So, I've only been mudding a little over a year, and now, I wish to begin my quest for knowledge, and the perfect mud!

Anybody got any suggestions for a codebase, etc. etc. for a high school kid with -no- money?


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Thine in muddership,
Curuthol Lasgalen o Eregion, Aran Arda

sorry, let me rephrase myself before people get posting about soemthing different.

I want to start my own mud, start small, but run my own mud, with one friend to help with code. So, I'd like input on basically -everything-

sorry if this is an exausting, general question.
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Thine in muddership,
Curuthol Lasgalen o Eregion, Aran Arda

First off, if there's anyway to swing it, I suggest you run it on Linux or FreeBSD. If you run one of these as your desktop system, you don't even need an extra box, but a Linux box running without the window system doesn't need to be bleeding edge hardware.

As for a what codebase, I'd go with ldmud.

I would suggest building in the codebase you play in the most.
Building in a base you have already played in allows you to understand what players may need or really desire. After building for a while and learning the commands, it may be easier for you to handle high-level Imm duties. Also, try and learn as much C prog. language as you can. Running a MU* takes alot of time and effort. So, no matter what, do not give up and understand being an Imp is fun and in the same breath it is very upsetting at times. The codebase you played in the most may be the best option for you to start off as an Imp. I apologize if i wasn't much help.

Youngster with no money, hmm, sounds familiar and know your competition out there will be really great.

The simple question you posed does not have as simple an answer though with patience and skill you might be able get away with it cheaply.

There are really three parts to running your own world AFTER you chose the codebase style you are most familiar with as suggested earlier.

First, you need a machine to run the code on that will allow C programming in whichever version you prefer. Most do use Linux from what I've seen. Modifying a freeware codebase and making it unique or even just playable according to the code is not as easy as it sounds. This is Head Coder stuff.

Second, you need the ability to take the freeware world files of the codebase you selected and modify to suit your needs where you think it would be attractive and playable for others based on a long term plan. If you wish others to help you, then you should enable a way for them to update the world without entering the codebase itself (OLC). This is World Builder stuff.

Lastly, IF you get the coins to enable web access by mortal players, you should establish rules of ethics for immortal interaction with mortals. Immortal interaction among themselves and a hierarchy among themselves is important. Policies for the mortals, goals of the world, PK or !PK, Clans or Guilds, newbie assistance, crime and punishment, the list goes on and on. This is Administrator/Owner stuff.

Notice I said IF above. There are ways to get free support from a server if you are persistent but, unless you get a huge following for your world, I would suggest it will be minimum space. The biggest cost I've seen is the speed of the server your players will connect to. The faster the server the better the game play and loss of lag. Our t-3 recently was being serviced for around 15 hours and we dropped to a t-1 backup, sheesh the whines!

I know from experience reading, Smaug is not a hard mud-code to build in, now the coding can be difficult, but can be worked with through the Smaug mailing list and everything.  I have personally printed and read most of the Smaug builder notes and believe me, if you have played a Smaug codebase game before, then this one will be for you.  Also Diku is another pretty easy one.  You might look into one of them.

If you want to learn OOP, or just plain and simple coding, I'd have to pick ldmud. LPC is much higher level than C, and teaches you OOP without the massive extra baggage that comes with C++. Some of its nicer features include automatic array and mapping allocation/expansion and garbage collecting. I also have never seen a C++ string implementation that matches the ease-of-use of the built-in LPC string type (and I've seen many).

Oh yes, almost forgot automatic initialization of variables upon declaration, and the ability to declare variables at the beginning of any block just like C++ (You'd be surprised how much this can increase code readability).

Whilst I agree with the benefits Thelenian attributes to LPC, he appears to have forgotten there are other LPC drivers than ldmud - eg MudOS, DGD, CD.