Visti
August 23rd, 2007, 06:24 AM
Hi! Searching the forums I found a few mentions of MUDs, but nowhere near enough to justify the collective geekiness of these pages. So, what is a MUD?
Well, the almighty wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-user_dungeon) tells us that "(...) a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon, Domain or Dimension) is a multi-player computer game that combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash style computer games and social chat rooms. Typically running on a bulletin board system or Internet server, the game is usually text driven, where players read descriptions of rooms, objects, events, other characters, and computer-controlled creatures or non-player characters (NPCs) in a virtual world. Players usually interact with each other and the surroundings by typing commands that resemble a natural language, usually English."
Now doesn't that sound interesting? Come on, stop playing Nethack with yourself and get out there and kick some other people's asses! Some of these are immensely advanced and shouldn't be dismissed because they're just text. Some of them require twitchy, fps-like reflexes - Seriously, take a look at this description of combat from Godwars II (http://www.godwars2.com)'s site:
"You control four different locations you can fight with: right hand, left hand, feet and head. Each of these locations has its own table of techniques, which changes depending on your weapon (and the weapon in your other hand), style, encumbrance, skill level and talents. You can view the tables for each location by typing 'r?', 'l?', 'f?' and 'h?' respectively.
Check out the full description here (http://www.godwars2.com/guide.php?page=combat)
Yikes! Getting intrigued yet? Well, I haven't even gotten to the best part, yet. Or even the parts! First of all, if you go to a site like The Mud Connector.com (http://www.mudconnector.com) there's a small statistic running in the upper left corner - now surely, that must be a mistake? At the time of typing this, there are 1515 Muds up and running.
These are all (well, mostly) unique games with different appeal, different worlds and different people! There's something for everyone. You want straight fantasy? Wanna be an ogre and just devour people in combat for no particular reason, you can find that game! (There's Godwars II, as mentioned earlier). Want deep roleplaying, detailed characters and fleshed out countries, backgrounds and history - Go right ahead! Use the search on TMC! Hell, play a tabletop RPG? Especially interested in some particular fantasy world from fiction? Chances are there's a MUD based around it! Wheel of Time, White Wolf, etc. etc.
Secondly, the vast, vast majority of these are completely free of charge! There are a few pay-to-play MUDs out there and I haven't personally tried them, because I've been pretty darn content with the selection of free ones! And I'm not the only one! An average middle to highlevel MUD has plenty of players online at any given time! Hundreds, in some cases! ("Hundreds? that's not very impressive next to WoW hundreds of thousands.." But wait till you see it. It works in a much different way with a lot more global interaction, so you don't have to feel lonely at all)
And what now, there's more!? Sure! The base sourcecodes for these games are actually available for you to download in a nifty tar.gz packace and compile to modify and run your own! Now, most of these are derivatives of a couple of codebases, so while perhaps you can't download, for example, Godwars II, you sure can download what he started to modify: DIKU - There's nothing stopping you from creating something of your own. The standard codebases are all available here:ftp.game.org (http://ftp.game.org) - And there's a huge community supporting these, so you'll never get stuck! TMC's forums are bursting with coding, roleplaying and general MUD knowledge!
If I got you sorta buzzed about this thing, great! You're probably itching to explore! Now, in the older days you'd use a standard telnet client to access a MUD, but of course everything evolves and there are specific clients with all sorts of nifty features ripe for the using! There's even one in the repositories! GNOME-MUD! Yay! The most advanced one is probably Zmud (now Cmud) available from Zuggsoft, which is amazing, but unfortunately not free. It even comes with a search frontend for TMC, so you don't need anything else to find a nifty MUD just for you. These clients support colored text, sound and lots and lots of other things! Check out that Godwars II site mentioned earlier for a peek at how it actually looks.
I'm done typing now! Get the hell out there and play! It's free, it's got diversity and the source is even available! What are you waiting for!? Something even geekier? I doubt it!
Well, the almighty wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-user_dungeon) tells us that "(...) a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon, Domain or Dimension) is a multi-player computer game that combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash style computer games and social chat rooms. Typically running on a bulletin board system or Internet server, the game is usually text driven, where players read descriptions of rooms, objects, events, other characters, and computer-controlled creatures or non-player characters (NPCs) in a virtual world. Players usually interact with each other and the surroundings by typing commands that resemble a natural language, usually English."
Now doesn't that sound interesting? Come on, stop playing Nethack with yourself and get out there and kick some other people's asses! Some of these are immensely advanced and shouldn't be dismissed because they're just text. Some of them require twitchy, fps-like reflexes - Seriously, take a look at this description of combat from Godwars II (http://www.godwars2.com)'s site:
"You control four different locations you can fight with: right hand, left hand, feet and head. Each of these locations has its own table of techniques, which changes depending on your weapon (and the weapon in your other hand), style, encumbrance, skill level and talents. You can view the tables for each location by typing 'r?', 'l?', 'f?' and 'h?' respectively.
Check out the full description here (http://www.godwars2.com/guide.php?page=combat)
Yikes! Getting intrigued yet? Well, I haven't even gotten to the best part, yet. Or even the parts! First of all, if you go to a site like The Mud Connector.com (http://www.mudconnector.com) there's a small statistic running in the upper left corner - now surely, that must be a mistake? At the time of typing this, there are 1515 Muds up and running.
These are all (well, mostly) unique games with different appeal, different worlds and different people! There's something for everyone. You want straight fantasy? Wanna be an ogre and just devour people in combat for no particular reason, you can find that game! (There's Godwars II, as mentioned earlier). Want deep roleplaying, detailed characters and fleshed out countries, backgrounds and history - Go right ahead! Use the search on TMC! Hell, play a tabletop RPG? Especially interested in some particular fantasy world from fiction? Chances are there's a MUD based around it! Wheel of Time, White Wolf, etc. etc.
Secondly, the vast, vast majority of these are completely free of charge! There are a few pay-to-play MUDs out there and I haven't personally tried them, because I've been pretty darn content with the selection of free ones! And I'm not the only one! An average middle to highlevel MUD has plenty of players online at any given time! Hundreds, in some cases! ("Hundreds? that's not very impressive next to WoW hundreds of thousands.." But wait till you see it. It works in a much different way with a lot more global interaction, so you don't have to feel lonely at all)
And what now, there's more!? Sure! The base sourcecodes for these games are actually available for you to download in a nifty tar.gz packace and compile to modify and run your own! Now, most of these are derivatives of a couple of codebases, so while perhaps you can't download, for example, Godwars II, you sure can download what he started to modify: DIKU - There's nothing stopping you from creating something of your own. The standard codebases are all available here:ftp.game.org (http://ftp.game.org) - And there's a huge community supporting these, so you'll never get stuck! TMC's forums are bursting with coding, roleplaying and general MUD knowledge!
If I got you sorta buzzed about this thing, great! You're probably itching to explore! Now, in the older days you'd use a standard telnet client to access a MUD, but of course everything evolves and there are specific clients with all sorts of nifty features ripe for the using! There's even one in the repositories! GNOME-MUD! Yay! The most advanced one is probably Zmud (now Cmud) available from Zuggsoft, which is amazing, but unfortunately not free. It even comes with a search frontend for TMC, so you don't need anything else to find a nifty MUD just for you. These clients support colored text, sound and lots and lots of other things! Check out that Godwars II site mentioned earlier for a peek at how it actually looks.
I'm done typing now! Get the hell out there and play! It's free, it's got diversity and the source is even available! What are you waiting for!? Something even geekier? I doubt it!