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Old 02-16-2011, 01:05 PM   #7
dentin
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Home MUD: Alter Aeon
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Re: How to build your own MUD!

While at first glance this seemed to me a reasonable list, it occurs to me that my experience basically knocks out nearly everything on this list:

> 1) Play on a MUD that has the style of what you want to build

Yes. I played my first mud for about a year before starting on my own.

> 2) Be a staff member or builder on the above MUD.

No. Not even close.

> 3) Establish your idea for your game.

Sorta. The original mud went down, and I wanted to duplicate the look and feel, with improvements.

> 4) Create maps and backgrounds for your idea.

No. The building group had only the vaguest idea, and everything was built pretty much at random in spite of their attempts to organize.

> 5) Find a Codebase that you can work with.

No. I knew how to write my own programs at a basic level, but I was far too unskilled to understand and modify a codebase written by someone else. Contrary to popular belief, it takes less skill to write your own code than to understand someone else's large codebase, especially if it looks anything like standard mud codebases.

> 6) Make sure you understand you will need a website.

Sorta. We did add a web site later, but it was hardly considered important at the time. Everything was mudlist driven.

> 7) Understand that you will need a host ISP (a paid for location to hold your game and run it).

No. We ran everything on .edu machines for the first few years.

> 8) Understand that you will need to know how to run your game from the host ISP.

N/A. All development work was and is still done from command line tools, there is no difference between local and remote/host ISP. It's not entirely clear to me how this even applies in general.

> 9) Realise that this process will take 1000's of hours of commitment.

Yes.

> 10) Realise that 9 out of 10 MUDs never bring in more than 10 players.

No. It never even occurred to me that we'd fall into this category.


I'd give my overall score 3/9 (half a point for the two 'sorta' answers, N/A removed from both totals), yet AA is fairly successful.


My own list would be one item:

1) Be prepared to do everything, because let's face it, your only other option is give it to a volunteer. Your helpers will be be full of enthusiasm for about three days, then they will burn out. The remaining ones that are not incompetent, will not share your vision or will think they can do better. If you're lucky, you'll acquire good helpers at the rate of one per year. If you're lucky.

As examples, here is a minimum, non-inclusive list of Stuff You Will Personally Have To Take Care Of:

1.1) You will need to learn to program using a real programming language (anyone you recruit to be a coder will suck)
1.2) You will need to manage the building team (your builders will build garbage or inappropriate things.) It's also a good idea to learn to build yourself, but not IMO critical.
1.3) You will need to manage the server entirely yourself (your admin will be unresponsive when you need him)
1.4) You will need to handle PR and advertizing (because this needs to be done well and noone who does it well will do it for free)
1.5) You will need to construct and maintain the web pages (because they are 3-6 month one shot projects and you'll lose your maintainer in that time)
1.6) You will need to be the top level manager of admin and player problems. Delegate this authority at your own risk.
1.7) You will need to fire volunteer builders and helpers with good intentions and zero skill. You will need to fire lots of them.

You do not have to be an expert in these things, however you will have to do each of them, and you will have to do each of them well. Don't think for a minute you can get by with anything less. When your mud has 100+ players, then you'll have enough quality people to start taking over some of these tasks. Before that, it's all you, or it's nothing.


-dentin

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