Okay, I looking to put together a graphical MUD. I have a good portion of the mapping and movement code done, using PHP/MySQL/Javascript.. Now I'm curious as to how difficult it would be to interface it with an existing MUD system or would be more effcective to code my own, and if so, what would be the best way to go about that.

Any advice or Ideas you guys could give me would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Mike

I'm a novice myself, so I can't say for sure whether or not it is possible to take an existing mud and slap some graphics on top of it, however, I would recommend looking for a few coordinate-based systems that are out there since the standard DIKU-style room object probably wouldn't scale well to accomodate graphics. Another thing to consider is whether or not you want to get to know and understand everything about how a pre-made codebase works since I imagine everything besides chat would have to be modified and it may be easier and in terms of development overall quicker to write everything yourself since you know what you need and where you need it, rather than finding every place in all of the source files that the one behaviour you're trying to modify is stashed away. Anyway, I think that made at least a little sense, so before I start tripping on my own tongue, I'll leave you with those comments to do what you will with, best of luck!

Vopisk

I agree with Vopisk - I think it would actually save you time in the long run to code your own. But, since I am doing this as well (and not even with a graphical game), I know how much time this takes. I think it would allow you to do what you truly want with your game if you code everything. But you will need to learn EVERYTHING to code your own mud. Unless of coarse you put a team together to code it. That's something I wish I had done was put together a team to code the game. Hmm ... maybe I still should.

Also - how can you have the movement and mapping systems done already when you don't know what code you are going to be using? Shouldn't you design those AFTER you have your codebase chosen?

Judging by the title, I'd guess he's already created the basic infrastructure for a graphical single-player game, but wants it to support multiple players online.

I agree with you and Vopisk; it'd probably be easier to create the mud from scratch, particularly if it's designed to be purely graphical. The other alternative would be to take something very simple, like SocketMUD, as a starting point.