[MUD-Dev2] Text based MUD's - State of the art (if any)

[matthew.owen at barclays.com]

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 11:55 AM, Tiago <tiago.matias at gmail.com> wrote:

> I know that this question surfaces from time to time, but, what is 
> your opinion on developing text based muds these days ? 

> Thing is, is it worth it? Will anyone still care ? Is it a waste of time?

I'd say, if you've got the time, then go for it. I found writing my own MUD
codebase very enjoyable. It also enabled me to tackle some code scenarios I'd
never hit before. It's very different beast writing a state engine for
multiple players compared to a GUI based single user application. The end
result was that I'd created something I was proud of, and something that
others (for a short while) enjoyed playing. I also improved my coding skills
no end because even a basic MUD engine requires 1000s of lines of code - it's
not a trivial 'Sunday Afternoon Project'.

Ignore all the naysayers who say that it pointless to create your own when
codebases already exist; they are completely missing the point. By their
logic no one would invent anything new and we'd all have one type of wheel,
attached to one type of vehicle.

I will say this tho. Before you start, think about what you did and didn't
like about other MUDs an design accordingly. When I wrote MUD32, I used
Shades as my model, as I spent most of my teenage years living in that MUD
(ahhh, how I miss that blue/red viewdata page...) and I knew it well. However
in all things, there is always room for improvement - for instance, I'd like
to see some sort of P2P MUD Servers, where potentially each zone in the world
is hosted by different servers... I don't think it's been done, and I think
it would be interesting to see if it is workable...

-Matt (Jaruzel)

MUD32 is available here: http://www.jaruzel.com/mud












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