Hey guys,

I've been gone for a while and decided to check in. I've taken a few courses in C programming for the past few months to learn more. Does anyone run or know of any Smaug or Smaugfuss muds lately?
I currently am building a few areas and class/spell systems in my spare time and would like to collaborate a bit!

Hope all is well with everyone!

Thanks

I mean, I still have mine that I toy with on occasion, but I wouldn't really say it's "running." I launch it from time to time to tinker. But most of the time, my college coursework, and my work as a java developer eat up most of my time, and what free time I do end up with is not usually dedicated to any one thing anymore.

I'm still running mine, off and on, mostly for stability testing. Longest I had it up was around 130 days or something without a reboot, so that was pretty decent. Only had to take it down because I made code updates, but that should give you an idea how off-and-on sometimes goes. Life gets in the way!

I do like tinkering with area building, but I've had more fun tweaking the "little things" that make the MUD feel more immersive, at least for me as a player-turned-developer. Things like whether or not the weather impacts you in any meaningful way, while flying or moving about, suffering from extreme heat/cold, etc. Changing the flow of combat to make it more fluid with out-of-turn strikes (blocking and countering) instead of just the "I hit you, you hit me" over and over. Making thrown weapon support actually work. Making it so that corpses underwater don't have "flies buzzing around them" and instead have barnacles growing on them, etc. One of my favorite pet projects was making it so that mobiles hunting another character would be far more ruthless. Kick down doors, locate hidden exits, track you through portals, across different areas, and most importantly, be undeterred by anyone that attacks them on their way to get their original target (i.e. once they kill their attackers, they resume the hunt).

I've made countless changes along those lines, and I find it immensely fulfilling when I find ways to add more depth and unexpected nuance to my little world. I find that far too often, this aspect of world building gets overlooked in favor of flash and feature stacking, quantity over quality. It's great if someone's got 25 classes, 30 races and hundreds of spells and 90 areas, but for me personally, all of that falls flat if I can't pick up a sword on the ground because it's level is higher than mine, or the MUD tells me I can't walk into a new area because my level isn't high enough. Or the combat tells me that my opponent's "arm is sliced off" when I'm beating them with a hammer or a staff or my bare hands. Stuff that flat out makes no sense just ruins the experience for me.

I had mine back up briefly a couple of years back and some interested parties who had never played a MUD before thought it was cool but they lost interest pretty quickly and eventually we shut the thing back down again.

It did lead to a slew of bug fixing in the codebase though. Weird errors we didn't even remember being problems back in the day. Funny how that seems to work.

GatewaySysop said:


I've made countless changes along those lines, and I find it immensely fulfilling when I find ways to add more depth and unexpected nuance to my little world. I find that far too often, this aspect of world building gets overlooked in favor of flash and feature stacking, quantity over quality. It's great if someone's got 25 classes, 30 races and hundreds of spells and 90 areas, ...

How not to share your opinion: I absolutely agree.

My old smaug 1.4a is still online anyway and I still do something every now and then.

I would love to have my game up and running, but I've run into a dead end figuring out how to compile and run it since changes were made to Cygwin in recent months/years. I'll create a separate post on this topic.

I personally love building areas and dabbling with mobprogs. I also like class/spell design but I am afraid that is my weakest skill towards operating a mud. I cannot for the life figure out how to add multiclass system. I can somewhat implement classes, spells but I believe the spells aren't fine-tuned to perfection as they should be!

I'm glad people are out there trying to work on muds today. I believe they still hold some appreciation towards the entire age of MMO gaming. I've played many games, but theres nothing quite like reading an entire game and becoming immersed in it from feeling like your own race/class or delving into some uncharted area. There's just a great feeling behind the concept of muds, especially from a multiplayer interaction. Partying and PVPing all have a great feel to it.

I may either keep trying to build on my own or eventually seek a mud in need of help. New people just don't know the quality and excitement being in a mud, but if they kept playing they would easily become hooked. It just has to be populated and thriving. Think of it as a vehicle with almost no gas most people don't want to ride because they think it will run out soon..

Zed

Well took about 5 years off from mudding.

Back with Classic 6Dragons.

An old staff member started asking me questions about fixing his version of the game. It got me excited to come back again.

Classic 6Dragons one of few smaug muds with all original world.

Stop by and make fun of me for still doing this.

Vladaar
6d.genesismuds.com port 4100

Anyone that feels like there should still be muds should join forces and create the best mud ever for one last time. Show these new age people what this game was all about.
I feel like we got swept under the rug of life and it doesn't give us any justice. Graphics aren't everything in gaming.

Came back to check if any New Smaug muds are being created. Let me know, I can assist with about 1000 rooms of new content. Thats about 8 areas that are unique. I can assist with Coding new spells and skills or Class creation.

Thanks, Let the old days come back to us.

Zedethar said:

Came back to check if any New Smaug muds are being created. Let me know, I can assist with about 1000 rooms of new content. Thats about 8 areas that are unique. I can assist with Coding new spells and skills or Class creation.

Thanks, Let the old days come back to us.

I have been tinkering with my mud off and on for the last 20 years. If you are bored and want to contribute some effort to creating entirely new classes, shoot me an email and I will give you access to login and play around. eldhamud at gmail dot com