I know this probably sounds like a newby question, and I must admit I am a newby to all Non MUD text based games. I was checking out the listsings and I noticed there were a ton of different types of games, especially in the RP mandatory search I did.

I know what a Mud is, but for the love of everything I have no idea what entails a MOO, MUSH, MUX or any other variation of Mu*. Could I appeal to the common decency of some human being out there to describe to me the differences between these text based game types and any others I may have missed?

Thanks in advance,
Slanted

The basic differences is codebase used. If one of the games, regardless of which type it is, interests you do a little research and check out their homepage. Many games have information to help new players on their websites as well as in the game.

Hope this clears at least a little bit of your confusion.

The code base is the main difference, but there's a difference in philosophy borne out by the code as well. MUSHes tend to focus on the cooperative storytelling part, and things like combat or spell results are often decided beforehand cooperatively. On a MUD, things like combat/spells are a function of the code.

MUD stands for Multi-User Domain/Dungeon, while MuX stands for Multi-User eXperience. MUSH stands for Multi-User Shared Hallucination. MURPE stands for Multi-User Roleplaying Experience, and sometimes gets slapped on the RP-enforced MUDs.

MUD is also the generic term for all game-like virtual worlds, whether graphical or text. Everquest is a graphical MUD, a MOO is generally a cooperative MUD, etc.

--matt, who thinks the word MMORG is just a marketing tool.

Newbie answer to newbie question...since when I was a newbie, not a single one of these answers would've made a lick of sense to me.

Look at Sanvean's explanation first...so you can see that all these terms are acroynyms that stand for different things.

Code base..invariably, most text-based games descend from the computer language C, C++, or similar. People have gotten together and taken the language, created routines, subroutines, and functions, and put them together in a package. The package would be either MUD, or MUX, or MOO, for example.

Now, without having a very good memory, I can't tell you which came first and which is a derivative of what. However...assume MUD came first. Any game that took the MUD package and tweaked it to create a new package would be called a derivative.

There's one codebase that I'm vaguely familiar with from the coder's perspective, and that's Lambda MOO. Its functions are fairly easy to understand, IF you are well-versed in C or C++.

The functionality of the package (or codebase, as it's called) determines the type of game usually created with it. Lambda MOO comes with combat AND roleplay functions, and so it would typically create a hybrid game.

MUSH does not come with combat functions that I know of, or if they do, they're extremely limited in scope. And so MUSH games would be mostly pure RP, with little or no "mechanics" whatsoever for combat.

Tweaks come and go, such as GodWars (the first), various Diku-types, TinyMUX, etc. etc. etc..some stick, some get lost in the shuffle. But each "tweaked" codebase becomes a derivitive of the code it comes from, and would have to follow whatever rules and policies set forth by the originator(s) of the base code.

Further, even a "standard hack-n-slash" code base can be tweaked to include nifty roleplaying devices, thus providing the coder with the means to create a hybrid game. The same is true with the MUSH-type codebase...adjustments can be made and functions added to allow for an engagement and combat system, crafting, etc..

However, Codebases already exist that work perfectly for certain types of games, and so it's very rare you'll see a hard-core RP code base tweaked to include combat, or a pure PK code base changed to add much in the way of RP support.

Again, my references to this or that code base are probably completely incorrect (except for Lambda MOO) so please consider them only as hypothetical examples.

Ok that makes a lot more sense. Thanks everyone.

While I have no desire to code a mud, even if they are in C++, my favorite language computer or otherwise, this has been a good base on which to stand.

I can see that I would probably not like a MUSH so much as a mud or another type, but I will just have to get my hands wet with all of em I suppose. Back to searching.