I suggest Cold C. There's really nothing better for building a codebase. You can even download a bare core that does nothing but handle sockets and build on top of that.

Oh... I just thought I would add that I'm definitely willing to spend anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours a day of focused study on learning to code. I do it with no problem for my piano and voice practice every day, so spending the same on coding wont be a problem.

First, just make sure you realise how big of a project you are getting yourself into. Building a mud generally shouldn't be someones first coding project, expecially not from scratch.

As for your questions, any form of C should work for you, but number 2(the interface) you'll probably need to do a web based java applet.

The first thing to know is that you're unlikely to be programming your client and your mud in the same language. Most MUDs do not have their own client, and the players make use of their favorite client whether it be ZMUD, TinyFugue, MUSHClient or any other number that could be named.

Secondly, it's always good to learn C, which is a very basic language. It seems like once you learn how to code in C, you can learn pretty much any other code. You'd still need to pick a driver unless you want to code that from scratch, too. I'm a big fan of looking at other people's code and fiddling with it in order to learn how to code. It's probably not the best way, but it works for me.

C is probably a bad idea. You will end up with memory leaks and other interesting problems especially if you are new to programming. It will end up that debugging will take just as much time as writing new code, if not more.

I suggest checking out Ruby. It has an incredibly clean syntax, is very easy to learn and most importantly a lot of fun to program with. It also plays very nicely with MySQL (for persistance) and Ruby on Rails can be used to update your website with game statistics with literally just a few of lines of code. It's not as fast as Java or C, but in exchange you will be able to have a less buggy product out the door faster.

Hmmm... what about Java?

If you're taking the long view, why limit yourself to only one? Learn 2-3 languages and you'll get the benefit of not only seeing for yourself which you like, but your programming skill will improve in a way it would not if you learned one language. Of course, you don't have to learn all the languages to equal degrees.

Let's see, there's an interesting article in this regard:



Hats off to you for looking at this realistically, most of the best games I've seen take 3+ years to really get going (not counting the prior experience of the programmer).

And perhaps Tyche could weigh in IRT his ruby server TeensyMUD.

If you write efficient enough code, I highly doubt that the speed difference between Ruby and Java or C would be noticable with 50 or even 100 people on the server.

Unlikely, since Tyche does not participate on these forums anymore. But the link is here:

Good luck, that's THE best way for you to start out. Work with people that have more experience, expecially in the field you want to end up doing yourself.

Let us know when you crash the server for the first time!! It's quite an experience. HEHE.

Well, I haven't heard back from him since I e-mailed him. I may need to send another one incase my reply didn't go through.

Well, in case that doesn't work out for you, here are some Ruby resources.

The first edition of Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide -

Why's Poignant Guide. An interesting approach to a Ruby tutorial, complete with talking bears -

TeensyMUD. MUD server created in Ruby -