01 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Hi,
I am not sure where to post this I hope this is the right place.

I am a middle school teacher teaching writing. When I found out about MUDs I had the idea that I could set one up for my class and other middle school classes in my school and they could use it and have them be the builders. I am not a newbie to servers Nix* and other virtual worlds, have hosted Open Simulator and Minecraft servers all of which are cool but lack little writing. What caught my eye was all the reading and writing in a MUD as well as the planing going into building. My thoughts were to have the students create the world. Maybe have each class create a zone. This is looking like it would be a year long project so we have time to learn as we build.
So looking for suggestions on what would be the best MUD that will run on a Nix* server. The real problem is making it easy for them to create the world I know OLC is in some MUDs. Coding is not my strength but can learn over the summer.

I am not interested in:
-Hack and Slash PVP
-some Mobs but limited maybe to nice ones at first


would like:
-room building
-objects
-putting things together to make something else
-Creating NPC's
-shops
-economy
-hunger and thirst
-Role player
-simple quest they can set up

I am sure I missed something but it was a quick list.

I am looking for as many suggestions as I can if you know of another place to post this please let me know.

Thanks for all your help,

Randy Stadham
Email: rstadham@isb.bj.edu.cn
01 Jun, 2014, Ssolvarain wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I think ROM would cover most of your needs. The OLC is fairly well documented, and mobprogs are simple enough to pick up and use.

The only thing missing would be economy. Most MUDs rely on the players to determine the worth of game currencies.
01 Jun, 2014, plamzi wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Hi,

As a former creative writing teacher, I'm curious about your project and what you're hoping that your students learn in the process.

If you're not looking to create a complete game (sounds like you're not a coder) then there's also the option of approaching an existing game where your students can be sandboxed for the duration of your course. That would save you from having to set up and manage the server, which can be a lot of work if you start from a barebone codebase.

If you're not out to create your own game, some existing games have creation tools that are way past the 1990's.

As an example, in less than two hours, I could set up an instance of our code and point a copy of our web OLC to it:



My game has, or supports, all the features you listed. In addition to the above tool, it also offers a simple web page from which players can submit quest ideas. The big caveat is that most or all of what your students do in the course of the semester may stay sandboxed to a developer port. I can easily provide you with a database dump of all the world content, but I will not be able to share the code required to run that content on your own sever.
02 Jun, 2014, Hades_Kane wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
I second the ROM suggestion, but like Ssol said, there is no inherit economy there. The other thing is that ROM is a bit hack n slash, but PVP can easily be enabled or disabled. If you clear out all of the stock areas, then there are no mobs outright to worry if they are nice or not.

I also think that finding an existing game who would be willing to work with you isn't a bad idea at all, if you don't want to have to deal with the administration side of everything. Most any game administrator would likely jump at the chance of new areas and it is generally fairly trivial for an isolated port to be setup for that purpose. I'd volunteer if my game wasn't based on existing themes and had more room for entirely all original content.
03 Jun, 2014, Grieffels wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
This may be off topic as far as what base to use and things like that, so just take in what I say.

MUDs are a great learning tool, period. When I started MUD, I was around 9 - 11 years old.
MUDs gave me more knowledge than I would ever imagine from a text game. It opened my
eyes to computers, typing, reading more often and kept my imagination growing. It sounds
odd, but it even taught me navigation. Basically what I am getting too, is MUDs are great
in more ways than most would think.

"How can you read that much", "How do you play a game you just read", "Why?"——-
things like this was said for so long and honestly, still are said to me. I now do C programming,
HTML, small bits of C++, and more. I basically took the talent of typing incredibly fast a lot further.

Most of your students may not understand/like this idea at first, but please do introduce it to them.
Do this every year. Not only will that give them skills/ideas and more, it could also open up their
minds past graphics and even bring a bit more of a player base/creator base to MUDs. If you need help
with server space, coding help, ideas and the like, please feel free to send me an IM here and i'll help
as much as possible.

I love this idea, please produce!
04 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks I will have a look at the Rom codebase seems to be what I am looking for.

Cheers

Ssolvarain said:
I think ROM would cover most of your needs. The OLC is fairly well documented, and mobprogs are simple enough to pick up and use.

The only thing missing would be economy. Most MUDs rely on the players to determine the worth of game currencies.
04 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks for the second on the Rom codebase. An existing game sounds good I do not want to start from zero. Thanks for the offer and idea, I might ask a MUD administrator to help out although we might be hosting it in house on our servers here.

Cheers

Hades_Kane said:
I second the ROM suggestion, but like Ssol said, there is no inherit economy there. The other thing is that ROM is a bit hack n slash, but PVP can easily be enabled or disabled. If you clear out all of the stock areas, then there are no mobs outright to worry if they are nice or not.

I also think that finding an existing game who would be willing to work with you isn't a bad idea at all, if you don't want to have to deal with the administration side of everything. Most any game administrator would likely jump at the chance of new areas and it is generally fairly trivial for an isolated port to be setup for that purpose. I'd volunteer if my game wasn't based on existing themes and had more room for entirely all original content.
04 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks for your offer of the sandbox but we would need to have the codebase so the students could play in the world and also offer others to play in it. What code would I need after we dump to the database?

plamzi said:
Hi,

As a former creative writing teacher, I'm curious about your project and what you're hoping that your students learn in the process.

If you're not looking to create a complete game (sounds like you're not a coder) then there's also the option of approaching an existing game where your students can be sandboxed for the duration of your course. That would save you from having to set up and manage the server, which can be a lot of work if you start from a barebone codebase.

If you're not out to create your own game, some existing games have creation tools that are way past the 1990's.

As an example, in less than two hours, I could set up an instance of our code and point a copy of our web OLC to it:



My game has, or supports, all the features you listed. In addition to the above tool, it also offers a simple web page from which players can submit quest ideas. The big caveat is that most or all of what your students do in the course of the semester may stay sandboxed to a developer port. I can easily provide you with a database dump of all the world content, but I will not be able to share the code required to run that content on your own sever.
04 Jun, 2014, Nathan wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
You'd probably need code to convert the representation used by his game into one suitable for others. What that entails depends on the codebase and his might support a few more features than whatever you end up using.

Also, if you use ROM, then you might be able to use this is as well -> http://www.gammon.com.au/smaugeditor/sma... It is a Windows-based tool, though. No pretty pictures there though afaik. It's by the same guy that made MUSHclient.

It's worth noting that any MUD is going to be designed heavily with combat in mind. Do you not want combat at all or just not PvP?
04 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks for your encouragement. I hope my students enjoy it to. Most of my students here like reading so I hope it works out. I was thinking of the vast planing and story writing going into creating even a small village with one quest. I plan on touching on as many writing styles as I can. I too hope to show those interested the programing behind the MUD and get then interested in even changing a small bit of code. Thanks for your offer to help host the MUD. I will send you an IM when I need some help.

Grieffels said:
This may be off topic as far as what base to use and things like that, so just take in what I say.

MUDs are a great learning tool, period. When I started MUD, I was around 9 - 11 years old.
MUDs gave me more knowledge than I would ever imagine from a text game. It opened my
eyes to computers, typing, reading more often and kept my imagination growing. It sounds
odd, but it even taught me navigation. Basically what I am getting too, is MUDs are great
in more ways than most would think.

"How can you read that much", "How do you play a game you just read", "Why?"——-
things like this was said for so long and honestly, still are said to me. I now do C programming,
HTML, small bits of C++, and more. I basically took the talent of typing incredibly fast a lot further.

Most of your students may not understand/like this idea at first, but please do introduce it to them.
Do this every year. Not only will that give them skills/ideas and more, it could also open up their
minds past graphics and even bring a bit more of a player base/creator base to MUDs. If you need help
with server space, coding help, ideas and the like, please feel free to send me an IM here and i'll help
as much as possible.

I love this idea, please produce!
04 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks for your comments. I have no problem learning code if I need to, never been afraid of it. Thanks for the editor link might help in building. I would like the students not have any combat to start with but open it up maybe later.

Thanks'
Nathan said:
You'd probably need code to convert the representation used by his game into one suitable for others. What that entails depends on the codebase and his might support a few more features than whatever you end up using.

Also, if you use ROM, then you might be able to use this is as well -> http://www.gammon.com.au/smaugeditor/sma... It is a Windows-based tool, though. No pretty pictures there though afaik. It's by the same guy that made MUSHclient.

It's worth noting that any MUD is going to be designed heavily with combat in mind. Do you not want combat at all or just not PvP?
04 Jun, 2014, Ssolvarain wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
I think if you wanted to use it purely for educational purposes… maybe a MUSH or MOO would be better suited. ROM has experience levels that are mainly combat driven. While it would be possible to just remove combat, I think it would be better to stick to something more suited strictly to writing.
04 Jun, 2014, plamzi wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
It's great that you're not afraid of coding :) But also, you should start right now if you want to be able to run your own game and have it stable enough for your students to contribute content.

If you want to "open up" combat at a later stage, I recommend starting with a codebase that has combat and trying to disable it for starters (even that is going to be serious work). Starting with an RP-oriented MUSH or MOO without any combat system would be fine for an experienced coder with unique designs in mind, but for a novice, adding a combat system from scratch would probably take over a year.

Also keep in mind that if you haven't coded anything before, you're about to learn a lot more than any of your students :)
04 Jun, 2014, Sharmair wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
From what you have described SMAUG would be a much better choice then ROM (as far as MUDs go anyway). First, it is a much more
advanced codebase and has many things out of the box that you have to add snippets or otherwise code in ROM. It can be run right
out of the box without needing coding. In SMAUG it is set to not allow PK unless you set the player as deadly, and the default is non
deadly. Also, unlike ROM and almost all other codebases, the commands can be changed with an in game command (cedit) and you could
disable combat just by removing kill and any other combat commands, the same with skills (sset). Also ROM requires code changes to
modify, add or remove classes and races, these can also be done without coding in SMAUG (setclass, setrace). This trend to move
things to on line creation and editing is probably one of the main defining features of SMAUG.
05 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks for your comment. I have looked at MUSH and MOO and have thought about trying it out on a test class but they just seems to not have enough stuff to build with more social maybe. But they are still on my list of possibilities. With MUD's it seems they have too much or not enough I guess I am looking for a happy medium.
Thanks

Ssolvarain said:
I think if you wanted to use it purely for educational purposes… maybe a MUSH or MOO would be better suited. ROM has experience levels that are mainly combat driven. While it would be possible to just remove combat, I think it would be better to stick to something more suited strictly to writing.
05 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
I agree with you. I will need to have one picked soon and spend the summer working on it hopping to have some help from some of the other teachers that are interested.

Thanks

plamzi said:
It's great that you're not afraid of coding :) But also, you should start right now if you want to be able to run your own game and have it stable enough for your students to contribute content.

If you want to "open up" combat at a later stage, I recommend starting with a codebase that has combat and trying to disable it for starters (even that is going to be serious work). Starting with an RP-oriented MUSH or MOO without any combat system would be fine for an experienced coder with unique designs in mind, but for a novice, adding a combat system from scratch would probably take over a year.

Also keep in mind that if you haven't coded anything before, you're about to learn a lot more than any of your students :)
05 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks for your sugestion you bring up some good points I will try and get one running on my server. I hope the current file is here.

Sharmair said:
From what you have described SMAUG would be a much better choice then ROM (as far as MUDs go anyway). First, it is a much more
advanced codebase and has many things out of the box that you have to add snippets or otherwise code in ROM. It can be run right
out of the box without needing coding. In SMAUG it is set to not allow PK unless you set the player as deadly, and the default is non
deadly. Also, unlike ROM and almost all other codebases, the commands can be changed with an in game command (cedit) and you could
disable combat just by removing kill and any other combat commands, the same with skills (sset). Also ROM requires code changes to
modify, add or remove classes and races, these can also be done without coding in SMAUG (setclass, setrace). This trend to move
things to on line creation and editing is probably one of the main defining features of SMAUG.
10 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
I went looking for ROM Codebase and having trouble getting it to compile on Centos 5.
If anyone has a tip to help me please let me know. It has gcc-4 and dev tools will give you compile errors below

[root@vps /]# cd Rom24
[root@vps Rom24]# cd src
[root@vps src]# make
rm -f rom
gcc-4 -O -g -o rom act_comm.o act_enter.o act_info.o act_move.o act_obj.o act_wiz.o alias.o ban.o comm.o const.o db.o db2.o effects.o fight.o flags.o handler.o healer.o interp.o note.o lookup.o magic.o magic2.o music.o recycle.o save.o scan.o skills.o special.o tables.o update.o -lcrypt
make: gcc-4: Command not found
make: *** [rom] Error 127
[root@vps src]#

Any help world be so nice.
10 Jun, 2014, andril wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Does the Makefile explicitly refer to gcc-4? Try removing the -4 part so it's just gcc and let the system choose whatever is set as the default.
10 Jun, 2014, Randy Stadham wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
andril said:
Does the Makefile explicitly refer to gcc-4? Try removing the -4 part so it's just gcc and let the system choose whatever is set as the default.


Thanks did that:
CC = gcc

and got this:

[root@vps src]# make
rm -f rom
gcc -O -g -o rom act_comm.o act_enter.o act_info.o act_move.o act_obj.o act_wiz.o alias.o ban.o comm.o const.o db.o db2.o effects.o fight.o flags.o handler.o healer.o interp.o note.o lookup.o magic.o magic2.o music.o recycle.o save.o scan.o skills.o special.o tables.o update.o -lcrypt
comm.o: In function `game_loop_unix':
/Rom24/src/comm.c:787: undefined reference to `string_add'
/Rom24/src/comm.c:792: undefined reference to `run_olc_editor'
handler.o: In function `material_name':
/Rom24/src/handler.c:126: undefined reference to `material_type'
handler.o: In function `material_lookup':
/Rom24/src/handler.c:114: undefined reference to `material_type'
/Rom24/src/handler.c:114: undefined reference to `material_type'
interp.o:(.rodata+0x1678): undefined reference to `do_olc'
interp.o:(.rodata+0x1690): undefined reference to `do_aedit'
interp.o:(.rodata+0x16a8): undefined reference to `do_redit'
interp.o:(.rodata+0x16c0): undefined reference to `do_medit'
interp.o:(.rodata+0x16d8): undefined reference to `do_oedit'
interp.o:(.rodata+0x16f0): undefined reference to `do_asave'
interp.o:(.rodata+0x1708): undefined reference to `do_alist'
interp.o:(.rodata+0x1720): undefined reference to `do_resets'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [rom] Error 1
[root@vps src]# startup &
[1] 21825
-bash: startup: command not found
[root@vps src]# ./startup
-bash: ./startup: No such file or directory
[1]+ Exit 127 startup
[root@vps src]#
0.0/33