A few questions about running a MUD?
 

Hey guys! I thought I'd start off by introducing myself. I'm Rhylin, otherwise known as Jessica, and I just joined your fantastic forum. :)

I'm starting to program my own MUD. I'm fully aware of the work involved and the time commitment; I have done my homework and I am a programmer, so I know what it's like to lose my life to a project. Also, I have played MUDs for years and I have experience as a builder. I don't want to make money off this MUD, nor do I aim to have a huge player base. I am doing this for 2 reasons:
1) It would be endless fun for me, and my brain is exploding with great ideas
2) I am taking a computer science major in university and there are many, many aspects to this project that would help me understand my school concepts better: Unix, running a server, networking/ports, programming languages, databases, documentation, etc etc.

So I have a couple questions for you guys!

1) I want to host said MUD on my own laptop. It is quite a powerful laptop. One day I might move it, but for now I'm not concerned about having it up 24/7. What I'm wondering is whether I should use Cygwin or a Linux virtual machine? I have both. The VM's operating system is Ubuntu. What are the advantages of each? Also, are there any important things I need to know about hosting a MUD on my own machine? Where do I start? Any guides that might help me? I'm kinda a noob at this but I need to learn it eventually, so it may as well be now! :p

2) I plan on programming my own code base, and I'm thinking I want to do it in C++, because it's object-oriented and that's how I've been taught. Is this a good choice? I want to take an existing C++ code base and make significant changes/additions to it rather than starting from scratch. Is this legal? Most importantly, WHAT CODE BASE DO YOU GUYS RECOMMEND I USE?? I'm trained on VME (Valhalla MUD Engine), otherwise known as Diku II, but this is an old code base and therefore is not as well developed or supported as newer ones. Also, if you guys have any guides/links that will help me understand code bases that would be awesome. I've downloaded a bunch of popular ones and looked at them, and I understand a lot of the code but I don't understand so well how all the files and folders work together to make a code base.

THANKS SO MUCH and sorry for the long post! :D

Re: A few questions about running a MUD?
 

First thing to read is this:

Here's a thread about starting a new C++ codebase:

Re: A few questions about running a MUD?
 

I have one thing to say about combining Cygwin and MUDs:

Don't.


Go with the Ubuntu.

Re: A few questions about running a MUD?
 

From your posts details be prepared to simply look at it as a pastime and not a real project with an opening that will garnish lots of players. You can be optimistic, but in my experience taking on your own code and stuff is going to be pretty taxing. There's a only a select few muds I can count on one hand who have done it, (kavir and GW2 comes to mind), and who have done it right.

Either way, good luck, you'll need it.

Also I'd go with Fedora if you're going to use linux which I assume you are.

Re: A few questions about running a MUD?
 

Zeno: thanks for the links! I've read them both before quite a few times actually, they are very informative. :)

Zenn: thanks for the advice, I'll use the VM instead of Cygwin. It'll give me a better chance to learn Unix operating systems anyways... we use these quite a bit at my university.

Delerak: you're exactly right, I'm planning to approach this project as a passtime more than anything else. Like I said, I don't expect to have a ton of players... probably the only people who will be on it are myself and a handful of people I know personally that I want to show it to. I understand that writing/modifying a code base is an enormous task but believe me, I'll enjoy every minute of it! I love tedious problem-solving tasks, otherwise I wouldn't be in computer science! ;)


If anyone else is able to answer some of my more specific questions, I would appreciate it very much! :D