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The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

andrewzigler.com

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Re: The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

#41

Post by jghn »

mentos wrote: post #30
agentultra wrote: post #21

Building a MUD engine is quite an endeavour in itself. Let alone the game! A good way to test your skills in networking, parsing, databases, and data structures. I’ve been chipping away at one on my stream using Haskell. Experimenting with Lua integration, parsing, networking, STM and concurrency… currently hacking on Entity Component Systems and unboxed vectors and all kinds of stuff. Thing is you can start small. S…

I’m a huge fan of UO which MUDs inspired. Curious if in the spirit of "Show me your [code] and conceal your [data structures], and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your [data structures], and I won’t usually need your [code]; it’ll be obvious." If you would share your data structures for your MUD?

In particular, Raph Koster (aka Designer Dragon) was heavily involved with LegendMud [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LegendMUD

Re: The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

#42

Post by compass_copium »

bkingfilm wrote: post #12

One part of MUD history that rarely gets told in English: the Chinese game industry basically started there. In the mid 90s Chinese students overseas ran wuxia MUDs like Xiakexing (侠客行, 1995), all text, built on the LPMud family. Wuxia fit text games perfectly because every player already had the whole world in their head from Jin Yong novels, so zero graphics needed. A lot of the people who built the first Chinese o…

It's hard to find good info on Chinese netizen culture in English in general. I loved chinaSMACK back in the day, but haven't found a good replacement. Do you know of any blogs or anything about this?

Re: The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

#44

Post by mjevans »

lightedman wrote: post #36

But now comes the real question - will the MUDs be programmed in something sane? The last MUD/MUCK I was on was done in RPN-style code. That was a headache to code various plugins and options.

The worst part of that is, at least the only MUD/MUCK engine I ever glanced at the source code for; those primitives were actually still script calls to blocks of C functions.

Modern MUDs and similar will just include a mature script language, like LUA and let that directly access the background resources from within some sandbox. No point in re-inventing the wheel with a custom scripting language. For any legacy data (E.G. running some old world on a new system) it'd probably make more sense to write a transpiler / converter anyway.

Re: The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

#45

Post by iFire »

trashb wrote: post #34
iFire wrote: post #24

Question to you all, muds tends to have a unix style interface, has anyone done a replacement for this uiux that fits … the class of 2019 first year computer science student that doesn’t understand files and needs a different uiux.

I'm not sure I understand correctly, muds are text based but not file based. But there are several mud clients available with different features. Most include an auto mapper for example, you can connect through different specialized protocols to your favorite mud server. Example clients: Mudlet, zMUD, kMUD, mushclient

I looked at Mudlet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1Llvwy0Y_Y&list=PLA40A1E6E5...

It's still text based in sense of `look at monolith`.

> Discord slash commands are interactive bot commands activated by typing / in the chat, prompting an inline menu of options and parameters.

Discord uses slash commands to visually autocomplete possible parameters.

> https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

Apple uses contextual actions to limit freeform grammars.

Re: The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

#46

Post by mingus88 »

iFire wrote: post #45
trashb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand correctly, muds are text based but not file based. But there are several mud clients available with different features. Most include an auto mapper for example, you can connect through different specialized protocols to your favorite mud server. Example clients: Mudlet, zMUD, kMUD, mushclient

I looked at Mudlet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1Llvwy0Y_Y&list=PLA40A1E6E5... It's still text based in sense of `look at monolith`. > Discord slash commands are interactive bot commands activated by typing / in the chat, prompting an inline menu of options and parameters. Discord uses slash commands to visually autocomplete possible parameters. > https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... Ap…

I mean, that’s a MUD for you. It’s inherently text based. It’s of the golden age of the internet where passing the UX bar meant you earned your place in the community.

The genre opened doors for MMORPGs like EverQuest. If you want something modern and polished there are no shortages of other games.

I think part of the nostalgia for MUDs is a nostalgia for the era of the internet where communities were small and special. Everyone has a discord now. It’s all so samey. Bring back the quirky hobby communities run by the users.

Re: The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

#47

Post by iFire »

mingus88 wrote: post #46
iFire wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at Mudlet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1Llvwy0Y_Y&list=PLA40A1E6E5... It's still text based in sense of `look at monolith`. > Discord slash commands are interactive bot commands activated by typing / in the chat, prompting an inline menu of options and parameters. Discord uses slash commands to visually autocomplete possible parameters. > https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... Ap…

I mean, that’s a MUD for you. It’s inherently text based. It’s of the golden age of the internet where passing the UX bar meant you earned your place in the community. The genre opened doors for MMORPGs like EverQuest. If you want something modern and polished there are no shortages of other games. I think part of the nostalgia for MUDs is a nostalgia for the era of the internet where communities were small and speci…

I disagree.

I think there's value to making a mud that uses discord-style slash commands outside of Discord without the player memorizing the text grammar.

Re: The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

#48

Post by techjamie »

flir wrote: post #22
mickeyp wrote: post #20

I miss MUDs. My old MUD went through a rename, a fork, and what have you --- but it's limping on, though with few playing it. The cost of hosting these things are so cheap today that you can just let it sit and mind its own business. Back in the 90s you needed a permanent internet connection (rare!) and fast enough to handle all the usually uncompressed text, so it had to be a - shocker - T1 or better. Then you neede…

I think one of the very first public demos for GPT was a text adventure game?

AI Dungeon played like a text adventure game and ran off GPT-2, later GPT-3 fine-tunes. That might be what you're thinking of.

Re: The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

#49

Post by jeromechoo »

Every time another nostalgia post comes along for MUDs people start replying with the name of a small MUD they enjoyed but I’m surprised how rare it is to see Iron Realms MUDs mentioned.

I’m almost certain they are the largest MUD development company to exist.

I played two of their MUDs — Achaea and Lusternia. The sheer imaginative scale of these worlds and engines are unmatched by even today’s standards. (And they still exist!)

PVP is a battle of engineering. The best PvPers build elaborate trigger systems that watch the terminal for specific maladies and conditions and counter them with herbs, potions, and skills.

The RP is similar to D&D but so much deeper. Where D&D is mostly storytelling by a DM, RP in huge commercial MUDs involve gods, physics, deeply entrenched politics, money, fame, and power spanning thousands of players.

Entirely player-driven economy. If you wanted a sword you could buy one from a player run market or commission a unique piece from a blacksmith. And boy it was truly unique. A blacksmith in Lusternia is really a wordsmith. A steel sword can be described as “honed to an obsidian finish”.

Peak human imagination, but sadly in a medium too many people can’t get into.

Re: The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)

#50

Post by klibertp »

mjevans wrote: post #44
lightedman wrote: post #36

But now comes the real question - will the MUDs be programmed in something sane? The last MUD/MUCK I was on was done in RPN-style code. That was a headache to code various plugins and options.

The worst part of that is, at least the only MUD/MUCK engine I ever glanced at the source code for; those primitives were actually still script calls to blocks of C functions. Modern MUDs and similar will just include a mature script language, like LUA and let that directly access the background resources from within some sandbox. No point in re-inventing the wheel with a custom scripting language. For any legacy dat…

> Modern MUDs and similar will just include a mature script language, like LUA

Not necessarily. The persistent, live nature of some types of MUD programming (LPMUDs, MOOs) is unique enough that many typical scripting languages are not a good fit. The only general-purpose languages that come close to the required execution model are Common Lisp and Smalltalk (and Prolog, if you squint hard enough), which are so unpopular that you don't really get much out of choosing them over a custom language. That's one of the reasons so many MUDs developed their own execution models and language dialects.

Writing a transpiler for a large MOO code or LPC codebase would require generating tons of boilerplate to emulate the unique semantics of the languages, as well as providing a runtime with support for those features. It's not that easy.

For some MUDs, scripting with Lua is more than enough. There's a book on writing MUD engines[1], and the second half shows exactly this setup (I think C++ for the engine and Lua for scripting). It will work in many cases, but it'll break down if you try to make the MUD easily programmable by users. It can still be done, but at some point, it might be easier to start from scratch rather than trying to make a stock Lua or Python interpreter work in that environment.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/MUD-Game-Programming-Development/dp/1...

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