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[Aklyon]

If there are any that are really, really great fun though please do write about them.

Legends of the Jedi is pretty exceptional, especially if you enjoy Star Wars. The crafting system is crazily in depth.

I wonder how they've dealt with the whole Legends thing. Or if they're just so obscure that it doesn't bother them at all.

[Shub-Nullgurath]

If there are any that are really, really great fun though please do write about them.

Legends of the Jedi is pretty exceptional, especially if you enjoy Star Wars. The crafting system is crazily in depth.

I wonder how they've dealt with the whole Legends thing. Or if they're just so obscure that it doesn't bother them at all.

They're never on the "rails" for more than half an era usually anyway. There's no Darth Vader or stuff like that, it's Darth Aklyon and similar.

[Retropunch]

I started having a quick look at MUD toolkits online - I'd be half interested in starting one at some point, but until that point others might be interest in this:
http://www.evennia.com

I've had a mess around and it's very easy to use. Python is broadly the easiest language to get to grips with, and there's a lot of documentation and demos with it. Arx (one of the MUDS made using it) had about 90 players on when I looked which is pretty good going.

[wierd]

I didnt think that there was a requirement for text only on MUDs. They are just multi user dungeons, by definition. That would include things like Tibia and pals.

[Shub-Nullgurath]

Honestly, I've felt like building a MUD for years but I just can't make the effort to build something no one will play.

I didnt think that there was a requirement for text only on MUDs. They are just multi user dungeons, by definition. That would include things like Tibia and pals.

I mean, Ultima Online and RuneScape were originally called "graphical MUDs".

[Yolan]

Used to play a lot on WoTMUD back in the day. That was fun, although I always sucked at fighting. There was a very popular period for a while when it would frequently have 100-200 players on at once, and combat was happening all the time. There was quite a nice balance of RP, equipment grinding, and factional player combat. The zone design was all thematic to the books and unique, which really helped to give it life. If you read the books, then you had the necessary pictures in your mind to flesh out the simplistic representation of that which could be provided by the MUD itself.

[Starver]

As a sort of PTW, but also to address points that have been made or otherwise raised, can I point out that it was a recommendation within the Discworld MUD that brought me into Dwarf Fortress. Might be worth advertising the return trip, once more.

The graphics are better within the imagination, IMO, when (as there is with the above) there's as much or as little textual description as you're willing to read (and there's maps aplenty of the often hugely-expansive environments, both in-game and and externally maintained).  Surely not too much beyond the reach of an afirmed Dwarf Fortress fan.

But, if nothing else, it's a social environment with like-minded people (in at least one area) that you can run alongside your own pursuits (of many kinds), so long as you don't mind searching for the best fit of size of MUD environment, player-base, flexibility of play-style and perhaps opportunity to contribute.  That's going to be the sticking point. I can't really dedicate myself to more than three simultaneous forum social-lives at a time, and MUD-playing eats into that. But no more than any in-depth graphical MMORPG game would; possibly less as you can better tile across the available screenspace.

The problem for MUDs is that of keeping their respective (and/or shared) community numbers ticking over, I suspect. There are just too many superficially more attractive entertainments online, these days, compared to a quarter of a century or so ago, when there were fewer people online but proportionally far, far fewer distractions to divide them.  (And I've yet to find a decent MUD client for Android/etc, under the limitations of interface, compared with the comparative ease of MUSHClient on a desktop, which probably also shaves off a large percentage of potential players, even if they could now play 24 hours a day, even on the bus...)

[Retropunch]

I didnt think that there was a requirement for text only on MUDs. They are just multi user dungeons, by definition. That would include things like Tibia and pals.

I think it's a prime example of semantic drift/narrowing, there certainly wasn't/isn't a requirement for it to be text only, but as that's all that was available tech wise that's what it represented.

It's now what most people think of - with MMORPGs being the graphical format - so I think it's fair for MUDs to be short hand for text only MMOs.

Honestly, I've felt like building a MUD for years but I just can't make the effort to build something no one will play.

My feeling exactly. I'd be happy with 100-200 players (small by any multiplayer game standard), but you see so many with just 8-10 die hard fans milling about which just gets a bit sad really. Worse than that, it feels as though the only way to get a big draw is to use an established IP (or rip one off pretty heavily).

As Starver has said, I think one untapped area would be the android one. However with such small screen real estate you'd find it difficult to do anything other than the most basic of descriptions.

[Shub-Nullgurath]

My feeling exactly. I'd be happy with 100-200 players (small by any multiplayer game standard), but you see so many with just 8-10 die hard fans milling about which just gets a bit sad really. Worse than that, it feels as though the only way to get a big draw is to use an established IP (or rip one off pretty heavily).

As Starver has said, I think one untapped area would be the android one. However with such small screen real estate you'd find it difficult to do anything other than the most basic of descriptions.

Yeah, I get the Android idea but I think it'd be a problem. Then again, phones are getting bigger and as long as you just do one room per screen (clear screen every room) you'd probably be fine. The main problem would be typing speed on PC vs on phone.

If I had someone who would be willing to have a consistent vision with me writing room descriptions etc, I'd happily do the coding.

[lordcooper]

Armageddon remains the Only Good MUD.

[Starver]

As Starver has said, I think one untapped area would be the android one. However with such small screen real estate you'd find it difficult to do anything other than the most basic of descriptions.

I'm not sure it's exactly that bad, but I would expect a custom and optimised input area on the App rather than rely upon the device's more generic on-screen keyboard. Perhaps capable of autoconfiguring to a combat input tab/half-tab when it recognises hostilities have started, etc (manual user enhancement may be required, given the potentially unlimited range of combat commands, or whatever, you might need access to).

A good GUI equivalent for client-side aliasing, and then the opportunity to revert to keyboard for one-offs, is what is needed in such a circumstance. If it could be supplied by the Creative team behind the MUD, that'd be easier, but still probably very limiting compared to the widest range of creatively usable player commands. And you're probably then as well to play a click-game such as Urban Dead (fairly simple, but highly effective for all that) or Initium (tries to look fancy, but really more of a fancy-skinned grinding game that's also not as forgiving without actually going Premium).


@Shub, 'rooms' scroll up in MUDs, generally, with the option (by dint of a scrollbar into history) of checking out previous rooms, or indeed the room description that you've since scrolled offscreen with combat/whatever. There's no need for advantage) to clearing a prior room description off of the screen. Agree with you as far as input, but then mostly because I'm reduced to one-finger typing on this device (even then, there's a good WPM possible, even if errors are far easier to creep in whilst doing it.

[Retropunch]

-snip-

Yeah, I can see a sort of 'macro engine for MUDs' being one way to go, although I imagine it'd be better to have a MUD created specifically with phones in mind. You could have turn based combat (all entities in a room take a turn before executing them all simultaneously) to ease combat, and then a number of readability improvements (short text for initial room description with a lot of linked words to describe stuff).

That being said, with so much of MUDs being RPing, I imagine the frustration of trying to talk effectively with just a tap screen being difficult to deal with. I'm a pretty slow texter compared to some, and I know a lot of people are even slower than me.
It'd probably have to be very ARPG focused rather than a lot of chattering, but there's definitely room for something like that.

[wierd]

Even low red phones tend to have 800x480 displays.

That is more than enough for 80 column mode.  I use a ssh client in my galaxy S5 all the time.

I really don't see how a mud would have difficulties there, other than the lack of traditional keyboard controls.

Hell, fully graphical games have android client ports made.

Hmm.. Makes me wonder... Nethack is technically in this genre. I can be convinced to start a nethack server and keep it running, if people would play.

[Starver]

Spoiler: My experience on my tablet(s) (click to show/hide)

I am on a 7" mildly-widescreen tablet (hard to tell what the resolution actually  is). As I type this in my habitual landscape usage, the keyboard takes about 55% of the screen height, from the bottom (I've been unable to disable the "suggested words" buttons that make it not just the bottom 45%, despite their existence being the bane of my life when I misskey onto them and reaffirm the average of zero quanta get seemingly random words instead of the top-row characters that I might have intended).
This leaves, along with the browser top-tabs and further bumf, less screen-height available than needed to display the whole of this post editing dialogue. I get about eight lines out of the eleven that the unadjusted textbox contains (vertical scrollbar necessary or not), and that assumes I'm not positioning the page's verical position so as not to see the format buttons.

If I switch to portrait mode, the keyboard now takes up the bottom third. The browser page resizes to give the same full width and I get far more more real-estate that is not keyboard, but the font-size would be unreadable on a less wide device (has the look of being on the edge of being antialiased beyond the limit of easy viewing, that might be my fault for having a system default of 'small' font size, but I actually think it's browser-controlled scaling).

There are some applications (an Office-clone spreadsheet editor) that I cannot make much practical sense of and have the keyboard active to edit cells in landscape mode, and there are some web-pages (wiki page editing ones) in which the only practical way of using my device is in portrait and then pinch-zoom a little to see everything bigger again, in the proportionally larger available space, at the cost of having to also carefully horizontally scroll to ensure I'm only missing margin-space to the sides.

I have a mini bluetooth keyboard, though. If I am able (and remember) to carry that around with me, I can forget about onscreen keyboards and everything is much easier. Still awkward, though, apart from obviously solving the screen-wastage problem.

...but that's just with my setup. I may not be doing it optimally.

On to the subject of Nethack, it is (pretty much the very definition of!) a roguelike, not a MUD.  A different beast, really. I've had a Vulture's/Falcon's Eye port on a previous, similarly-sized, tablet incarnation (I'm on my fourth tablet of the 6"-8" size range, inclusive of Samsung Galaxy Tab models), as well as more straight (character-based, not isometric graphical) Nethack/similar games in more original curses-like port forms. The on-screen controls were pseudo-keyboard (frequent controls visible permanently while applicable, further/sub-controls a tap or three away), and in at least one was absolutely awful at it and triggered the native tablet on-screen keyboard as it had no touch-screen element to it at all! It is also a game that runs at the speed of a player's interaction (like DF Adventure Mode) not by background ticks (a prerequisite for most attempts to run synchronised sessions for multiple players), and has few (outside of choices of what exactly to engrave/write) 'freehand' inputs necessary.

Any decent MUD is going to have to be able to accept "get third sword and all blue bottles; put them in backpack; get second sword; sheathe it in leather scabbard; remove rings; drop all brass rings; bury them; wear silver rings; put gold rings in sack; consider all", etc, and good luck giving all those (and more) interface choices with all due degerence to the various alternative possible commands one might equally need to cater for...

See also third question down under this section of an FAQ or this, if you're looking to even semi-MUDify Nethack. (It has been done, but it gets further and further away from Nethack in the process.)

[Cthulhu]

Personally, I think the best Iron Realms MUD is probably Lusternia. HUGE character variety, interesting guilds and the skillsets are generally cohesive (unlike Achaea, where the skills never really seem to fit a cohesive class).

Lusternia is very good for an Iron Realms MUD, and for a MUD in general, but the barrier to entry is pretty high. Very established, some guilds are very insular like the Ur-Guard, though if you're good at roleplaying the low population means there's plenty of opportunity to be a big deal.  Combat is a clusterfuck but if you have the right add-ons and practice enough you start to see the code and it's actually pretty interesting and tactical.

Overall though, artifacts of an older time and I don't think they have much of a place.  If you're in for the deep RP experience there are better media than MUDs, and if you're looking for an MMO, well.