Comment by 🚀 mk270
The underlying tech was pretty terrible: almost all were written in C for UNIX, and mostly hosted on UNIX rather than Linux systems until the mid-1990s. We didn't have the benefit of RDBMSes, sqlite, any kind of library for non-blocking event-driven I/O, etc. No-one managed to embed a mainstream scripting language into a MUD server (e.g., Tcl, Perl or Python, in descending order of embeddability). There were instead bespoke languages like LPC and U (a Forth). So a lot of the implementation turned on parsing weird MUD-specific file formats.
2025-03-30 · 1 year ago
4 Later Comments ↓
💎 pista · 2025-03-31 at 14:23:
I was a big fan of LORD back in the dial-up days.
There was a Web implementation a while ago called Legend of the Green Dragon that seems to have gone offline. But in its place is Legend of the Red Dragon, which seems to run actual LORD!
Requires a very modern Web browser to play and unfortunately I don't think you can telnet in. But it is there.
https://legendreddragon.net
☕️ Morgan · 2025-04-01 at 17:12:
I used to play Imperian ... to be good at PvP combat you had to code, and I do mean code, a "healing system" that would figure out from the text what ailments you had and what commands to issue to heal efficiently. Mine was in perl with an SQL database. Good times.
🌲 Half_Elf_Monk [OP] · 2025-04-02 at 15:38:
Cool to hear this, thanks. I remember enjoying a few... I didn't really enjoy any of the PvP , but that's probably because I was never any good at it. I loved the adventure/rpg aspects of it though... Some of them felt like the bones of a ttrpg. I will say that the *need* for scripting and programming languages seemed to suck some of the fun out of it... I'm fine copy/pasting directions to get from TownA to TownB, but if I have to script a chatbot to fight for me... I might as well play somethign else.
🌲 Half_Elf_Monk [OP] · 2025-04-02 at 15:40:
It occurs to me that advances in LLM tech, when combined the right way with MUD architecture, would really revitalize the genre. I don't mean prompts that tell the bot to "tell a story with the user, but a bot that could generate plot/quest/mobs/loot on the fly to tell a story. That'd be some Ender's Game grade gaming, and the MUD legacy deserves and upgrade.
Original Post
MUD/MUCK/MOO — Did anyone play MUDs? You know, connect over telnet and advennture around in a Multi-User-Dungeon? I remember some of those pretty fondly, although I never got any characters all the way maxed out. What were some of your favorites?