Hey guys, I have a pretty big question.

I was inspired sometime ago to create my own mud, and I've been trying to select a codebase to fit it.
I've dabbled with muds for a long time, and having built, coded, and served in administrative positions on many muds in the past, I feel confident that I'll be able to work my own. Here's my issue:

In my mud, I'm wanting to create a 'classless/raceless' system. Players will select a nation, or lineage, and then a specific city from that nation. (The city will have little influence in character modification, its just preference.)
The nation they are 'birthed' from will be the primary factor in their abilities and options to advance. Everyone will essential be human. Now my idea is that after you become part of a nation, in the game, you will develop your character on more of a skill/training based system, and the role-playing element of character modification is what 'faction' you align yourself with.

I'm trying to find a codebase that will be more suited to allow this kind of modification without sacrificing performance capabilities. I've worked with many codebases, and am willing to adapt if I get some sound advice one way or the other. Any contribution is appreciated; I am always willing to draw on the experiences of others!

Thanks in advance.

How does that differ from 'class'? Couldn't you just take any codebase with classes and rename them to 'nations', assigning them nation-specific skills in the same way as you would a class? You could even rename 'race' to 'city' and 'clan' to 'faction' to cover your other two requirements with very little additional effort required.

Without knowing more about your specific plans for the nations it's hard to give a more precise answer, but from what you've described I would guess that most codebases fit your requirements. Perhaps it might be more useful to narrow it down based on other (and much less easy to change later) critiera - do you have any programming language preferences? Licensing needs? Any special feature requirements (specific approaches to combat, crafting, magic, movement, etc)?

Well, the primary reason I wouldn't want to just rename class to nation is because I kind of want to use a class/profession like system, but it's not something initiated from character creation. It would be something that after you pick your nation and faction, you can begin specializing in a 'class' to serve that faction. The nation will just determine a characters stronger attributes, for example, a certain nation might be inclined to fire elemental magic, so if you belong to that nation, and you choose a 'class' later that utilizes skills in elemental, or specifically fire magic, you will get bonuses to advancing and using those skills.

As for factions, I used that word because a clan will be a type of faction, as will an official army, a capitalist organization, a religion, etc.

I would say I'm on even grounds for programming languages, having worked about the same amount with most common languages, that's not really an issue. Open source type licenses are probably my preferred route.

That being said, I was more looking for an answer from someone who had something to contribute to this kind of 'unique' system. Maybe someone has done something similar and has some input. It doesn't have to be technical, and opinionated answers are fine. :p

(Being snowed in right now, and having a lot of other things to do, I don't have the time to formally describe my mud. I hope I've cleared up any major questions.)

Thanks.

I would suggest that if a set of features really is unique, then you'll
have work to do regardless of the codebase.

I don't have the specific answer you want, so my apologies for that.

But I think it's a good idea for you to sample various codebases
yourself, and get a feeling for what you're comfortable with.

If what you're saying is "I hope my idea isn't unique. Where can I find most of
the work already done?" then that's different.

But I think any codebase out there is probably suited to fundamental reworking,
and eliminating races and classes is pretty far from that. On the codebase
dificulty scale, it registers, but not much. IMO.

So, find a codebase you love first. Then use it to do what you want.
That's my advice. Selecting a codebase just because it's easy to do this
one thing in it is a bad idea, IMO.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net/

If you haven't given it a look before try CoffeeMud by Bo Zimmerman. It is under the Apache license and is written in Java. While I have not done exactly what you are seeking before it would not be to hard to do. The config file (coffeemud.ini) even has raceless/classless settings.

I re-coded character creation for another MUD to have everyone start as "spiritual entities" with no problem at all, so changing initial player choices for your proposed model would not be difficult. In your case I would make "human" the only choosable racial option during character creation. Then I would create the towns as class-like options and assign "expertises" to them. Skills can be set to require expertise (other skills, %'s, etc) before they can be learned. it also has a multi-tiered clan system and a seperate configurable faction system.

One word about CM though, it uses a lot of resources compared to most other codebases (Java, go figure). Finding inexpensive hosting can be a bit of a problem. That said you can not only run it under Linux, but can also run it (with the exact same code) on a windows box at home if you have a decent high-speed connection. I often code and test at home then upload to my shell.

Best of luck with your project.

Well, if we're going to discuss specific codebases…. :)

Dead Souls does what you want with basically two file edits. Iike Coffeemud,
you just edit a config file to have: #define HUMANS_ONLY 1
and the mud won't let you pick other races at character generation.

As to classes, it's much like races. The way "human" is the default race,
"explorer" is the default class. In Dead Souls, players have to actually go to
guild halls and such to earn a class, so if you just don't add that stuff,
they won't have classes.

Dead Souls classes just provide a focus for the skills/training system. You
can use the skills system, and training, without classes just as easily as with.

As to nationalities, that can be as easy as just adding somrthing like
this to character generation:

Player->SetProperty("nationality","Frobozz");

Like Coffeemud, Dead Souls will run on UNIX (after you compile the included
source code) and Windows (with the executable already compiled and included
in the distribution).

You can get more info about Dead Souls here: http://dead-souls.net/

As you can see, you have your pick, and I have a feeling that there are plenty of
other codebases out there whose modification in these ways is also trivial.

Which codebase does it *easiest* just isn't the point. Which one you like best is.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

Yes, I did something similar with God Wars, back in 1995. It was based on Merc 2.1, which has 4 classes and no races.

I started out by making everyone a "warrior", giving the warrior class all of the skills and spells, and removing all references to classes from within the game. For all intents and purposes, the mud was then classless.

I then added a 'vampire' condition, which players could pass on to each other, with various special powers that could be developed. You wouldn't start as a vampire, but you could become one during play.

After that I added additional conditions such as 'werewolf', 'mage' and 'demon, each of which worked in much the same way as 'vampire'. Players could only have one such condition, and each had its own special powers - I'd made the game class-based again.

So, as with your proposed system, PCs would begin unclassed, and select a class during play. As with your "cities", each PC would also belong to a subgroup - vampires were divided into clans, werewolves into tribes, mages into colours and demons under specific Demon Lords.

Overall it worked quite well, although requiring players to be classed by other players caused some favouritism issues (particularly as the mud kept track of generations, so that you would always be weaker than the person who classed you). I dropped the idea of generations in God Wars II, and forced each player to earn their class themselves, but this seems to have resulted in much weaker social ties between the players.

Hello,

I'm not a professional coder nor have I ever done anything fantastic. However, I had spent a lot of time working with codebases such as Rom before I offered StarterMud years ago. I played with Rom for years, then went on to Envy 2.2, and then to Merc. 2.2.

Since I'm now pretty good at modding / changing existing code, I found that Merc. 2.2 allowed me to have a base system while still being able to decide if I wanted to add any additional features like Envy or Rom. Sometimes it's nice to have more advanced codebases to use as a reference since I wouldn't know where to begin to do something simular to Kavir's achievements. Let alone GWII..

Anyway, If you are looking for a ready made codebase but don't need all of the features / bloat of others, check out Merc.

I have fiddle with a lot of code bases, one of my most recent and easy to use is SMAUG.
The code base had been changed a lot, it was not the basic SMAUG, but it was still pretty easy to weed out everything I did not want. If you are looking for a code base I recommended just using google to search for "MUD Code base". Do your research, try on some different ones and just see which is the right style for what you are trying to do.

Or you could just scroll up, click on "Code Repository" and dig around for something you like there :)

There are a ton of very nice snippets in that code repository at the top of this page as well so if you selected one of the codebases from it, you'd have plenty of ideas to draw from as well. :smile: