Commercialisation and Charging Models

I’ve talked before about how I think more commercial muds would benefit the whole of the mudding community and in this article I’m going to look at some of the options mud creators have for commercialising their work. Subscriptions In a subscription model all players pay a regular fixed amount to access the game. Players … Continue reading Commercialisation and Charging Models →

FMud Scripting Tutorial – Aliases and Targetting

I thought I’d try recording some screencast videos to demonstrate how to use the scripting functions of the client. This first video covers creating aliases and using a variable for targetting. I’m not sure about the sound quality so I think I’ll try and improve that for the next one! Any feedback or suggestions for … Continue reading FMud Scripting Tutorial – Aliases and Targetting →

FMud version 0.8 released

FMud is a simple web based Flash mud client. A running demo, feature list and installation instructions are available on the FMud project page. Download Version 0.8 Released on 11th February 2009. Line breaks should be handled better nowColour parsing improved, including MUSH style bold textAdded support for clear lineAdded support for Terminal Type subnegotiation … Continue reading FMud version 0.8 released →

Why we need more commercial MUDs

The first thing I want to say is that there are plenty of high quality MUDs out there that are run on a non commercial basis. Now that's out of the way, I believe that were more MUDs to go commercial, even on a relatively modest scale, it would benefit the MUD community as a … Continue reading Why we need more commercial MUDs →

A new arrival…

I don’t usually post personal stuff on this blog but I wanted to share this. Emily Rose Adcock was born at 15.55 on 15th November by cesarean section. She was a week overdue and weighed in at a rather hefty 8lbs and 15 oz. The strangest thing was that Suzy barely put on any weight … Continue reading A new arrival… →

Making MUDs more visually appealing

I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that can be done to enhance the visual appeal of MUDs. This may sound a bit odd given that a MUD is all about text, but the text can still be presented in ways that are are more visually appealing. This is particularly … Continue reading Making MUDs more visually appealing →

FMud version 0.7 released

FMud is a simple web based Flash mud client. A running demo, feature list and installation instructions are available on the FMud project page. Download Version 0.7 Released on 7th November 2008. Fixed major bug when using FMud with LinuxRemoved display_height parameter. The dimensions of FMud are now calculated automatically from the height and width … Continue reading FMud version 0.7 released →

The state of MUD, part 3

I believe that MUDs’ greatest strengths are also their greatest weakness; namely that they are quick and cheap to setup and run. While this means MUDs can offer some of the unique gameplay I mentioned in my last post it has also undoubtedly lead to an explosion in the numbers of mediocre games. New players … Continue reading The state of MUD, part 3 →

The state of MUD, part 2

In my last post I asked what MUDs can offer players that they can’t get from more modern graphical virtual worlds. In order to answer this question we need to look at what makes MUDs unique. The single biggest difference between MUDs and other virtual world platforms is the relative ease with which MUDs can … Continue reading The state of MUD, part 2 →

The state of MUD, part 1

This week saw the 30 year anniversary of the original MUD so I thought it would be a good time to offer my thoughts on the state of MUDs. MUDs don’t get a lot of press these days and if you weren’t aware of them you’d be forgiven for thinking that players and developers had … Continue reading The state of MUD, part 1 →