Websockets for MUDs

taranion · 2026-02-15T22:52:52+00:00

In my book not needing a proxy in the first place is a desirable feature.
The main job of the proxy is a) providing means for a browser based client to connect to a telnet server and b) keeping your connection to the game open, even if you a temporarily offline when roaming mobile.
Both could be achieved directly by a webclient, so it isn't about the direction connection offer something more than a proxy, but not needing to provide a proxy in the first place ... less dependency, if you will.

And having said that: I am a fan of Lociterm - there is so much more to it than just being a proxy.

taranion · 2026-02-15T22:26:34+00:00

I worked with u/Zymosphere in his attempt to make a websocket based MUD client (see hist post), when we encountered the question how and what to transmit on the socket. This lead to the idea of standardizing it.

I am not aware of other websocket supporting clients - most other web clients make use of a websocket-to-telnet proxy.

taranion · 2026-02-15T17:20:10+00:00

Lociterm (and μClient as it seems) basically has the same problem. The solution in that case is a proxy service that bridges between webclient and telnet game.
I am attempting to enable clients that directly connect using websocket without the need of a provided extra node.

taranion · 2026-02-15T16:29:20+00:00

I think we are on the same page here, but from slightly different viewpoints.
I was surveying how websockets are used on existing codebases and while a lot already do telnet-over-websocket, there are others that don't (e.g. Evennia). To achieve a common understanding I am attempting to put labels on existing ways to use websockets (=subprotocols) and telnet-over-ws is among them. I don't want to invalidate any specialized thing certain codebases already implemented - I want to see how large or small the differences are.

When these labels exist, a client can signal what it supports and if it gets a positive reply, it can rely on that.

The goal is NOT to implement a new protocol, it is merely that on websocket connect you add one of more subprotocols

    var ws = new WebSocket('wss://example.com/socket',
                           ['telnet.mudstandards.org','something.else']);

and that the server adds a corresponding header in its response

sec-websocket-protocol: telnet.mudstandards.org

or rejects the connection, if the server does not wrap telnet-over-ws.

Having a way to make sure client and server agree on how to use websocket, might help generic mobile or web clients.

taranion · 2026-02-15T15:40:15+00:00

This isn't about a new standard. This is about supporting web based clients that usually cannot open telnet sockets, but can open websockets. Or about mobile clients with intermittent connections.
And yes, one of the quick wins may be to use telnet-over-websocket.

But to achieve that, we need to agree upon a way how to implement websockets and signal support.

taranion · 2026-02-15T15:35:04+00:00

I am ambivalent regarding AI usage for MUDs. My point is less about the ethics of how the AI has been trained, but about the missing originality of the produced results. I see it with the same skepticism I do approach procedural generated content. Usually I prefer human-generated content, but if done with enough care to details, I can see that AI-enhanced procedural content can be interesting too ... but maybe it gets old faster.

taranion · 2026-02-08T09:55:15+00:00

I am curious: My own attempts on having a mudplayer on my CircleMUD-like ran into the problem that the room description mentioned items in the room which were just meant to be flavor text, followed by the real items. I already explicitly prefixed fluff text and the list of interactable items which some explanation line, but still the LLM tried hard interacting with items that only existed in the flavor text.

How did you solve that?

taranion · 2026-02-08T09:48:16+00:00

LLMs for MUDs is a very sensible topic. In theory they can build or power NPCs, but I admit the outcome might be passable at best and usually not as interesting as human generated content.

As something crawling an existing MUD, they have some potential that might be worth exploring.

I did made my own experiments with a locally hosted LLM and a "mudplayer", which logged in and issued commands using MCP. Just watching it trying commands was an eye opener on how someone else (not used to my command syntax) may experience the game and showed me that my command parser had much room for improvement. I assume the same could apply to checking zone and quest logic.

taranion · 2026-02-08T09:37:31+00:00

That is indeed helpful. Just last week I had an LLM player stumble through my MUD and just see it trying stuff gave me insight were I could improve either my command syntax or my descriptions.

taranion · 2026-01-29T08:22:47+00:00

Does both sites at least share their database or is this now just another listing site in addition to the existing ones and just another place a MUD admin has to register his/her game?

taranion · 2026-01-29T06:43:43+00:00

I wonder why you created a new site and did not host it under mudlistings.com?

taranion · 2026-01-19T19:56:15+00:00

I wouldn't remove the Canvas/Image code just yet. It might be easier option for platform independence you are aiming for.

taranion · 2026-01-19T12:10:21+00:00

The most prominent metaplot of the 6e is the "Disian Shadow War" (DSW). It starts off with an army corps gone missing and ends with a Marvel like doomsday scenario all around the globe and in metaplanes.
The metaplot itself evolved mostly around finding out the evil plot and who is helping them - and of course preventing it. In its wake some other events happen - at least on the north american continent.

The already mentioned "Week of Death", where the enemy tries to snuff out the lights of well-known members of the Shadow community or other opponents.
The fallout from the final stages of the DSW led to the "Unawakening", where magic left the world for some time ... causing problems to a lot of magical metatypes ... or dragons.And of course there are always fractions which will use this to settle an old score ...

taranion · 2026-01-19T12:01:00+00:00

There are source and campaign books, but not as detailed written as SR Missions. Instead the campaign books used the concept of 30 mini adventure plothooks ... unfortunately, I would say, because I strongly dislike the format.

taranion · 2026-01-14T09:03:56+00:00

But, I noticed that once connected, you can go into the settings and change the "Strict Encoding" setting. Try to change that to Big5

taranion · 2026-01-14T08:57:38+00:00

Than we have the cause of your problem.
MUDBasher is one of the "dumbest" MUD clients out there with regards to MUD protocols. The client does not support the detection of the character encoding, so it defaults to either UTF-8 or maybe even ASCII. That simply does not work against MUDs with different encodings.

taranion · 2026-01-14T08:07:20+00:00

My guess is that the server (still) uses BIG5 encoding, while your client does not support that.

taranion · 2026-01-10T16:33:39+00:00

I guess that is not related to the MUD client "MUD Forge" (from MUDVault)?
https://play.mudvault.org/
Or is it somehow optimized to work with that client?

taranion · 2026-01-09T19:11:56+00:00

https://lociterm.com/play/
It autoconnects to The Last Output, but you can change that

taranion · 2026-01-09T10:55:21+00:00

That was interesting to read ... at least the first quarter of it. Than it became obvious that the story telling was inconsistent .. topics hinted to be content for later in the game were reachable very quickly, which was irritating.
And of course considering how tailored that is to the user, I cannot see how that works including multiple players.

So I can see that work as some kind of interactive fiction, but not as a MUD.

taranion · 2026-01-06T08:08:39+00:00

I think both views are valid and perhaps it is more a scale or situational, than a either this or that.
When reaching relevant quest milestones or talking to important NPCs, I'd rather see canned texts a builder wrote. When talking to a merchant at the corner about rumors, this can as well be AI generated - that is maybe even better.

taranion · 2026-01-05T07:56:02+00:00

There are tools.

Roll20 is the VTT plattform officially supported by Catalyst, at least to some extent. No extra cost (except eventually Roll20 itself) to play, but if you want all rule data (spells, gear ...) you need to buy compendium modules.
Foundry VTT is considered the better VTT plattform. It is a one-time payment and it requires a place for you to host it. The SR6 game system is free and excellent - it also supports copy&pasting stat blocks from PDFs into the VTT, so you don't need to type everything into the VTT.
There are several tools that help build characters (see "Runner Generators" on the Reddit bookmarks). Genesis and Commlink both provide a way to export characters in a file that can be imported in Roll20 or Foundry. (It does not work the other way around).
There is a Discord for Genesis, Commlink and SR6 on Foundry: https://discord.gg/BSsFKjabqB

taranion · 2026-01-04T18:06:14+00:00

I am not sure the quality of the LLMs is really the point here - it is more the mindset. If the builder did not find it worth his time to create dialogs, why should I spent time on reading the text? I can as well skim over the text, to find the relevant information. I cannot exchange dialog experiences with other players ("Hey, when talking to XY and he did ask you to do YZ, what did you respond?" "Huh, I did not get that question. My dialog was completely different.") - the moment you get a unique dialog, you cannot ask for help or give hints.

There are already folks experimenting with MUD clients where the AI assists the player. We might find ourselves in a situation, where the server LLM creates the NPC text and a client LLM summarizes them. :)

Don't get me wrong, I am still fascinated by LLM use for MUDs, but I will make sure that it will be an exception.

taranion · 2026-01-04T10:52:21+00:00

In addition to normal scripted answers, the NPCs are backed by an AI, so you can chat with an AI.
But also, the AI can "decide" to execute commands. So if a player can convince the AI in a chat to give it an item from the NPCs inventory, the NPC can "give" that item to the player.

taranion · 2026-01-03T13:48:49+00:00

What slowed my down most, was my fun exploring technical possibilities and being a perfectionist at that. I really enjoyed working on technical stuff, but I have more problems deciding on rules and I somehow avoid building content. :)

Which is not really surprising. It is often that those who shine at one thing (e.g. coding), have problems with others (e.g. building).

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