I'm new to mudding but I've been RP'ing for a long while and I was rather curious one morning, (heard a couple of guys talking about it at school) so I stopped by a few sites. Needless to say, as a newbie, the information on creating Muds was overwhelming to say the least. I wasn't prepared to be launched so deep into it all of a sudden.

I'm by no means I programmer, I've designed a website or two and I have minimal knowledge into the usage of most popular programming languages but not the resources or (currently) knowledge to write a program. However, I have both the time and the patience to learn, however I need a place to start.

I've been thinking about starting a Mud, nothing big, only a few rooms, 5 users or so, just to test what can be done.

But I have no place to start, I need lots of links to build my knowledge from the ground up. And don't bother telling me how hard it will be or how long it will take, I'll get it done eventually. It may take a month, it may take ten years, but eventually I should be able to dedicate the required amount of time.

I'm mostly interested in reading up on creating a mud of course. Remember, I know almost nothing at the present, but everybody has to start somewhere sometime and I'm chosing now. I know nothing, I've studied how to play Muds but never how to design them.

Thanx in advance for any links of information you can give me.

- Jaded Wrath

ftp.game.org has copies of all the codebases. You could also try , he has more information and a wider variety to search from for codebases.

Each codebase has a readme file which contains basic information on how to get started. Basically you have to unzip the file, then untar it. To do this you need to either have a shell account (running linux) or an emulator, such as cygwin, which can do the commands you need. Kyndig also offers hosting accounts at reasonable prices, if you're interested.

Now for the requisite speech: you should really play elsewhere for awhile first to see if you really want to do this. Jumping in feet first is great, especially with a can-do attitude, but it is often overwhelming and can lead to frustration. Also, playing with a MUD to 'learn to code' is strongly discouraged; most of the programmers out there have some very bad programming habits which will be picked up by working with their code.

You seem to have MuDs from a strickly player's point of view. Working on a MuD is hard enough much less starting one. My suggestion to anyone who wants to start a MuD would be to work on one first. Good luck either way though and Gammon Soft link I have below has information on popular code bases if you do still chose to try and start your own MuD.

-- Astin