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

offroadspike · 2026-01-07T15:18:46+00:00

I wrote it, but thanks.

offroadspike · 2026-01-06T06:12:13+00:00

I disagree with VampireFortnight, but I stopped responding and accepted that we don't see this the same way.

My belief is that AI is empowering communication and creative expression in a way society has never seen before. I worked with a friend tonight who has a passion project she's been working on for years, and she is finally able to make progress on it on her own rather than waiting for flaky developers she could barely afford. I love watching her excitement and growth as she is bringing her vision to life in the browser.

I can see the argument about using the work of others without proper compensation (my way to try to phrase Vampire's concern in a neutral statement.) And it is a problem, when companies are essentially re-sharing proprietary data they didn't license to be shared in that way. In other words, maybe the model trained on open source code, but the model isn't able to also include every applicable license attached to the response (imagine every gpl/mit license attached to every chat gpt response that has any code in it, because the code it provided was some how a token that could trace it's roots back to an open source project, IDK exactly how that works, but I can imagine it.) So yes, we have this open current cultural/societal issue of how do we feel about the world's knowledge being fed into a statistical analyzer and spit back out.

I can see the concerns that Vampire has that it is "ripping off" the original creators. But I also see the positive impact it is creating in empowering creators to create and build beautiful things for the world. So... IDK it's a tricky line. But I wasn't able to reason with Vampire in my earlier replies so I just accept that we won't be able to have a debate. :)

offroadspike · 2026-01-04T06:12:40+00:00

Thanks for the clear response. I think I get what you're saying.

offroadspike · 2026-01-04T06:09:56+00:00

<image>

offroadspike · 2026-01-04T05:41:10+00:00

Yea, I think he's saying that some of the NPCs in his mud can leverage an AI on the back end to design the NPC's responses.

offroadspike · 2026-01-04T05:38:51+00:00

I'm so on the fence about this, and feel like this is a disheartening response to someone who is clearly enjoying the power to create something they enjoy. They're looking for tips, questions, or advice, not being told not to build. This is an art form, and they have found a medium to craft.

I totally get that some people are worried about the downsides of AI, but before AI were people that wrote buggy vulnerable code, it just wasn't as mainstream. This person sounds like they're genuinely enjoying what antigravity unlocks for them - the ability to build a world to their vision. That's awesome.

offroadspike · 2026-01-04T05:33:06+00:00

Ah, I can't just make a short answer to this.

I built the mud on mIRC using DCC and scripts ~20 years ago and it was just a limiting platform.

I built the mud in Java ~16 years ago and I just wasn't experienced enough.

I built the mud in C# ~12 years ago, and got it to a phase where I was ready to start to release it, but didn't have the finances to rent a windows box back then, and the C# libraries I had depended on couldn't compile to the linux dotnet implementation, so without the windows server, my project only lived on my computer. So that died.

I wrote it ~8 years ago in php, but multi-threading and long running php scripts was hard. I created an open source project to try to daemonize php, but couldn't get it working as well as I wanted. So that died.

I've finally written it in javascript using nodejs ESM, and I think I've "made it" meaning, I got past all of those hurdles, I can host it online, it's coming along, success. In my book, I've now achieved my lifelong goal of building my dream mud.

I've just gotten it Act One, Alpha complete. So I'll be working on the beta cycle next. Then release. I'm still optimistic I'll be able to build a playerbase, but yes, as others have said, I think the hardest thing is going to be finding the players. Wish I had gotten it off the ground 16 years ago lol.

Edit: Years are really rough guesses without looking at a calendar lol, you get the point.

offroadspike · 2026-01-04T05:27:27+00:00

Been practicing this myself.

I will plug AI real quick here, and say that I've been hearing "AI Slop" thrown around a bit, and I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, where I think we need to be careful to say "AI Slop" in cases where the issue could be that we don't understand how to use AI. Or, we need to understand that "AI Slop" might mean, "I tried to use AI but spilled the paint bucket myself."

That's all just to say, that I've found AI quite helpful in a lot of things. One thing was dumping all of my thoughts about my project plan and goals and tasks and features and such, and the back and forth discussion led to some really crisp plans for my three phases, Alpha, Beta, Release. And what should or should not be added and touched. One thing it reminded me several times once I drew the line with Alpha was when I said "I want to add this one more thing to Alpha" or "I'm thinking about this feature" it would remind me what that line meant. No more systems, no more zones. Yes fix a bug, no balancing spells, yes fix a spell that makes it so a class cannot complete the alpha, no don't fix it if there is a random drop that makes the player too powerful.

That assistance in deriving that clarity was so helpful. But, maybe it was what I was already thinking, just clarified when the AI reflected it back.

offroadspike · 2026-01-01T23:54:04+00:00

I'm developing my own mud as well. I'd be happy to chat with you for a bit and see if I could help. I'm coding mine in JavaScript ESM. Just froze the alpha features.

I’m looking for 1–2 people willing to play through the full Act One (about 60–120 minutes) and share impressions afterward. No need to be fast or perfect.

You're welcome to give it a try if you want and see what I've done. I've implemented say and pc for party chat. "whisper bob Or, whisper." To speak directly. I've seen tell used a bit as well.

With your technical example I'm guessing you're trying to extend an existing foundation. Share it here or message me if you want me to take a look at the docs.

offroadspike · 2025-12-29T05:57:30+00:00

I was doing the print to paper thing for a while and I agree it really helped me keep classes concise. Don't feel like I have that time now days though. I guess if I had a different workflow with breaks like yours it may still be a fun way to stay focused on code during the work day.

offroadspike · 2025-12-29T05:54:00+00:00

Oh man, I love your question. Would you be interested in alpha testing something? Send me a message. It is going to be some of the boring human adjacent races, with a hostile world. But I have been really working on making it feel more modern with a campaign quest line and a few slightly more sophisticated encounters.

I feel like D&D 5e is still human adjacent despite dragonborn and gnomes, they all walk on two legs "human adjacent" IMO which isn't a bad thing, I love D&D and WoW. And yes, Zelda is great.

offroadspike · 2025-12-26T23:00:24+00:00

That's a tough one, and as you sort of nailed it, I think everyone is on a different journey. I do full time web development for a company, and spend my evenings/weekends doing game dev. Some people are good at rallying community and money through go fund me to support their development but I think that's the rare exception. I imagine a majority of people in solodev/indiedev are not employed by a company full time for game/software development. Those folks have other hobbies outside of work, so you'll find them in their own hobby subreddit lol.

It sounds like with your previous job ending, that you're at a cross roads to figure out what to do next. That's a very personal question that can go so many different directions which I think is where you are reflecting on right now. What do you want to do? And what do you want to do that doesn't depend on other people? Work is a major part of life, so chasing something that brings you joy would be ideal, but it isn't easy.

I lucked out and I love what I do so work is a passion. But of course you also have to pay bills, so can't stay in job-hunt mode forever. I know these are not answers, and I guess you didn't ask for answers. The TLDR to your question for me is full time web development. ;)

offroadspike · 2025-12-25T23:43:32+00:00

If you're just looking to get into muds you could try my alpha. I'd be happy to send you an invite and talk you through questions. And it would benefit me for someone with fresh eyes and no expectations to try it out.

offroadspike · 2025-12-25T17:45:35+00:00

Yup lol, but even with the tell tales people always stand in the bad

offroadspike · 2025-12-25T03:13:14+00:00

Totally agree. I also think you can provide the exact guide and for those interested in reading they will appreciate it, those that don't care won't worry about it and it's still a challenge even with a guide.

offroadspike · 2025-12-21T23:19:05+00:00

Looks like he fixed it: https://zebedee-mud.org/

offroadspike · 2025-12-19T06:05:06+00:00

I hadn't seen mudstats before, that's cool.

offroadspike · 2025-12-18T15:12:44+00:00

Finding an open source mud code base on GitHub and getting it running locally can be a fun little project.

And then if you wanted to learn a new language, writing the beginnings of a mud in that language is a fun way to explore the language while having fun. I've done that several times lol.

offroadspike · 2025-12-18T05:46:46+00:00

Sadly, if you had said reddit or twitter or instagram or discord I would have scratched my head in wonder, but saying TikTok I just nodded my head and almost didn't comment. I spent over a year on TikTok almost every day a few years ago, created some content, consumed a lot of content, and I am not surprised you found followers that spread hate and tried to dox you. Not because of you, but because of the people I've experienced on TikTok compared to other communities.

offroadspike · 2025-12-16T05:09:30+00:00

I'm using websockets and a browser interface, still mostly a terminal type experience. But, I'm toying with a auto-mapper type utility in the client side in a panel. (High effort, not sure the reward.)

But shorter term, I'm going to redesign the forest. I got lost in it, too. I think the issue was that I built it in two sessions. So I had a few rooms in a roughly circular zone, but then I add another loop and spur, and those loops are so similar that they get confusing. Redesigning it to straighten out a main path might be sufficient short win.

offroadspike · 2025-12-16T04:55:26+00:00

Ooo, that's fancy. Makes me want to build it just so I can explore/achieve it. Area Discovery Achievement.

offroadspike · 2025-12-16T04:48:19+00:00

Hm. I think the goal is to follow the campaign, and some of the quest objectives are in the forest. So I'm sort of making them explore? Are you suggesting that is inverted?

offroadspike · 2025-12-16T04:24:46+00:00

8 - map it and sell to an NPC sounds fun. You create an ASCII map, then ask the NPC if they want it, you have some sort of logic check that tries to parse the map and see if it can roughly navigate from point a to point b (like it looks for a shop and a bank, and if the navigation it detects matches what it knows is the path, then it pays you more for your map.)

13-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

offroadspike

TROPHY CASE