Building MUDs with Python
As I mentioned the other day, I somehow went straight from BBS door games to IRC/web, skipping right over the whole MUD/MOO/MUSH phenomenon. That’s unfortunate. So I’ve been looking into MUDs lately, particularly how to build them using Python as the language of choice…
I loaded ErisMUD tonight to try it out. It’s written entirely in Python and uses SQLite for the backend storage (nice!). Upon inspection it is really more of a MUD framework than a fully working MUD itself. Very bare bones, but it looks like it would be very easy to extend.
Of course, if you want a MUD framework you could use Buyasta. According to the project page, the goal of the project is to “provide a simple-to-use framework for constructing MUDs.” I didn’t download it yet, but it’s an interesting concept… if you are into the whole framework thing.
Lastly, there is sparse.py. It’s an extremely minimalist Tradewars-style MUD engine written for the 16k mud contest. If you want some simple, stripped down code to look at for some examples… this is the one to check out.
Those are by no means the only three packages to get you started with MUD coding, but they seemed to stand out to me when I was doing my quick search. Of all of them, I’m probably going to revisit ErisMUD and see what I can do to extend it. Looks like a good base to start with.
Update: People are trying playsh and liking it. Cool.
March 25th, 2006 at 12:39 am
[...] In my ongoing quest for interesting MUDs built using Python, I came across MOOP (MUD, Object-Oriented, Pythonic): Users connect to the server via TCP/IP, and can interact with other users in a fashion similar to any network MUD-type game. But the neat thing about a MOO is that all the coding which makes gadgets and gizmos and ordinary objects work is right there, available to the remote users … it is written entirely in Python, and all the code which makes the objects work is (of course) Python as well. [...]