[REQUEST] Comprehensive MUSH experience

[Jeshin]

Hey,

As per the Optional Reality thread in Advertisements. I have been on a quest to broaden my horizons in the text-based genre so that I can bring that back to development and design discussion on the OR Community. I have tried Otherspace (briefly), Kushiel's Debut (2 months), and Sindome (technically a MOO for 2 months). I need some MUSHes to go try to really be able to experience the genre like the rest of you have or at least get a fair approximation.

I only have about 10-15 hours per week to dedicate to these beyond my other projects so that may be a factor, I am not sure.

[Glitch]

I haven't heard of the others, but Kushiel's Debut is likely a pretty standard MUSH experience when compared to other MUX/MUSHes. Many people on here also play WoD MUX/MUSHes, so for something a little more connected to many of those posters, I would suggest Eldritch MUX or RenoMUSH.

[Tempest]

Shame Firan is dead, you'd probably find it an interesting experience (one with admittedly, 500 metric tons of staff-and-culture-related problems, but still).

Aside from that, eh. A WoD MU is a WoD MU. As much as I'd like to sarcastically recommend trying to get politically involved in a mage/vampire/etc sphere, I'm not sure the..uh..experience is worth the time investment required.

And there doesn't seem to be a ton besides WoD these days.

[ThatGuyThere]

For superheros the biggest are CoMux and Hero MUX, not on Comux so can't comment on it., but Hero would likely be not to your likely it is pure consent no actual system used after c-gen but it might be worth looking into since it would be about as close to a polar opposite of a MUD.

[Tempest]

Yeah, I don't think any of the hero games even use numbers at all these days. All consent and +sheets are at best a paragraph describing various 'abilities' or 'flaws' your character has.

Marvel Untold used some old Marvel RPG system once upon a time, I don't think they do any longer, and 9 times out of 10 it only came into play when some body was being a twink.

[ThatGuyThere]

Hero Mux Uses numbers and a verbal description. It is a simple scale 1 to 10 with 2 being human average and 10 being say Hulk and Thor in stength, or Green Arrow and Hawkeye in archery.
But the numbers are at most used as a guide there is no real rolling.

[Chime]

MOO and CoolMUD/ColdMUD are very different than mushes; different assumptions and the hardcode presents a very open-ended set of tools. Numerous people (including me, sigh) have used MOO to e.g. write a webserver and other oddities. This is wonderfully powerful, but also means that the MOO user interface is a lot less unified. The bare minimal.db setup doesn't differentiate between players/things/rooms/doors; all of these things are softcode. I think this is fantastic, but it also means the average non-technical user can't really tell much about the UI from knowing only that site Foo is "a MOO."

MUSHes (and MUXen, which really are the same for these purposes) instead present a very uniform UI with (relatively) rigid constraints on the data and implementation choices. On the code-side of things, ALL data is LBUFs, or large-buffers, which traditionally were 4000 bytes in size. More modern MUX environments generally default to 8000, Firan used 24000, and my fork (in use on the Reach, Darkspires, et al) tends to use 64000. MUX use utf-8-based, so that may or may not mean 64000 characters tho. Also, color-codes are stored in-text in a persistent fashion. All other datatypes-- integers, floating point values, lists, error indications, DBrefs, etc.-- are represented in these text LBUFs with the same hard limit on sizing.

MOO instead had an actual typed (albeit dynamically typed) language with internal stack-oriented bytecode virtual machine. MUSHes lack that data typing capability, which is why larger mush applications like Anomaly Jobs (a ticket tracking system, essentially) tend to have hilariously small limits on their dataset and prefer to drop data as soon as possible.

To get an idea of MUSH programming, read Amberyl's guide and likely browse Brazil's tinymux softcode wiki, if that is still up. The PennMUSH people also likely have some good docs. For most users, the "big four" mush families (TinyMUSH, RHOST, PennMUSH, and TinyMUX) are essentially the same, though they have different design goals and limitations, and somewhat different UIs for email and comchannels.

To get an idea of MOO progamming, I actually mirror some of the MOO hardcode and semi-standard default softcode starting point, aka a 'core,' which explains some of the basic MOO user assumptions, as far as they ever had any.

There is also MUCK. Where MUSH went with a naive string processor and MOO went with a modern yacc parser with bytecode stack vm, MUCK implemented a typed FORTH, accessible in-game as MUF and a more limited higher-level MPI language sometimes used on top of that. MUCK is a great deal more powerful than MUSH, but many people have trouble thinking in forth terms and MUCK has historically been associated with the Furry community. @nuku_v would be a good person to ask about that stuff, but he doesn't seem to have connected here in a few months.

MUSH/MUX examples this community is likely more familiar with, vaguely sorted by max-conn per last 30:

• Shangrila (adult)
• The Reach (hybrid NWoD1+NWoD2 set in Maine with Lovecraftian theming), many staffers/players here
• Naughty Muffin (adult)
• City of Hope (wod?)
• New Prospect (wod?)
• Kushiel's Debut (Kushiel books)
• M*U*S*H (Penn-based social)
• HeroMUX (superheros)
• CoMux (superheroes)
• Requiem for Kingsmouth (wod)
• Sheltering Sky (wod)
• Eldritch (wod; are you guys even open yet?), @thenomain's game
• Shadowrun Denver (shadowrun)
• Road to Amber (amber)
• PernWorld (pern)
• DarkSpires (Dresden Files, FATE-based, set in Oxford), @jinshei's game
• RenoMush (wod)
• Blood of Dragons (GoT)
• Game of Bones (GoT)
• City of Fog and Blood (nwod, sadly mostly defunct)
• Haunted Memories (nwod, set in Vienna, sadly defunct), many staffers/players here
• Wildcard (AnitaBlake, FATE-based, basically defunct), formerly mine, now run by @Cobaltasaurus, in theory
• Blood&Citrus (AnitaBlake, NWoD1 retheme, defunct)

MUCK examples:

• Tapestries (like a furry shangrila)
• Furry Muck (similar but less adult more social?)
• Flexible Survival (MUD-like but very adult, furry), @nuku_v's game
• Rusted Promises (Still a bit MUD like, but more RP-oriented, not really adult, somewhat furry), also @nuku_v's game

Be sure to look down the lists at mudstats, as there are many more than I have listed but I've been a bit out of touch and don't recognize a lot of the newcomers. Note that they separate MUSH/MUX and don't separate NWoD1/NWoD2/OWoD, so it's a bit awkward.

Also, be sure to check max/min/avg/current orderings; some games are in different timezones (e.g. because their staff are in Austrailia), and have varying numbers of continuously-connected or continuously active clients. Reach's internal +who at least gives a stat on currently-active unique IPs, which is a more meaningful number.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

I think I mentioned No Return awhile back in a thread looking for examples of post-apoc systems, and it might be of interest to you. It's a zombie MUSH. Decent group of players, from what I briefly encountered. Has some fun toys that aren't common elsewhere (I was surprised by how much I enjoyed playing with +scavenge, when I had time to play).

http://www.zombiemush.com/

[Thenomain]

@Chime's descriptions of Mush is fantastic, from a coder/Mudder standpoint. From what I know about Muds, there is about as much a 'comprehensive Mush experience' as there is a 'comprehensive Mud experience'. Where I call most of that ilk 'LPMuds', people will 1) call me old and 2) chew my ear off about how Muds vary and a new code-base pops up because it's a Tuesday.

The same can be said for Mushes, only they do, as Chime says, share a common code foundation. Well, not so much share as they're almost functionally the same. And that's where it ends. Even two WoD games based upon essentially the same softcode (Reno and Eldritch) are going to come off as wildly different because, well, why not.

And yes, Eldritch is open. We've been open a month now.

[Rook]

Side note: For the new to the genre? MUX is MUSH. It is just a branch of the codebase.

MUXes are played exactly like MUSHes. We don't differentiate TinyMUSH 3 games with one name and PennMUSH games with another... they're all MUSHes.

I only bring this up because there seems to be a trend of saying "MUSHes and MUXes" like they are cousins.

[Chime]

@Rook said:

Side note: For the new to the genre? MUX is MUSH. It is just a branch of the codebase.

Right. They are the same thing; brought it up only because mudstats foolishly files them separately.

@Jeshin:

There are some differences among these four branches though;

• TinyMUSH, which I've really never used myself.
• Rhost has a more complicated security model, essentially with different levels of staffers that encourages codestaff to have separate privleged accounts that they don't normally use. Very nice stuff.
• Penn has better SQL support, better regex functions (hello regmatch), and a generally better build process. Lots of new functions and syntaxes for referencing DBrefs in ways that break safely if the number is reallocated to a new object.
• MUX has many of the more commonly used Rhost/Penn features (not the Rhost security model sadly), and generally better color support.

Some differences visible from the user:

• Rhost comchannels are by default disabled, and most rhost games (anecdotally) use instead a softcoded comsys that works reasonably well. Subtly different evaluation/quoting results. Rhost lacks telnet-negotiation (and thus NAWS) support.
• Penn comchannels use a different syntax, and inline color attribution requires code-escape and ansi() calls.
• MUX needs to be @restarted anytime it loses sql connectivity, and the ssl code is a bit dodgy.

@mail systems work completely different on every codebase. Paging syntax and capabilites have subtle differences in semantics and output. The same theoretical capabilities do work across the board, though.

Note: when we talk about using SQL, we mean as an auxiliary database for storing tabular data of whatever sort. The "in-game" mu-db remains a custom hierarchical attr-val database, just like all other MU games.

[Tempest]

@Chime said:

• MUX has many of the more commonly used Rhost/Penn features (not the Rhost security model sadly), and generally better color support.

256/hex-a-whatever colors. drool

Admittedly, a pretty moot thing, since colors don't get used very much on 99.99% of MU*s and some clients don't support it. So much pretty stuff made on Firan though.

[Thenomain]

@Chime said:

@Rook said:

Side note: For the new to the genre? MUX is MUSH. It is just a branch of the codebase.

Right. They are the same thing; brought it up only because mudstats foolishly files them separately.

I appreciate that they do, because the differences in coding are still important. Not as bad as lumping Penn in with Mux, but the drift continues.

@Tempest said:

colors don't get used very much on 99.99% of MU*s and some clients don't support it.

Most clients don't. Atlantis, Potato, and TF is the complete list that I know about.

[Jeshin]

Thank you everyone whose given me feedback and suggestions. I think I'm going to try EldritchMUSH first because of their death policy and it gives me the vibe that it'll be a comfortable transition for me. I'll continue to play Kushiel's Dart as well since I made commitments over there.

Probably try one of the super hero themed ones next, not that anyone will particularly care but I felt I owed letting people know where I went with all their suggestions.

Quick Additional Question:

Is there a reason the majority of the underlying systems for these games are nWoD / WoD? Is it because of the very graceful way that that RPG system approaches incentivizing RP? Is it just something that started and kind of stuck in the community?

[BetterJudgment]

@Jeshin said:

Is there a reason the majority of the underlying systems for these games are nWoD / WoD? Is it because of the very graceful way that that RPG system approaches incentivizing RP? Is it just something that started and kind of stuck in the community?

It's because of where you are. Many here were also on WORA, which was predominantly concerned with WoD games and had participants whose involvement with WoD and other MU* genres like Shadowrun and Pern dated back to the late 1990s. I came in much later and peripherally because I was playing on an Anitaverse MU*, but most of my experience has been on other types of games.

At one time I would have recommended that you look at Elendor and especially at its combat and resource systems, but it is moribund. You might still get something from logging in, poking around, and talking to those still there. Even though The Greatest Generation is also gone, I bet at least some people here could talk about that game, which I bet would be right up your alley.

[TNP]

@Jeshin said:

Probably try one of the super hero themed ones next, not that anyone will particularly care but I felt I owed letting people know where I went with all their suggestions.

I'd recommend CoMux. http://cmbeta.wikidot.com/

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@BetterJudgment said:

Even though The Greatest Generation is also gone, I bet at least some people here could talk about that game, which I bet would be right up your alley.

Oh, TGG. The wiki's still up. Many fond memories (I was Strife there, along with several character bits).

http://warisunlimited.wikidot.com/

And it might indeed be interesting for you, since the combat was intentionally a MUSH/MUD hybrid (real-time, but the 'mooks' were run by a GM and if you didn't kind of try to pose Death would yell at you). Outside combat, RP was free-form. One of my favorite online RP experiences, though probably not one that could be replicated. There's been a diversity of things done with the MUSH format, even if individual players themselves might have only played WoD or whatever (I've never played a WoD game in my 15 years playing these dumb games).

[SG]

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

One of my favorite online RP experiences, though probably not one that could be replicated.

Oh yeah, The Lost Generation is up there with my favourite mush experiences, too. One of those magical points in time in the hobby for me.

[Jennkryst]

Randomly, if MUSHes and MUXes are the same, then why doesn't combat on... any mush ever, work like on BTMux?

[Jeshin]

Are you referring too http://battletechmux.com/index.php/Site_Frontier:Main_Page ???