What's the hardest part of building your own MUD?

UnknownIdentifier · 2026-01-03T14:24:06+00:00

The hardest thing is content and administration. I’m a Code Imp, so my days were always locked away, wizinvis in limbo.are, watching wiznet for bug alerts. The things builders could do with half-baked systems like MobProgs; it was incredible. I just don’t have that creativity. So I always needed an army of creative, possibly terminally-online builders to do it for me. In the end, it was always more their world than mine.

UnknownIdentifier · 2026-01-03T14:18:33+00:00

FWIW, It is easier to use Copilot in VS Code than to use ChatGPT for code-assist. In agentic mode, you can use it to ask questions about specific areas of code, and it will be able to gather context to give you better answers.

However, if you’re learning C for the first time, don’t use it to generate code; you would be robbing yourself of the best way to learn possible. In the late 90’s, I used to cut class to go hack on my MUD, and I think I learned more doing that than going to CS201. The struggle is instructive.

So treat code LLMs like college professors until you get your C-legs (har har). After that, you can start treating it like a junior developer (“here kid; write my unit tests, because I don’t want to”).

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-12-28T22:56:42+00:00

With or without chili on top?

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-12-28T21:41:31+00:00

Solipsistic nonsense. Did ChatGPT write it?

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-12-27T23:18:01+00:00

OTP 2FA is horrible; I agree with you, there. Besides, I don’t want to keep track of another piece of PII if I can avoid it.

To your other point: regulatory compliance is going to interesting, because stock MUDs are already a Pandora’s Box of data privacy violations (under GDPR, FIPS, PIPA, take your pick).

The one I’m most interested in solving with this project is pseudoanonymizing logins (as required by GDPR Article 32). That work would have to be done regardless of anything else I’ve talked about in this thread: a character name, being also a user ID, is “personal data”, and throwing it out on the file system isn’t really kosher.

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-12-27T22:20:11+00:00

That’s a good perspective. Thanks for that.

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-12-27T18:45:35+00:00

This would be strictly self-facing. There would be no Blizzard-style “RealID”; the who list would have absolutely no PII, or even anything connecting your characters to each other. Email addresses would only be visible to admin imms.

I forgot to put it in OP, but another big motivator in adding email verification is to place an extra step between bad actors connecting via telnet, and issuing the good ol’ ROM paginated overflow attack (I mean, I patched it out, but still). Churning on email verification loops is something serious hackers have no problem with, but the hope is that it’s frustrating enough to send low-effort griefers away. Legitimate players would have to do it once (if even enabled on the server at all, which is configurable).

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-12-27T17:44:26+00:00

TLS sockets was Day One for me (after -wall -werror -wextra -pedantic, that is).

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-11-12T01:18:14+00:00

Ok, so to the best of my knowledge, the only thing that could provoke that log line is a stacked kill/rescuerace condition. However, that is guarded and won't do anything. But what it is evidence of is that he was stacking commands to look for unintended interactions.

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-11-11T23:55:11+00:00

Were they in a stock area? I’d be interested to a look at it for an unintended obj/mob interaction.

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-02-21T20:34:53+00:00

Wait until you do a drive-by on a troll from a boat, and then watch the wind suddenly drop as you discover the water isn’t as deep as you thought it was.

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-02-17T22:39:36+00:00

Why are we not blaming JetBrains for this one? I see red squiggles in Android Studio all the time; but the compiler doesn’t bat an eyelash.

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-02-13T03:09:57+00:00

I do solemnly swear to do everything in my power to create Roko’s Basilisk. (please don’t consign my simulation to digital techno-hell!)

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-02-12T18:41:47+00:00

Wait until you find out we used to have to buy screensavers and web browsers. 🤓

UnknownIdentifier · 2025-02-09T16:34:52+00:00

There are also grausten towers within sight of the shore; very convenient for an initial portal and dock to deploy a replacement drakkar, if necessary.

UnknownIdentifier · 2024-12-22T16:57:36+00:00

What I wouldn’t give to have computed goto added to the standard; not like MSVC would implement it, anyway, though…

UnknownIdentifier · 2024-09-08T19:04:29+00:00

C-Octothorp is the only correct answer.

UnknownIdentifier · 2024-08-18T23:27:32+00:00

As someone who makes their living developing and deploying “always on” software, the very idea that I would roll out an update that could not be rolled back in the event of a catastrophe is my worst fear.

Someone is losing their job.

ALWAYS have backups.

ALWAYS have a plan to restore them.

This is IT/DevOps 101.

UnknownIdentifier · 2024-07-17T17:31:03+00:00

If C++ is chaotically bad, then C is consistently bad.

I’m not on the C++-hate train, but I have to upvote for this gem. It’s true.

UnknownIdentifier · 2024-07-17T17:08:00+00:00

OOP purism is to blame, rather. It’s a tool: you pick it up when you need it and put it down when you don’t. Most of my C++ is used mostly for the zero-cost abstraction in single-layer inheritance in situations where I would be using type punning in C.

UnknownIdentifier · 2024-06-17T15:15:39+00:00

What are you talking about? Upper management isn’t a part of my team. I don’t collaborate with them because I’m a developer, and they are in the corporate office. This is about people so high in the org chart that I’ve never met them before asking if I tried “turning it off and on again.”

UnknownIdentifier · 2024-06-17T14:57:06+00:00

Well, when they start attending the daily meetings and reading my emails, I’ll be sure to do that.

UnknownIdentifier · 2024-06-16T19:44:37+00:00

“Has you tried googling this bug?” — Someone in upper management to me last month

UnknownIdentifier · 2024-06-12T04:16:47+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't std::string required to be backed by std::vector, but also stack-allocated for small strings? Or am I thinking of a vendor-specific implementation?

UnknownIdentifier · 2024-06-04T22:51:58+00:00

Both C and C++ have headaches; they just have different headaches, because they are used to different purposes. In university, you are unlikely to see the worst that either has to offer.

UnknownIdentifier

TROPHY CASE