[MUD-Dev] NEWS TECH: Re: Welcome to the "MUD-Dev" mailing list

[Peter Seebach]

In message <mailman.69.1073508367.371.mud-dev at kanga.nu>,
mud-dev-request at kanga.nu writes:

> Welcome to the MUD-Dev at kanga.nu mailing list!

And a hearty welcome to you to, Mr. List Robot.  :)

I don't know if this list does intro posts, so I'm pretending this
is NEWS TECH.

Hi!  I am a programmer who has taken to writing for a living; as
such, I have a programming-project-shaped gap in my life.  I am
considering trying to write a mud driver.

I am aware that this is not exactly an unusual hobby idea.

My interests:

  1.  I want a driver that is as game-generic as possible.  I do not
  want to impose concepts more specific than "players who interact
  with a game" on potential users.

  2.  I want to make reasonable use of existing tools; for instance,
  if I stick with C as my implementation language, I'll use
  pthreads, stdio, and other likely tools, rather than hand-coding
  my own scheduler and buffering.

  3.  The resulting mud will be released under a very
  non-restrictive license.  I am a programmer, not a lawyer, and I
  am not going to write my own license; I am currently leaning
  towards Artistic.

Why do I think I can do this?

  1.  I have written two or three "toy programming languages", which
  is a good background for trying to implement a programmable mud.

  2.  I have experience with a broad variety of languages, most
  relevantly Inform, which is a language custom-designed for writing
  text adventures - and which gives a lot of good insights into what
  kinds of language features are useful for expressing those kinds
  of stories.

  3.  I know C, especially Unix-targeted C, well enough not to make
  all sorts of weird newbie mistakes.

  4.  I've been playing various muds since AberMud 2, and I feel I
  have a reasonable sense of what kinds of features they want, and
  what kinds of mistakes they tend to make.

  5.  I am insufferably arrogant, and I think I can do anything.

I'm interested in learning more about the state of the art, and
seeing what kinds of ideas people have.  I might well be persuaded
that one of the existing mud-level languages, such as LPC, is the
best option, but I am thinking seriously about trying to do a
language targeted specifically at muds.

-s
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