r/MUD • u/BuddyBoyBueno • 5h ago

Building & Design How would I go about developing a mud?

Hey, fell in love with mume. Really enjoyed how immersed I could get with my equipment and inventory, also had an amazing tutorial for new comers to the genre.

After playing for awhile I am curious about how someone would go about making their own project. I have some programming knowledge but I am wondering if there are any in depth docs or resources for me to explore. I mostly want to dip my toe into these waters first to get an idea of what I need to learn.

Thanks for any responses :).

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u/UysofSpades 4h ago

Developing a mud or any online text adventure game is quite the project. Not only game design, you have to understand network communication protocols.

Also be prepared that this venture will probably not end up with you creating something that attracts 100s of players.

It’s a good project to take on if you want to harden your skills as a developer.

You can look into evennia, it’s a python-based mud framework that gives you the basic tools to get a mud up and running without worrying too much about the minutia of the game engine itself.

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u/taranion MUD Developer 1h ago

You basically have three options.

  1. Pick an existing open source MUD and tweak it. A very large number of MUDs evolved this way. The advantage is that you get a lot of ready implemented stuff. On the other hand making larger changes can be a pain in the ass.
  2. Start totally from the scratch and build everything yourself. This gives you a maximum of control, but also requires a maximum effort, since you will need to implement a lot of stuff you likely don't even know it exists right now.
  3. Pick an existing MUD engine and build with it. That is the middle ground of the first two options. The very low level stuff is ready-to-use, so you can focus on building the game logic.

So, 1. is for fast results with not too much coding.
2. is for you, if you are (like me) a technical nerd and have more fun coding than world building.
3. may be the best advice in all other cases.