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.
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