Well, you see, in the beginning, there was Diku mud. It was released,
and became very popular. It also got changed because it was opensource
(well, not really, because opensource wasn't really a thing back then,
just folks willing to share their code to have the most exposure
possible), that lead to all kinds of clones (so to speak). To my
knowledge, diku was the original mud that provided a complete world
classes, areas, levels, and the like, basically, an entire mud for
basically no work by the folks hosting said mud.
Well, it worked, but folks wanted more features, more areas, more
classes, and so on, so various other versions of diku mud were
released. Circlemud being the most popular, followed by so many clones,
I doubt even the internet archive has copies of all of them, godwars,
rom, tartarus, envy, smaug, and so on. The problem (as I see it) with
all of these variants, is that for the most part, what changes is the
areas, and (sometimes) the list of commands, but the basic game play
hasn't changed, and indeed, the starting areas don't change a whole lot
from mud to mud. After you get used to one, you can play any of them.
Nothing wrong with that, it's just not my thing.
I much prefer a challenge, and logging into hundreds of muds over the
years, just to have 90 percent of them be practically identical clones
of one another turned me off completely to those kinds of muds. Plus,
until you customize the prompts, there's way too much spam for your
average screen reader user, especially during combat.
Of course, all muds suffer from that in one way or another, but if your
prompt takes 3 seconds to finish talking, because there's so much
information in it, and it shows up every second or so, you can see why
screen reader users are at a great disadvantage.
LPC style muds are a completely different concept.
(well, that's not entirely fair, let me back up a moment).
From the admin perspective, diku style muds were great, because they
basically were a game ready to run. All you needed to do was install
the software, select your port, and poof, entire game ready to go.
Nothing wrong with that.
the problem is that most admins were in such a hurry to get their games
up and running, that they did next to nothing to make their game
different from every other clone out there.
And, to be fair, changing a diku style mud isn't easy, it requires an
entire recompile of the game, so if an admin doesn't like the experience
formula, they can change it, but then they have to recompile the whole
game to make the change.
Want to add a new class, other than the basic four (thief, mage,
fighter, cleric), then you need to make the changes, and recompile the
whole game.
It's no wonder folks didn't want to mess with the internals, plus it
took a certain amount of programming knowledge to make such changes, and
(for the most part) game admins aren't programmers, they just want to
run a fun and entertaining game, so I don't blame them at all.
Now, later revisions of the various clones introduced methods for
dealing with most (if not all) of these issues. I.E. area editing was
added to some of the clones via OLC (OnLine Creation) commands. Those
allowed reloading of the various areas without having to recompile the
mud. But, you still had to restart the mud after a recompile (then they
added the copyover command to solve that problem), folks could remain
connected to the mud while effectively rebooting the game to add the
latest changes, and so on.
Then LPC showed up.
LPC isn't really a mud type, it's really a programming language, but
it's used in muds by having a driver program which remains the same,
then pieces of code this driver runs.
Those pieces can change, be reloaded, removed, added to, and in fact,
practically rebuild from scratch the entire mud all without ever needing
to shutdown. Entire areas/commands/worlds can be built and added to the
running game without having to reboot the mud at all.
The thing was though, for the most part, LPC muds were distributed with
a basic library of commands and small areas demonstrating the
capabilities of the server.
Then, admins would have to build their worlds (muds) using the LPC
command set.
But, because there were only demos of how things worked, this meant that
each and every LPC mud was totally unique, because there weren't any
prebuilt areas, monsters objects and the like you could just hook up,
and slap a new name on it, and poof, you have a mud game.
It took a real investment of time and effort to make an LPC mud into a
full blown game.
And, also, because of that, you could be pretty sure that no LPC mud was
going to be a clone of another LPC mud, because they all had to build
their own world.
Now, that's changed too, and now you have LPC distributions that contain
entire systems ready to go, such as discworld, nightmare, and others,
but for the most part, even today, LPC muds are pretty much built to be
unique, and that's a lot better in my opinion.
Of course, LPC muds also didn't (originally) have the massive spam traps
for their default command lines, which made them way more screen reader
friendly.
These days though, there's plenty of muds that aren't based on either
one of these systems, though generally, even those tend to mimic one or
the other of the base Diku or LPC muds, simply because they were first,
and folks tend to stick with what works.
When you log into a mud, that initial screen you see, (you know, the one
with all the spammy ascii graphics?) If you read it carefully enough,
you'll see the mudbase, and if it says diku circle or someother variant
thereof, you can be pretty sure there's going to be serious spam in your
future if you don't modify your basic prompt pronto after logging in.
So, that (not in a nutshell) is the reason I'm not a fan of diku style muds.
This brief history lesson leaves out a *lot* of details, but it should
be sufficient to get the main points across.
You may want to google diku or lpc for further details on the various
systems if you're still curious after this entirely too long message.
Hope that doesn't confuse you too much.
On 12/13/2022 10:36 PM, Heather Seaman wrote:
What are Diku-style muds and circle muds? Which type would a mud like Alter Aeon or
Ardwolf be under? Or are those in yet another catagory altogether? Thanks for
responding to a curious reader. On Dec 13, 2022 2:16 AM, Travis Siegel
<[email protected]> wrote:
Not a fan of diku style muds. Smaug is too close to circle to make me
happy. Got tired of those kinds of muds way back in the 90s. I got to
the point where I could hit level 10 in less than an hour on any of
those mud versions. Decided they were no challenge, plus I don't
particularly care for their interface. I much prefer LPC muds, where
each one is unique. Sure, sometimes I don't like those interfaces
either, (or the mud content, or the game play, or whatever), but I've
found over the years that non diku style muds contain way more
entertainment for me overall, so that's primarily what I stick to these
days.
On 12/12/2022 11:20 PM, Jude DaShiell wrote:
Has anyone else tried this one yet? One of the ports for it is 4000.
Jude <jdashiel at panix dot com> "There are four boxes to be used in
defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
.
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