Greetings, adventurers! Whelp... it's been a while. The past six months have been a whirlwind of chao

The MUD Coders Guild 💾 A monthly digest of text-based game development successes, failures, inspiration, and anecdotes from the members of The MUD Coders Guild.

Greetings, adventurers! @eric, @swiftausterity, and @trevoke for their steadfast dedication to the community. Despite my absence, they’ve done an amazing job that has resulted in incredible Whelp… it’s been a while. The past six months have been a whirlwind of chaos that forced me into an unexpected hiatus from the guild, however things are starting to calm down now and I am ready to kick things back into gear. With that said, I do want to take a minute and thank my fellow administrators, andfor their steadfast dedication to the community. Despite my absence, they’ve done an amazing job that has resulted in incredible Grapevine growth, a new newsletter (which will be rolled under the Grapevine umbrella), a new game jam , and even a podcast Now, without further ado, I’d like to present the next issue of The MUD Coders Guild newsletter! Zach P.S. - Since the last newsletter the world has celebrated a number of holidays and events including, but not limited to, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s Day, and St. Patrick’s Day (to name a half-dozen), so rather than trying to play catch-up on everything we’ve missed, this issue focuses on more recent developments in order to keep things as relevant as possible.

> notes

Re-Enter the (Multi-User) Dungeon mudcoders.com – Share I’m not sure I can bring the eloquence that was had with last year’s announcement but it’s a year later and we’ve got a new MUDJam. Entry period is straight through the end but the jam officially…

> wiznet

The Grapevine Gazette gazette.grapevine.haus – Share The Grapevine Gazette was originally conceived as a replacement of this very newsletter, however with my return we’ve decided to keep the guild newsletter as is and roll out the Grapevine Gazette as a general-purpose MUD newsletter that focuses on the genre as a whole.

Vineyard vineyard.haus – Share In partnership with Grapevine, underneath a new umbrella called Vintner, Vineyard is a new free MUD hosting provider.

Last Outpost MUD: A Review medium.com – Share The Last Outpost has been around for nearly as long as any MUD could have been having gone live in 1992. Given its age it’s no surprise it started life in Diku but it has clearly been improved over…

Covenant MUD: News www.tierceron.com – Share Run by one of the members of the guild, The “Covenant” is the name given to the political alliance between the central provinces located on the only explored continent.

> open source

fantasy-time-crunch github.com – Share A way of handling time and time-related state changes in a highly customizable way, for use with games and virtual worlds.

Warrens github.com – Share A c# mvc routing js client text world platform.

dumserver github.com – Share A modern MU* engine re-imagined, actively developed and properly tracked.

> inventory

If I Can Get Everything, Choices Don't Matter kotaku.com – Share Great article about the importance of impactful player choice. In a nutshell, it’s just hard to care about picking specific perks or abilities when it becomes clear you will get them all.

So Let’s Get Practical www.raphkoster.com – Share It is no accident that in virtual communities, admins are often titled gods, wizards, and immortals. This is of course an essentially paternalistic structure. One has to ask the very tough question: can an online community ever truly flower if it always has to run to Dad to deal with problems? The reason this is a critical question is because the presence of an all-powerful being is not a philosophical question in a virtual setting. In final analysis, it’s the guy with the ability to flip the power switch on the server.

Amit’s Thoughts on Grids www-cs-students.stanford.edu – Share Grids are commonly used in games for representing playing areas such as maps (the standard room-based design in most MUDs might ring a bell). This is a great article that takes that concept and expands it out into an impressively large number of ways to think about player positioning in a game.

> afk

Titans of Text www.titansoftext.com – Share Titans from the text gaming community is a new podcast by TMCG admins @eric and @swiftausterity. I’ve just listened to the first episode and it is a must have in your podcast queue.

Getting Started with TextWorld www.youtube.com – Share TextWorld is a text-based game generator and sandbox learning environment for reinforcement learning agents.

> quit

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