I'm going to show my relative newbie-ness here and in general my lack of being able to find any information on this topic. All I was able to find was that Mudcon was an event where various MUD admins/designers/developers, came together to talk about whatever. So I was hoping that someone could fill in the blanks for me, muchly appreciated. :biggrin:

It was an informal online gathering where everyone got together to discuss more or less whatever the felt like discussing. But it served mostly as an opportunity to socialize with other admins, developers, players, etc in the community. There's been a total of 5 of them but time constraints more or less interfered with being able to run more after that.

I don't know whatever happened to the information on the first 4, but the logs and such from #5 are here: http://www.mudbytes.net/mudcon/

Thanks Samson. -initiate absorb all knowledge in dastardly plot to take over world sequence- :robot:

You definitely came to the right place, Dean ;). Samson, Asylumius and I were the ones who set the last ones up. Come to think of it, it could be considered the beginning of MudBytes, as thats where we first started working together ;). The first four were held by a man by the name of Orion, along with Samson from MudWorld. I was impressed so much, I talked to Orion about the fifth. When he said he wasn't going to do another one, I instantly began work on holding a next one. The thing that bothered me the most about the original MudCon was that it crashed, and Smaug. I'm not really a fan of either. So I started with something, at the time, known as MercNet (merc 2.2 stripped of, well, everything.) I released what I had made, along with the website end here. Some of it is cool stuff, just take a look at the copyover and channel code.

Ah MUDCon memories…

Actually I never got much out of the MUDCons because they were severely dominated by code talk rather than building, game management, etc. But I did get to do a lot of networking. And I did get to piss off some developer guys :)

Alas that's what happens when coders are the ones in charge of the whole operation. I would like to see another mudcon soon but I realize that probably isn't going to happen. If it did, maybe there would be more building oriented discussions. Especially if some of you builder types made a fuss about it in advance.

Make a builder run the next one and just use a stock codebase instead of a custom one like was used last time. (Actually I think some mostly stock codebase would likely be better for usability anyway as I remember the commands on the last one confusing the hell out of most people. Specifically I'd suggest a codebase that was still in development like AFKMUD, tbaMUD or RaM so the event could multi-task as an advertisement of sorts for the codebase by bringing its features to the attention of the people at the event.)

See, I'd be interested in something like this except that it's the above that would keep me from going. The codebase shouldn't matter at all, I've never played or used a stock codebase at all, the MUDs i've run and\or built have all been custom and commercial. It'd be nice to talk a little bit about how you build your areas, what goals you try to accomplish with each, how you plan a release schedule - whether the same person should design the drops and mobs of the area or if it should be split up to different people to make it less likely to be a 'god zone', etc. That's not to say that a session or two on predominant building systems is out of place, but there should be a healthy amount of 'abstract' conversation.

Personally I don't think the code side is very appealing at all, it is still very C\C++ heavy in any forum (for good reasons, I'm aware) but at this point everything is so incestuous that most 'new' codebases are just a derivation of a derivation of a copy, or worse. If it was more geared towards sparking\inspiring new codebase design though, then you'd have something cool. I'd love to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of using a database, the benefits of a scripting model, how classes should work, etc.

I wasn't suggesting the discussions be focused around the codebase that was chosen to be used which seems to be what you believed me to be implying. I simply meant that if the mudcon was ran on a specific newer codebase it would indirectly get that codebase some exposure just from people using it and possibly finding things about it that they liked.

Personally I would rather have a codebase which is both stable and neutral. I would be concerned about the stability of a codebase which is still under heavy development, and I while I don't mind visiting other people's muds for a tour, I don't think the Mudcon should be tied to a specific game.

Ideally I'd like to see something like SocketMUD or NakedMUD, perhaps tailored specifically towards the Mudcon (so no stats, combat, or equipment, but commands for viewing discussion history, etc).

I'm not sure about RaM, but I'd assume it's rather stable even though it is being developed. I do know though that although tbaMUD is technically in development that TBA has run for several months at a time without crashes recently and that a stock copy of the codebase would most definitely be stable enough for such an event. It also does have commands for viewing discussion history (up to the last 100 communications on any channel), though admittedly it likely wouldn't be considered to be neutral by some. The main draw to me for using a DIKU derivative for such an event though is that it is likely what the largest # of users would be familiar with.

What's the point of running what is (as far as I can tell) essentially a glorified chatroom on an entire MUD codebase?

It's a gathering of MUD developers and players, where people discuss the current state and future direction of MUDs. It would be a cruel twist of irony if it were decided to host it in a chatroom instead of on a MUD ;)

Well, I agree :smile: But if there are all these concerns of codebase neutrality etc., it seems like all people really want is a bare-bones chatserver.

And hey – I don't want you picking some kind of Python bias by going with NakedMUD, we should use a Lua MUD instead :tongue:

I'm really more concerned with game neutrality than codebase neutrality. The codebase running the MudCon should be nothing more than a tool, a means to an end. I wouldn't want it becoming one of the main topics of discussion.

With that I agree. I wasn't suggesting one of the newer currently maintained codebases to be one of the main topics of discussion, but I figured at the same time a MUDCON held on a codebase of this sort would likely inadvertently bring attention to it simply by causing people to use it for a short amount of time who otherwise would never likely give it the time of day.

If that is your goal, you would, by making a decision, be deliberately preferring one "new and upcoming" codebase over the others, which sets off some warning bells for me.

Shouldn't the server, and hence the codebase, rotate or something?

You would need to have one rotation per codebase you wanted to "showcase", not to mention needing to establish beforehand which codebases are worthy of "showcasing".

Not to mention that if people are supposed to be poking around, there will be competing activities of said poking around and trying to hold a conference.

Easier to just have a list of up and coming codebases: then you "only" need to worry about making the selection…

I wasn't really talking about the showcasing thing, I'm pretty much with kavir on this one. The whole 'what codebase' discussion can be avoided by a neutral rotation schedule, it'd make sense for the contributing people to rotate the effort of hosting/promoting the event.