[MUD-Dev] PHP muds

[Peter Harkins]

On Mon, Aug 11, 2003 at 11:49:22AM -0700, Ammon Lauritzen wrote:

> Grin, if you really want to have fun, use PHP. It's the best of
> both worlds.

OK, I guess I'm getting called out here.

A while ago I noticed Erwin S. Andreasen's 16k mud coding
competition and thought it was really neat. About the same time I
noticed PHP has socket functions. I contacted Andreasen and found he
had no plans to run another competition, so I shelved the idea of
writing a mud in PHP. A few days ago the idea had finally gnawed at
me long enough that I'm undertaking it. Even without a competition
running, it's been a fun personal challenge I've been working on for
the last few days.

My mud is called Hennepin, and it's currently about 3,000 bytes of
code after getting run through Andreasen's comment-stripping Python
script. It uses PHP's variable variables, variable functions,
create_function(), and eval() to load code at runtime. This makes
for a decent driver/lib split.  It uses serialize() to load and save
to disk. It also has delayed function calls ('call foo($bar) in 10
seconds'), which is currently only used to regular save users (which
are persistent). It's a robust little framework that works as a
basic talker, and I've spent the last day or two pondering how much
gameplay I can fit in my remaining 13.5k. If there's interest, I'll
post again when I'm done.


Back to the larger topic of PHP, I've made a survey of muds written
in PHP.  I only found 5 projects, and none are complete or
advanced. I'd love to learn of more projects, but I've done a pretty
good search.

A lot of muds use PHP to create websites that tie-in closely to
their game.  The established mud I code on (with Ammon,
http://simud.org) has some nice examples. Besides the online wholist
and helpfiles, the game's bug/idea/typo commands post to our forums
for discussion by players and wizards (using their game
logins). Wizards can browse and edit files (source is even
colorized, which makes it easier to read than the in-game editor).


Here's my list of existing PHP muds:

  phpMy MUD
    http://phpmudengine.sourceforge.net/

    It aims to make a web-accessed mud written in PHP, but has
    produced no files, documentation, or discussion. Though there
    was a news post by the main developer in April 2003, it was
    fairly defeatist, and it appears this project is inactive.

  Php Mud
    http://sf.net/projects/phpmud
    http://ryan15.darktech.org/index.php?action=phpmud

    The project is being actively developed, and seems to be a
    web-based game.  So far there's code for logins and some
    administration. From reading the code and supporting materials I
    gather the coder is very inexperienced, and I do not expect this
    project to survive or produce anything of value.

  Indigo
    http://www.kyndig.com/codes/php/
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/kyndig/

    Developed by Kyndig of kyndig.com, this is a basic talker with
    some support for rooms. It's fairly OO, but does not support
    dynamic loading of code. It does not appear to be actively
    developed.

  socket_select() example
    http://dave.dapond.com/

    A simple talker developed as an example of PHP socket
    functions. Not a mud project, but worth noting.

  Saryon
    http://www.kyndig.com/polls/view/11

    A mudder with the nickname "Saryon" has made reference in a few
    places to writing a mud in PHP, but not provided details or
    code.

 --
Peter Harkins, Malap on http://simud.org
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev