Diku MUD

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Fingz_sl

shitlord
238
0
MUD stands for Multiple User Dungeon. It's ASCII based, so no graphics. Well there are graphics after a sort.

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You can see the map and that is sort of a graphical interface. Why would you play a Diku MUD? I play one at work to pass the time. I usually have 3 or 4 terminals open and when the boss comes by, all he sees is me typing away at a text terminal like a mad man. Secondly, a lot of blind people play MUDs and there's a lot of support for what they call VI, or vision impaired users.

Another reason to play one of these is from a MMO hobbyist viewpoint. Why does WoW use the '!' for quest givers? What do people mean when they say 'that mob cons too high for me'. Why are there corpse runs? Where did the class 'trinity' come from? Where did raids come from, and a lot of other cool--I guess you could call it MMO history--kind of things. Clans too.

Diku MUD is as old as 1990 and you canread more about iton Wikipedia. It was created by Danes. There are many, many more MUD engines around these days.

If you are an armchair dev, you can put your money where your mouth is and launch your MMO today. Well, you'd have to build content but the software is free, and Linux servers, a VPS, are very cheap, some a $1 a month. But you could build it and see if you could attract and retain players.

There are all kinds of MUDs out there, from survival MUDs, to science fiction, fantasy of course, Terry Pratchett stuff and so on.

I play on Aardwolf MUD, Edgor a warrior. It's one of the more popular MUDs and has about 300-400 players on every day. Come look me up.

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D

Dom_sl

shitlord
266
0
I was big into MUD's back in the day. It's where I first got to share my fascination with fantasy, D&D etc... with large groups of people. I went from being completely fucking lost and confused in them, to being an IMM, and then struck out and started building my own Rom 3.2 MUD that I never got around to finishing. They're surprisingly fun and immersive, and incredibly easy to create shit in as the C(#?) based ones can be edited by hand even if you know fuck-all about programming.

I remember that a few years into playing them, the words "Graphical MUD" and then eventually "Everquest" started floating around, and I laughed them off as a fad...
 
B

Bergraven_sl

shitlord
103
0
I used to play the shit out of MUD's back in 93-95. I can't remeber the ones i played (did 3-4 of them) but the one i remember most was one called Medivia or something like that. I actually met a chick that played and she drove down from pittsburg with some friends to met up at my dorm lol. When Everquest came out, i was like, WTF...it's like a MUD i can SEE! I was blown away and left my MUD gaming to rot. A friend of mine was developing one and I helped a tiny bit, but it fizzled out quickly when he didn't get many players. Good times....
 
Flake

Flake

Golden Knight of the Realm
190
181
I use to play MajorMud for many years. I still have the BBS software and realm setup on my laptop. Plus the software to edit the dats n shit.

Great fun.
 
D

Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
10,034
3
I played MUDs 20 years ago. Tele-Arena, MajorMUD, then Sojourn, EmlenMuds (MPV2, LoC etc.) and a ton of others over the years.
 
I

Insomnia_sl

shitlord
263
7
I find it funny someone feels the need to explain what a MUD is, in a MMO community thats 10+yrs old and thats full of a bunch of older people. Its almost like going to 4chan or some shit and explaining what a meme is. With that said, The Shadow of Yserbius was my first.
 
G

Gecko_sl

shitlord
1,482
0
Insomnia_sl said:
I find it funny someone feels the need to explain what a MUD is, in a MMO community thats 10+yrs old and thats full of a bunch of older people. Its almost like going to 4chan or some shit and explaining what a meme is. With that said, The Shadow of Yserbius was my first.
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Shadows of Yserbius on Imagination Network wasn't a MUD, though. It actually had some crude graphics.

I did a few MUDs, and was really into Doors and BBS systems in the 80s.

Holy fuck I feel old.
 
ShakyJake

ShakyJake

<Donor>
7,623
19,246
Yeah, I played Gemstone III hardcore until EverQuest came out. I still have a friend or two that return to Elanthia every once in a while.
 
V

VariaVespasa_sl

shitlord
572
5
I did about 4 years on Sojourn/Toril MUD myself. Made so much money selling platinum-plated bracers, golden helmets and redweave bracers after each boot.
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Alkorin

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,029
5,915
I played on MUME (Lord of the Rings MUD, was quite large in its heyday,http://mume.org) since 1993 or so until a few years ago. Ended up taking on a builder role at some point in the late 90s and became a programmer/"GM" afterward. I am retired now.

It was a great place, but it has failed to evolve over the years, and as a result has very few players these days. At its most popular, there were enough people logged in that the server it was running on actually ran out of slots to accept new players and had to queue them. Good times.

Also,

Gecko_sl said:
Holy fuck I feel old.
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iannis

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
What kind of hack ass mud were you playing that had maps built into the interface? That's what ZMud was for. That's for sure not ROM or DIKU standard.

PvpRp muds were the way to be.

TinTin++
 
P

plaeroma_sl

shitlord
16
0
Aardwolf is also available on Android market. Haven't had a chance to check out the details, but it's all the same server as the mud itself.
 
K

Kid Sized Coffin_sl

shitlord
158
0
I think it's funny you guys are still using CLIs. Btw, zmud/cmud development is dead.

Starting up a new generic diku is a terrible idea though if you're serious about making a game and getting players to enjoy it. The community is incredibly small and caustic. If you're making a roleplaying enforced game then I guess you could find yourself a bit of a niche... or maybe some sort of furry sex game.

Is Aardwolf combat like every other diku where you just spam your highest level "kick" while maybe cycling in a heal every other round?
 
K

Kid Sized Coffin_sl

shitlord
158
0
Yeah, I know it's been around for a long time. I believe it has also been under steady development over the years and isn't even considered diku anymore from code point of view. Never gave it a try though.
 
F

Fingz_sl

shitlord
238
0
Yah, Aardwolf has been around for over 16 years now, I think they say 1996 on their web page. They had to move from DIKU because of licensing issues from what I understand.

But there are many MUD engines out there.mudpy is anotherentirely written in python. This would be the ultimate sand box as you could easily rewrite any of the code.

As for clients, there are many, some older ones that use a VT100 terminal like tintin++, but there are many more. there is even a wintin these days. But you can connect with a telnet client like putty.

From what I can see, the biggest cost in starting a MUD is labor. A Linux server can cost as little as a $1 a month. If you want to get fancy and get a domain name, that would be $12 a year or so.

It could be fun to set one up. I don't think it would be profitable but it could be a nice hobby. Attracting players would be a challenge.

Or you can volunteer to design content on an existing MUD. Aardwolf has volunteer devs called 'builders'.

And there are hundreds if not thousands of other MUDs besides Aardwolf out there.

The communities on these MUDs are excellent if not the best I've ever found.
 
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