[MUD-Dev] Re: Help Request On Creating MUD

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 02 Jul 1998 02:45:33 -0700 
Strahd Von ZAROVICH<strahd at bimel.com.tr> wrote:

> Hi, I ve been trying to find documents (or howtos) on mud coding,
> containing; Inner game organization, players organization, and
> tcp/ip documentation needed for writing mud code from the beginning.
> Sadly, I couldn't find any. :(

Sadly, there isn't any.

MUD server development encompasses many other parts of standard and
well known development areas, such as databases, parsers, languages,
scripting, network servers etc, and as such in a grea many ways it
really isn't a field in its own right, but a combination of many other
stand-alone fields.

That said the most commonly used documentation is the source code for
other servers.

>         I wonder if any subscribers of this mailing list can help me
> on finding these documents, or recommend anything else..

Only partially really, its mostly a question of building your own way.

  For game design and development there is very little and damned
close to nothing.  About the only thing I've found worth anything is
Chris Crawford's "The Art of Computer Game Design" (do a web search of
search the MUD-Dev archives).

  For TCP/IP I like the Steven's books, "TCP/IP Illustrated".  

  On the database side there are many books, mostly specialised for
specific application (non-MUD) areas.  Others may be able to recommend 
better here.

  Parsers: the dragon book and the O'Rielly books on lex/yacc.  Also
do web searches into PCCTS and similar.  Note that there have been a
few fairly extensive threads on this area here on MUD-Dev.  Search the 
archives.  

  Languages:  The dragon book and other similar compiler-oriented
tomes.  For natural language parsing you're largely on your own (tho I 
think Keegan referenced a couple in the threads here).  Its definitely 
well worth searching the archives on this area.  Crawfords articles on 
compiler design were posted to MUD-Dev a while back among other
things.

  Scripting: See languages.  Roll you own seems to be the name of the
day, tho there are an increasing number of canned solutions you can
borrow from, ranging from Pike/LPC. Guile, Python, to CINT.

All that done my best advice is to go and grab several highly variant
servers, study their source codes and designs, figure out *WHY* they
made the design choices they did and what the relative advantagaes and 
disadvantages are of each, and even setup and run each server type for 
a while with a small world to get a real feel for who it really works
in practice.

What servers would I recommend looking at (in no particular oder
except for the first one):

  CoolMUD (start here -- its the most elegant and simple of the lot)
  Genesis/ColdX
  Interlude
  LambdaMOO
  LP with one of the current MUDLibs
  Mordor
  MUD++
  DIKU
  Aber
  Any of the Tiny-* clan.
  UnterMUD  (must do this one)
  UberMUD   (and this one)
  YAMAMUD

IIRC you can find all of the above under
URL:ftp://ftp.kanga.nu/pub/MUD/, but I'd recommend using our
semi-unofficial mirror at URL:ftp://portland.puremagic.com/ instead as
it has a much faster connection than Kanga.Nu.
     
--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...