: Australian MU* ban. Still in effect?

Apparently MUDs were taking a significant proportion of the Australian national link. Interesting note on the overhead of a telnet packet when the protocol is operating in character mode rather than line mode.

1992-10-09: Graphical MUDS?

A poll of what graphical MUDs were available for play, with some allusions to others that were in development (for what that's ever worth).

1992-11-10: ATTN: skill based muds

Interesting discussion about skill training through use. Discworld MUD has a system called Taskmaster which was implemented four or five years later than this. Pinkfish from Discworld (David Bennett) can be seen participating in this thread.

EVE Online used to have skill training in this manner, but eventually it was discarded due to the implementational problems it involved in the one-world multi-node environment.

Eggert, who wrote EVE's "taskmaster" system was directly inspired by Discworld's implementation which he experienced as a player in university.

1992-12-03: Skills based systems abuse

Followup discussion on skill advancement through use.

1993-03-12: Magic

Discussion about magic systems.

1993-03-19: A new type of player?

Allowing players to login and control NPCs.

1993-04-19: Rooms? Who needs them?

Replacing the room-based model with a grid-based model.

1993-04-15: Nightmare mudlib 2.4 for MudOS 0.9.16

George Reese makes a post announcing his new mudlib version, listing a range of features it provides. This is analysed by other posters and results in some interesting discussion about schools, guilds and more.

1993-06-17: How to permanent character death

Discussion about permadeath. Leads to Alan Cox pointing out that this was the way it originally worked (in MUD1) and it was expensive.

Current position: April 23rd, 1995.

Why Lost is great

Dan: Where do you suppose all this power is coming from?

Charlotte: Add that one to the list, Dan.

Stackless Python MUD framework

I've uploaded my Stackless Python based MUD framework to Google's project hosting:

http://code.google.com/p/sorrows-mudlib/

When I was at university and for a few years afterwards, I joined in the effort to work on an LP MUD based on the MudOS driver. As most of the potential of an 'in-development' MUD is defined by the game systems which have been implemented, and I did most of the programming, I eventually inherited control of the MUD.

After a period of time, I became frustrated by the closed environment MudOS provides and the idea of a straightforward scripting language became appealing. So I rewrote the basic elements of the mudlib in Python. There are only a few toy game related elements present in the code.

Over time I developed a few other projects and they have come to be integrated into this framework as I found the time:

• Code reloading: As MUD code is changed and the files saved to disk, the game framework detects this and reloads the contents of the files.
• Stackless-compatible socket module: Asynchronous networking support is hidden away behind the standard socket interface through the use of Stackless Python channels preventing them from influencing framework structure in custom ways.

It also has support for connecting to the Intermud 3 MUD network. Although this isn't 100% working at the moment going into an infinite loop when receiving the initialisation updates from the Intermud router.

Anyway, a friend expressed an interest in possibly using it as the basis for his own MUD experiments so I figured I might as well throw the code out there.