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Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

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Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#71

Post by wccrawford »

shostack wrote: post #4

I give Gemstone III and Dragonrealms full credit for my current typing speed. And I remember setting up a local TinyMUD instance for my friends on the school network then creating all sorts of weird items and creatures to mess with them. It's funny... These games largely didn't have graphics (you could argue some of the more advanced interfaces like with Simutronics stuff did). Yet I have vivid memories of specifics…

I miss the old days of DR so much.

Sadly, both it and I have changed. It's just not the same now for me. I've tried going back, and I've tried to find other things to recapture that feeling, but it's just not happening.

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#73

Post by reaperducer »

aurelius12 wrote: post #10

MUDs may be history to most people, but at Iron Realms we still have five commercial MUDs running live with dedicated paid staff on each constantly working to improve the gameplay and enlarge the already massive worlds. Honestly, it's pretty surprising to me, as when I launched our first one - Achaea - in 1997 right around when Ultima Online launched, I gave us five years. https://ironrealms.com

Since you run the place, I'll state here that it would be nice if I could look at your web site and decide if I'm interested before being hit with a pop-up window asking me to sign up for a newsletter.

How do I know if I want your newsletter, if I haven't figured out what your product is? Window closed. Sale lost.

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#74

Post by bokchoi »

bretpiatt wrote: post #69

Another MUD (and MUX) alumni here, used to play a lot of 3 Kingdoms ( still up at http://3k.org/ ) using TinTin ( https://tintin.mudhalla.net/ ) and TinyFugue ( http://tinyfugue.sourceforge.net/ ) as clients. Also played lots of MUX, specifically BattleTech 3065 ( still up at http://btmux.com/ ). Once the graphical MMORPG came out and folks started to have broadband and their own computers MUD/MUX usage dropped a ton…

I too was on btech 3065 back in the day! Good memories of hanging out with people from all over the world. My dad got really mad when I hogged the phone line for hours.

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#76

Post by every »

I was once a builder on Steve Jackson Games[1] Metaverse MOO[2] until it sadly went away[3] about 25 years ago. I was "paid" with my first real access to a *nix system. Some may remember me as a blue gelatinous cube named Quiver...

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOO

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/19961226202638/http://www.io.com...

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#77

Post by keithnz »

fuckthemachine wrote: post #40
keithnz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played that in the early 90s, my gf at the time was addicted to it and was a admin/creator and worked on the world of the gnomes.

Who was that? ^_^ I was a fluffy creator around then, discworld terminology for a visiting mud creator via the old inter-mud system

her name was Chrisom (I think thats what she used on there )

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#78

Post by npunt »

Old-school MUDs are alright, but I'd love to see a modern reinterpretation of them that rethinks the interfaces and offers more democratized tools.

For instance, I'd love rooms that could be populated with sounds, images, environmental effects, day/night cycles, and text effects. This would be purely ornamental and could be done in a way to support backward compatibility with text-only views, as I'd want to keep this fully accessible to the blind.

I'd also love better tooling for designers and writers to easily make quests, objects, and NPCs. Ideally a library of templates and then the writer/designer can fill in the details. Think no-code or low code tools like Hypercard/Airtable/etc that empower artists, writers, and designers, not just engineers.

Finally I'd love to see interfaces that support mobile/touch devices, not just keyboard. Short quests in narrative games like MUDs are a great match for mobile devices, but this requires breaking out of the CLI/terminal mindset that originally bore these games. Of course chat can still be keyboard based, but typing in commands on a mobile device is a dead-end.

If there's serious interest in this I'd be happy to offer some further design guidance

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#79

Post by EMM_386 »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #51
hazeii wrote: post #29

Way back in the day (1985) I was figuring out how to do timeslicing on a 4MHz Z80, and once I had it working on multiple terminals I slung a simple MUD on it (Shades). Connecting it to a couple of modems (this was the days when BB's were the thing) got people playing, at which point British Telecom's Prestel/Micronet decided they'd like to run it on their system. The demand was sufficient that it kept crashing the en…

Pre-90s dial-up MUDs sound fascinating to me. Do you know of any others?

Check out MUD1, which eventually became British Legends on CompuServe and was rather popular in the late 80s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD1

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#80

Post by moron4hire »

npunt wrote: post #78

Old-school MUDs are alright, but I'd love to see a modern reinterpretation of them that rethinks the interfaces and offers more democratized tools. For instance, I'd love rooms that could be populated with sounds, images, environmental effects, day/night cycles, and text effects. This would be purely ornamental and could be done in a way to support backward compatibility with text-only views, as I'd want to keep this…

I've done just that a few times with some side projects, but never anything I released. One in C#. One in Node. One in Racket (I liked that one the best). It's definitely fun, and I found it helped push the application architecture into a good direction for being decoupled and maintainable.
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