This information is geared toward DIKU MUDs, specifically Merc and Envy.
If you are reading this page, you probably already have a bunch of ideas on what you want your MUD to have, and are already preparing to be a fair, benevolent IMP. So I will skip over this whole section.
Next, it is likely that you want to build your own world, or at least
seriously extend one of the prebuilt-ones. If you want to use a stock
MUD, that is OK too, if you have a good reason like you and your friends
are at some company or in some part of the world that can't access
MUDs easily. But there are some decent builder's resources out there.
I usually start people off at my
MUD Area Building Software and Links page. There are some other
good pages on this, like
AnonyMUD Area Building
.
Building areas isn't hard, if you have played enough areas and looked
around. It does take patience, though. It is a lot better if you
learn area building as an immortal on some MUD, instead of trying it
on your own. I learned how to do this on
The Final Challenge MUD
and I am very grateful for the help they gave me.
If you have any questions about building, there are some good places to
ask. First, there are some newsgroups:
rec.games.mud.admin
, alt.mud.programming, and
also some mailing lists, which you can find out about on
AnonyMUD Resources.
Now comes the hard part. You need a computer connected to the Internet.
This doesn't mean you dialing in on a 28.8 or 33.6 or whatever
connection for your flat-rate fee, this means a real network connection.
In other words, you need fractional T-1. This costs a lot of money,
at least $500 a month each in the US to the phone company and to the
Internet provider, so you wouldn't want to do this just to run a MUD.
Better choices are to set one up at your company, if your company already
has such a link. Or you could try to convince an ISP that your MUD
is some kind of "advertising" for their service. Maybe you happen to
be going to school somewhere and have your own Sun workstation or
something. If none of these apply to you, then you need to go to
rec.games.mud.admin and look for "Call for Builder" ads. If you can
make zones, or do the C code to tweak a MUD, then they will make you
an IMP. This is a much better deal, because you have other people to
help you learn how to do the various installing of the MUD server.
I have recently discovered a service which will host your MUD for
about $50/month, called MudServices.Com,
but I don't know anyone who has used their services.
OK, so you have a computer. It is probably a Unix-type computer. You
can get the MUD server code for free some web pages, such as
Mud Server Information and
DIKU family tree. It is also pretty well
known that I ported Merc 2.2 to Windows. I'm afraid I must admit
it isn't a very good port. I did it so that I could test area files
and server tweaks at home and although I have had four people connected
to it at once, it is more designed for catching area file errors than
being a bullet-proof server. Sure, with Windows NT and a few minor bug
fixes you could run a MUD on Windows, but all of the Merc admin stuff
is designed for a machine which you can telnet into and do things with.
I'm sure someone will make the necessary tweaks to run Merc on Windows
properly, with automated install and administration through the control
panel and stuff, but no one has done that yet.
Once you get your Unix source code, which you want even if you are
trying to run the server on Windows, you will find a directory called
'doc'. It explains how to set up Merc or Envy. You want to read all
of the text files there. If you are going to run Circle, there is a
lot of that sort of documentation already in HTML, which you can read
on The CircleMUD
home page.
Since this is Unix code, it is going to have a .tar.Z or .gz file extension. If you are coming from the DOS world, you would rather have a .zip. Sorry. You are going to need to know the basics of unpacking the source and compiling before you can continue. I will try to put a link to some kind of Unix beginner's FAQ here soon.
At this point you have a running MUD, either a real Internet MUD running on Unix, or a Windows/Mac test server. You have to create a character. Depending on your server, there may already be a test immortal, or you may need to follow some instructions. When I build Merc 2.2, I needed to first start a new character, get the character to 2nd level, save, and then go in with Windows NOTEPAD to edit the player file (it turns out to be a text file. In Unix you can use VI or something.)
If you have been an immortal before, you know all of the immortal commands. If not, you can use IMMHELP or its equivelent and learn your new commands. Setting up gods can be kind of tricky the first time. In Merc, there is a field called "Trust" which you can use to give a character of any level god and IMP powers. So you can take any player file, set the trust to the highest level, then use immortal commands like ADVANCE to set the other fields, RESTORE, set all of the skills to 100% etc. In Envy, immortal powers are skills just like backstabbing and KICK, and you need to manually set these skills to 100% for them to have any chance of working. This is all explained in the documentation.
A lot of things in Merc/Envy are coded right into the C code of the server itself. The Merc documenation states that you need to know C, and I thought so myself until I guy named Mort proved me otherwise. If you have an extreme amount of patience you can tweak server stuff without much knowledge of C. It won't be any fun, though. Here are some links to get you started with C:
Reasonable introduction to C.
This is notes to a university class, I guess it would be a handy
reference if you were learning C and didn't have your book available.
Very handy references I wish had been available when I learned C.
I will also try to put up some information on popular server tweaks. There are links to some code snippets on my area building pages, perhaps that will get you started.
Slash
Maintained by esnible@acm.org
Please, do not mail me questions about how to start a MUD. If the
answer isn't above, I don't know it. There are links above to people
who can help you.
Mud area building software and links
My home page
Last updated January 25, 1997