Towards a New MUD

For years, the old major codebases (LP, Diku, Tiny) have remained dominant in the mudding community. Unfortunately, these codebases haven't changed appreciably during the past few years. True, they have been altered, and in many outstanding cases, been turned into unique and complex MUDs. But there hasn't been a new version of Diku in years, and I don't think LP and Tiny have changed much either. The MUD code has remained virtually static.

This, to my mind, is why we've begun to see hundreds of identical MUDs popping up, each claiming to be "ALL NEW! UNIQUE!" when the only apparent difference is the names on the wizlist. Over the past few years, we've had a tremendous influx of newbies to the internet. Newbies who like MUDs, and want to put up their own. A certain percentage of them have access to sites, and proceed to run their MUDs. Unfortunately, these people haven't the slightest idea of how to code. This means that they cannot make any real changes to their MUDs, which leads to the many MUD clones out there.

We need two things to fix this problem:

1. A larger number of codebases to choose from.
2. Codebases that are EASY to change.

That's why I've created this WWW page. I've written a codebase of my own, and I intend to help others do the same. This page will discuss various possibilities in MUD design. I invite criticism. Indeed, I would welcome it, as it shows that people are interested in MUD design.