[REQUEST] Jeshin's Questions About MUSHes!

Jeshin · Jul 21, 2015, 1:32 AM

Hey,

So as to not needlessly bump and clutter the OR/Project Redshift thread, I'll be posting some of my many questions here in my quest to better understand the MUSHier style of text-based gaming.

I notice Safe Haven is an "invite only" game. Is this common or uncommon for MUSHes? What are the normal justifications for this: Higher quality RP, intentionally small and personal playerbase, house rules?
http://www.byond.com/games/WritingANewOne/EterniaPrologue would you consider this to be a text-based game and/or a MUD?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/270170/ would you consider this to be a text-based game and/or an interactive novel? Are they the same thing or fundamentally different?
I was discussing MUSHes with someone who plays both MUSHes and MUDs and they were commenting that the majority of MUSHes do not use nWoD softcode but the majority of nWoD text-based games are MUSHes. Would that be accurate?
If nWoD softcode isn't the most common MUSH overlay than what is? PennMUSH maybe?

Misadventure · Jul 20, 2015, 10:57 PM

A lot of it is a reference to the actual code being used. MUD, MUSH, MOO, etc.

Styles of gameplay have arisen around those code types, but its akin to sating that something is sci-fi because it's written in a certain font.

Thenomain · Jul 20, 2015, 11:32 PM

@Jeshin said:

I notice Safe Haven is an "invite only" game. Is this common or uncommon for MUSHes?

No.

What are the normal justifications for this

Normally when I see it, it's "so I don't become grossly overwhelmed with administrative nonsense".

http://www.byond.com/games/WritingANewOne/EterniaPrologue would you consider this to be a text-based game and/or a MUD?

It's a play-by-post. ("All posts made by players are looked over by administrators and awarded points based on quality.")

http://store.steampowered.com/app/270170/ would you consider this to be a text-based game and/or an interactive novel?

A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

Are they the same thing or fundamentally different?

Considering the number of illustrated "interactive novels" out there, I don't know how you could call them "text-based". I suppose it depends on what you mean by "text-based".

Similar question: Is the original Ultima Online "Mud-based" or "Roguelike"? Pick one.

I was discussing MUSHes with someone who plays both MUSHes and MUDs and they were commenting that the majority of MUSHes do not use nWoD softcode but the majority of nWoD text-based games are MUSHes. Would that be accurate?

Let me get back to this.

If nWoD softcode isn't the most common MUSH overlay than what is? PennMUSH maybe?

TinyTIM, TinyMUSH, PennMUSH, TinyMUX, and RhostMUSH are, in chronological order, server code-bases. We call them "hardcode". They run a very similar inline interpreter that uses an inline object-based system.

What you seem to be doing is putting all Mushes together as a single codebase, which would be like putting all Muds together as a single codebase. You Mudders and your LPMuds, so wacky.

What Mushes do that Muds (that I know of) do not is have an in-line (on-game) interpretive language as well. We often call this "softcode" to differentiate it from the C/C++ code that runs the game itself ("hardcode").

Moo and Muck also have in-line/on-game code in what I am told is a much more intelligent manner than the five Mush codebases mentioned above. I believe there are two (one and a half?) Moo bases and one Muck base, but don't quote me on that.

It is safe to say that all these code-bases share the same origins: MUD, MUSH, MOO, MUCK.

Chime has a broader memory for this, if she wants to, ahhem, chime in. The point I'm making here, tho, is that questions 4 and 5 are not just "how do you see it" questions, but are how things are.

Tyche · Jul 21, 2015, 12:01 AM

surreality · Jul 21, 2015, 12:04 AM

A quick thing re: MOO cores: while it has been a long time, I know Lambdacore is still out there, and for a while, ghostcore was as well. ghostcore was Quinn's baby, and was a heavily modified Lambdacore with more features designed around the idea of automated game play. It was created from what he learned mostly in creating Ghostwheel, which was an RPG MOO. Many MOOs are social spaces, and the ghostcore had the additions to create wandering monsters, combat systems, etc. from what I recall of it. (Ghostwheel did, but I only half recall if Quinn's distribution of the core had the systems in full, or just the code that would allow someone to craft a system of their own. It's been over a decade.)

BetterJudgment · Jul 21, 2015, 12:22 AM

There is HellCore as well: http://hellmoo.org/wiki/index.php/HellCore.

Thenomain · Jul 21, 2015, 1:16 AM

@Tyche

Beautiful.

I'm pretty sure Islandia was a MUSH, as it had most of the building and coding commands of TinyTIM of the time. TinyTIM describes itself as "the first Mush" and I believe it.

edit: I was going to say something else about PernMUSH -> TinyMUSH 2, then I realize that the point of the diagram is well made, and I would be adding to it. Calling us all "Mushers" is wrought with organic messiness.

Tyche · Jul 21, 2015, 1:16 AM

@Thenomain said:

@Tyche

Beautiful.

I'm pretty sure Islandia was a MUSH, as it had most of the building and coding commands of TinyTIM of the time. TinyTIM describes itself as "the first Mush" and I believe it.

Well there may have also been a mush named Islandia, but the one referenced was the last running version of TinyMud. I have the code to it. It wasn't really programmable (It did support entering boolean expressions to check for presence of objects). It's certainly possible that those who ran Islandia later adopted Larry Foard's Mush code.

TinyMush 1.0 is a place holder for the original MUSH code and TinyTIM was likely the original running Mush. The oldest code I have been able to find is the PernMush code.

edit: I was going to say something else about PernMUSH -> TinyMUSH 2, then I realize that the point of the diagram is well made, and I would be adding to it. Calling us all "Mushers" is wrought with organic messiness.

The only information I have is from Lydia Leong, that TinyMush 2 was started from a fork of PernMush. I didn't have any information on RhostMush because at the time the code was given out by request only.

Ide · Jul 21, 2015, 1:32 AM

@Jeshin said:

I was discussing MUSHes with someone who plays both MUSHes and MUDs and they were commenting that the majority of MUSHes do not use nWoD softcode but the majority of nWoD text-based games are MUSHes. Would that be accurate?

I don't know if this is still the case but there used to be very large WoD games that didn't use any kind of mush at all. I'm blanking on the server type at the moment. IIRC these games had thousands of players and were real-time, but maybe more like IRC than mush.

Bobotron · Jul 21, 2015, 1:40 AM

@Ide
Probably thinking of digichat games like Wanton Wicked or New Bremen.

surreality · Jul 21, 2015, 2:38 AM

White Wolf had a game that was... forum-based, I believe? It was supposedly large, from the people I have heard describe playing on it. AOL used to have a lot of WoD RP, but it was wholly unregulated in parts -- I don't know if it stayed that way forever or not, but around '93-'94 it wasn't uncommon to see someone just decided they were a 3rd generation All The Things.

Bobotron · Jul 21, 2015, 2:44 AM

@surreality
Yeah, that was a digichat game; digichats are setup like a MUSH in a way most of the time. They'll have chatrooms representing places, but no in between city streets/etc. type stuff, like we would do a grid. Dice rolling was done in a separate part of the site that kept things in a long log (rather than in the chatroom itself).

Tyche · Jul 21, 2015, 3:49 AM

@Jeshin said:

I notice Safe Haven is an "invite only" game. Is this common or uncommon for MUSHes? What are the normal justifications for this: Higher quality RP, intentionally small and personal playerbase, house rules?

There are probably more private "invite only" games, if you consider the lot probably aren't going to bother to list them anywhere.
I've run tabletop games for friends on a Rom and later on a Cold server.

http://www.byond.com/games/WritingANewOne/EterniaPrologue would you consider this to be a text-based game and/or a MUD?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/270170/ would you consider this to be a text-based game and/or an interactive novel? Are they the same thing or fundamentally different?

They don't have much to do with Mushes. Thenomain nailed the basic play styles. Although that EterniaPrologue looks more like a typical hack-n-slash game with a side game of role-play by post. As to whether they are text-based or muds...some people have very narrow definitions of what a mud is, or what a text-based game is. My own definition of mud is very broad.

Is 8-bit Mush a text game? A Mush? Why does one care? It's like nailing jelly to a tree.
People have been merging graphics and animation into muds, moos, mushes since forever (Sensemedia )

I was discussing MUSHes with someone who plays both MUSHes and MUDs and they were commenting that the majority of MUSHes do not use nWoD softcode but the majority of nWoD text-based games are MUSHes. Would that be accurate?

If nWoD softcode isn't the most common MUSH overlay than what is? PennMUSH maybe?

PennMush is a server. The four main mush servers would be TinyMush, TinyMux, PennMush and RhostMush. They all run an interpreted language called mushcode or softcode. Maybe the following very dated analogy might makes sense... The differences between the languages implemented by the various mush servers is somewhat analogous to running different versions of BASIC (like Microsoft Basic, Atari Basic, Commodore Basic, etc.)
There's a ton of softcode/mushcode out there. It's mostly drop in modules/objects/commands like bulletin board systems, dice rollers, character creation systems, ad infinitum. Here's a link to my very old repository. I don't have a clue what softcode is most popular. Maybe something like mudcore?

Tyche · Jul 21, 2015, 3:52 AM

@Ide said:

@Jeshin said:

I was discussing MUSHes with someone who plays both MUSHes and MUDs and they were commenting that the majority of MUSHes do not use nWoD softcode but the majority of nWoD text-based games are MUSHes. Would that be accurate?

I don't know if this is still the case but there used to be very large WoD games that didn't use any kind of mush at all. I'm blanking on the server type at the moment. IIRC these games had thousands of players and were real-time, but maybe more like IRC than mush.

Godwars and VampireWars were based on the WoD settings. But they were hack-n-slash muds, not really role-playing games.