Top products from r/MUD

There is an active community of mud coders here: https://mudcoders.com

I know several of them have github repos in progress or at the very least could point you to more resources!

The top books on the actual coding are older and are good exercises:
https://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Premier-Press-Development/dp/1592000908
https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Mud-Wizards-Programming-Role-Playing/dp/0672307235

One of the oldest MUD gurus also wrote this about the design work in general:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designing_Virtual_Worlds

Good luck!

Oh nice, I'd love to have a look at that one, too. That used price isn't terrible, either. At least not compared to this one. If anyone owns a copy of that, I'd love to hear thoughts on it, as well.

> Am I missing something in either format?

Nah, you just about summed it all up. You probably even missed a few valid criticisms. Well, you may have missed one thing; it's an active community for a gaming medium that has very few active communities left. I at least found value in it for a while.

Also, I just dug this one up too... https://discord.gg/DpR9YF

This is one that I actually stuck with because it is a bit less annoying and I really hate Slack. But it's still just a few people mumbling about text based networking games.

If OP was making a Unity3D platformer, they shouldn't give my suggestion a second glance. However when you're short of attractive options, the un-attractive suddenly has more value.

It's much better than telling OP just to google MUD Coding Tutorial and hope that there are still a few easy to follow ones out there. Or give them a Book Suggestion that might be a bit inaccessible because it's years out of print and rarely sub-C-note cost. (Not a bad book by the way.)

Glancing through the other comments it's not looking like much better advice has been given...

> Maybe I'm just old(-fashioned) ...

I got my first internet (shell only) account in 1991 to play a MUD based at Texas A&M. I understand old-fashioned, and I certainly understand not liking that group's way of setting up their environment, but any congregation of people who have better advice than this subreddit is better than bad advice... I hope.

One of the most important aspects of game design is that the story should always be written first, with the design and technology then being informed by the story. What you need to do is come up with the game you want to make (which hopefully is also a game you think other people will have fun playing), after which you can create a design plan / feature list / implementation plan from that.

I suggest you read The Art of Game Design for general game design information and Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds for MUD-specific information. That's probably a good first step for getting you into serious MUD development.

Edit: link formatting

Thanks for awnsering with such detail. Its hard for me to disagree with or add much here because of how much you went into it. Found the book in question here. Which I'll definitely have to read after I finish this book on game design.


I wonder if it would be better to coin a different more SEO friendly term for this genre. As you might imagine, search mud in google doesn't bring up too many games haha.

I'll hop on the game design book recommendation bandwagon and suggest Designing Games. It's less popular, but much more useful IMO.

The closest is this, if you have an Alexa: https://www.amazon.com/Bethesda-Game-Studios-Special-Edition/dp/B07D6STSX8

You can play Skyrim with Alexa via voice! Was once a Key and Peele skit, now reality.

If you have the Amazon app on your phone, you can play that way too: https://www.polygon.com/e3/2018/6/11/17448080/skyrim-alexa-iphone-android-how-to-play

This book is excellent and relatively new: https://www.amazon.com/Procedural-Generation-Design-Tanya-Short/dp/1498799191

I still own this book which was very interesting and informative on game programming and network programming in C. http://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Premier-Press-Development/dp/1592000908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414703446&sr=8-1&keywords=mud+programming