The Case for MUDs: Why Text-Based Virtual Worlds Still Matter Today
The case for MUDs in modern times
I explore why text-based MUDs remain relevant in an age of high-end graphics, offering unique telepresence and accessibility for visually impaired players. Unlike graphic games limited by asset costs, MUDs rely on pure imagination, allowing creators to build intricate worlds with only words. These platforms foster deep community and collaborative storytelling, proving that the power of text can still create immersive, living simulations.
MUDs are a new kind of virtual parlor game and a new form of community, where players are authors as well as consumers of media content.
- agentultra
Building a MUD engine is quite an endeavour in itself. Let alone the game! A good way to test your skills in networking, parsing, databases, and data structures.
I’ve been chipping away at one on my stream using Haskell. Experimenting with Lua integration, parsing, networking, STM and concurrency… currently hacking on Entity Component Systems and unboxed vectors and all kinds of stuff.
Thing is you can start small. Start with a chat server. Add character registration. Add a mob. Add some commands to interact with the mob. Just keep adding things on.
There’s a community for mud coders too. There are dozens of us.
- fusslo
Between this and the previous MUD post about LLM MUDs I'd love to see a comeback.
A few months ago I tried out my old (1999-2004) hang, wocmud.org
Some of the quests were still sometimes broken. auto attacking mobs were still unfairly strong. But, there were a couple people more than willing to help me get my gear back from my corpse. They helped me remember the areas, quests, syntax, etc that I had BURNED into my memory when I was 14. We chatted and got caught up in the 20 years of updates. Oh, and I didn't get banned for being out-of-character. overall a 10/10 nostalgic experience
I started working on my own with Evennia and claude. I was hoping to hook up an LLM for MOBs but had to put it down when life got busy again.
- arglebarnacle
I learned to touch-type by accident as a kid playing MUDs—no time to look at your hands while you’re under attack! I made friends, discovered things about myself, and even got brought on to start writing room descriptions. Totally formative for me in so many ways.
I logged back on a year or two ago, now in my late thirties, and the sense of community and a critical mass of others who were invested in the game and eager to have me join just wasn’t there. It’s a shame because I agree MUDs have so much unique value to offer. Maybe it’s too much to hope for their return to former glory but I hope at least some flavor of them can rise again as a new form of mostly text oriented multiplayer game.
- mickeyp
I miss MUDs. My old MUD went through a rename, a fork, and what have you --- but it's limping on, though with few playing it. The cost of hosting these things are so cheap today that you can just let it sit and mind its own business.
Back in the 90s you needed a permanent internet connection (rare!) and fast enough to handle all the usually uncompressed text, so it had to be a - shocker - T1 or better. Then you needed a server.
My old MUD has a discord; turns out a lot of the people I knew 25 years ago were there and remembered the my nick if not a little about myself back then. That was a fun nostalgia trip.
MUDs will eventually see a resurgence, I think. Mobiles with little language models to give flavour text and quests, plus a little tool calling language behind it to make it happen? I can see it working; in fact, I might just myself...
- imzadi
I learned to code on an LP MUD back in the late 90s. It was a fun experience.
I did all my work in the MUD interface using ED. I didn't realize other people wrote their code offline and sh'd in to upload it. I got very good at writing and editing code on the command line.