[Scrod Fungus]

I decided a long time ago that I wanted to atleast attempt creating my own MUD. I have just started teaching myself programming, and I was wondering if there was any codebases out there that could suit my needs (something I could play with and piddle with on my own computer).

I would really prefer something in C++ that runs in Windows. So far, I have found only one (Mudcore), however I am having a great amount of difficulty getting that to run using Dev-C++, and I am unwilling to go out buy the more powerful required program for 100 dollars. If you have any information on this codebase and getting up to go in Dev-C++, I'd love to hear from you.

Whatever I decide on MUST be able to run in Windows XP. I have Cygwin, but I am unfamiliar with it and have no idea how to use it. At this point, I am slightly more willing to try something in C because C++ in so bloody rare, although I'll prolly end up confusing myself between C and C++ (but if I don't, all the more power to me for learning two programming languages).

No Smaug, please. x.x If I ever do get to run a MUD, it will be roleplay enforced, levelless and classless, and the furthest thing from any kind of diku-ish game as I can get it. I have very strict ideas about IC and OOC, originality, and realism that so far have never been entirely fulfilled by any other game out there (man, am I picky..).

Sooo...

If you have any suggestions, questions, comments, tutorials, codebases I might find of interest, CIA "connections", constructive critism, helpful offerings, or just the urge to email, AIM, PM, or contact in any other way someone with whom you have never met or feel some strange spiritual or mystical connection with, please contact me in the following ways:

a.) reply to this post
b.) email me: scrod_fungus@hotmail.com
c.) AIM: candidatuslupus

[welcor]

Originally Posted by No Smaug, please. x.x If I ever do get to run a MUD, it will be roleplay enforced, levelless and classless, and the furthest thing from any kind of diku-ish game as I can get it. I have very strict ideas about IC and OOC, originality, and realism that so far have never been entirely fulfilled by any other game out there (man, am I picky..).

While I don't use smaug myself (I'm currently developing DG scripts for the CircleMud codebase), I don't see your point. How you want the 'feel' of your game is almost entirely independent on the codebase, and is more of a design choice.
Whether you use Smaug, Circle, Diku, LPC (MudOS), PennMUSH or a sixth codebase only decides how you implement your ideas on a practical level.
Not wanting your game to be like all those other games you've encountered, doesn't mean you should immideately dismiss the codebase they used. If your ideas and/or programming abilities differ from theirs, the end result will as well.

I hope you find a codebase that suits your needs,

Welcor

[Scrod Fungus]

Hmm, well you see, not to diss on all those types of codebases out there, but I have not had an easy or enjoyable time while on games made with those codebases.

I usually have the most fun on custom codebases or well-made LP Muds. But like I said, I am just very picky.

[visko]

6 or 7 years ago I started looking at creating my own game. We downloaded rom24b4a, patched on OLC color and a few other things, and started tinkering.

5 years ago the coder left and I learned C programming with gdb, makefiles, 60k lines of source code, and 400 crash bugs.

4 years ago the MUD went down and I vowed never to again develop a MUD.

2.5 years ago I went back to our old source, walked through merc.h (the main header file for merc-based MUDs) and ripped out half of it (the half I didn't want anymore). Then I spent 4 months getting everything to compile again.

(Note to all of you out there: that was insane. But Rom was really well designed as far as fault tolerance; I could knock out entire infrastructures and *actually be able to disengage them from everything else* without too much trouble.)

Over the last two years I have been reworking everything off and on, getting new ideas and filing them away. My dream is a raceless, classless, levelless pk-oriented clan-oriented system with a large amount of tactical (default) and strategic (not standard, much harder to develop) infrastructures, a system with no administration (all rules are hard-coded, all building is completely player-initiated) and development (people submit new code to add onto the MUD and I review it, then implement it if I think it's worth putting in).

This has proven itself to be quite an undertaking. I've estimated finish date in about 10 years, because I don't have the resources necessary to develop it any faster.

What I'm doing is a complete departure from anything I've seen in the MUDding community so far, and it's still going to be a derivative of Rom when it's done, no matter how remotely it resembles the original download. You can do anything with any code base; the question is, how much time are you willing to invest in learning the programming language necessary, how much time are you willing to spend reading, re-reading, and re-thinking functions, entire infrastructures, and the game as a whole in your head and on paper?

The complexity of a MUD is enormous; these aren't M$ word or excel where there is a beginning, and end, and a pretty good concept of what's in the middle, and then the rest of the code is adding buttons and increasing the formatting options. This is a WORLD, and worlds are complex places (when done correctly). Unless you have infinite time and infinite ideas, you can never fully mimic the world around you, but that's not the point; ever increasingly good approximations of the world you hve designed in all of its complexity is the goal here. And that isn't codebase-constrained, that's language and coder constrained.

Take a code base you know; you don't have to like it, just make sure you've played it enough that from a user perspective you're pretty clear on how things work. Then read the code and figure out how they work programmatically. Then do what you want. (Notice the nice open-ended conclusion )

-Visko

[angelbob]

Have you had a look at any of the LPMUD stuff out there?  It runs a rather nice interpreted language.

To get started with DGD, which is one of the various LPMUD descendants (sort of), I recommend "http://phantasmal.sf.net/DGD".  Of course, it's not surprising that I'd recommend that site...  I wrote nearly all of it.

There's a decent DGD tutorial currently posted at "http://phantasmal.sf.net/DGD/Book/html/".  It'll get you started on the basics of LPC.  It's not C++, but it's really quite nice to use, and it has some advantages for MUD work that you simply can't get in C++.