Issue 0x02 - Mailbox Contents (1 Newsletter)

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Greetings, adventurers!

Welcome to issue 0x02 of The MUD Coders Guild newsletter (that’s right, we’re numbering in hexadecimal, because we can)! I don’t have much of a lead-in this month, but I did want to take a minute and thank everyone in TMCG (and our friends over at r/MUD) for their amazing support for this little corner of the internet. Being able to come together over our collective love of this particular genre of text-based games is something that I am grateful for every day.

Thank you!

- Zach

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> notes

Combat… It Still Isn't Very Simple

I’ve always been big on giving credit to where I stole ideas from, and back then the primary driver for combat design for me was this: River City Ransom (RCR). A seminal street brawling game for a…

Main Hand: Apple; Off-Hand: Orange

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that most RPGs are themed by swords and sorcery; we’re all swimming in the ocean of Tolkein’s legacy and medieval fantasy. It’s easy to get stuck in the idea of…

> open source

neuro

Neuro is a Websocket MUD client for the Ranvier MUD game engine, built by TMCG community member @shawncplus.

fluxspace

Fluxspace is a work-in-progress Elixir MUD Engine by TMCG community member @vy.

ArchaicQuest

ArchaicQuest is a browser-based MUD engine built in C# by TMCG community member @liam.

cool-retro-term

MUDs are, by definition, not very graphical. But just because we work in text that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate quality text-based art. Cool-retro-term is a gorgeous terminal emulator that mimics the look of old cathode displays, making for the world’s greatest screenshots.

NATS

NATS is a high performance messaging system that acts as a distributed messaging queue for cloud native applications, IoT device messaging, and microservices architecture. TMCG community member @wot shared this with the plan to distribute zone, room, and combat messages to clients.

> inventory

stunnel

Stunnel is a multiplatform proxy that can be used to encrypt arbitrary TCP connections with SSL/TLS.

REXPaint

MUDs and ASCII art go together like bacon and more bacon. Unfortunately, ASCII art is hard. Enter REXPaint, an amazing ASCII art editor by Grid Sage Games.

> train int

The 30-Day Code Quality Challenge

If you’ve ever taken a look at the code from any DikuMUD derivative, then you know that MUD code can get messy. The 30-day code quality challenge is a… well… 30 day challenge to improve the quality of your code. Nuff said.

> cast 'inspiration'

Medieval Demographics Made Easy

How many people in a medieval city? How many taverns? How many castles in those hills? This article will let you know.

Worlds

TMCG member @sazzer created this awesome fictional world encyclopedia to help inspire our own world-building efforts.

Skyrim Rendered in Text

This mad genius did an excellent write-up of what a text-based demake of Skyrim would look like. There’s not a lot more to say about it other than read the article, it’s fascinating.

TwinMUD

TMCG member @swiftausterity documents every design idea he has for his own MUD in a special subreddit. There’s a lot of incredible inspiration here for text-based game designers.

> afk

ArchaicQuest: First Impressions

Our first stream! Okay, technically it’s the first streamed playthrough and review of a TMCG member game—ArchaicQuest by @liam—but still, it’s very exciting!

Roguelike Radio Episode 141: MUDs

If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about the past, present, and future of Multi-User Dungeons, this episode of Roguelike Radio is a must-listen. It features the vocal stylings of the grandfather of MUDs himself: Richard Bartle.

> quit

Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.

[Add little to little and there will be a big pile]

The MUD Coders Guild is a community for people with a passion for creating text-based games. Join us on Slack!