LegendMUD
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
LegendMUD is an online text-based Multi-User Dungeon. Its world reflects our shared history through the eyes and imaginations of those who lived it. LegendMUD re-enacts periods, places, and events of the past not only as they are described in historical documents, but also as they are related in the legends, myths, and folklore of the time. LegendMUD's world is history as it is thought to have been. The places and creatures you encounter as a player might be strictly mythical today, but the residents of the lands and times you're reliving believed in them enough to tell their stories.
Contents |
[edit] Geography
| Ancient | Medieval | Industrial |
|---|---|---|
|
Roman Britain |
Medieval Britain |
London Port |
| heavy emphasis denotes a hometown | ||
Geographically, the world of LegendMUD maps very closely to that of Earth itself. But, because the scenes reconstructed in Legend can overlap in space, the world is built upon a temporal framework of three distinct eras. The ancient era runs until about 476 A.D., and industrial times begin roughly with the invention of gunpowder or mechanized industry — although this varies from one land to another. The medieval period is all times in between. With such broad periods, each era encompasses a large variety of people, places, and creatures, from ancient sidhe and sea serpents, to witches, Crusaders, and ghastly denizens of the Underworld, to gold prospectors and newspapermen. Within an era, travellers can get almost anywhere on foot or mount or by sea. Players move between eras through a variety of geographically-fixed time-travel quests. These quests are open to players of all levels; the new player can begin his life as an explorer immediately.
[edit] Players/Characters
LegendMUD's players are permitted any number of characters, and all gameplay is free of charge. Players and immortals are held to a documented code of conduct, however, which players accept when they create a character. Immortals enforce this code for the benefit of all, and hold themselves to the same standards as players are held.
Characters are human and are fundamentally classless, and many options are open to any individual from birth. A character's abilities are somewhat determined by his hometown — that is, the location and time period in the Legend world in which the character is created. There are six (soon seven) hometowns, each conferring access to a different combination of skills and abilities, with different strengths. This makes for a vast number of archetypes, providing for years of new experiences for any player.
[edit] Architecture
LegendMUD was originally developed in late 1993 and opened to the public on February 14, 1994, and has been in continuous operation since. It was originally developed in C from Merc (MUD) beta source code, but in twelve years of ongoing, active development it has evolved into a unique system with many original features. Its 6,000 rooms, 4,000 mobiles, and thousands of objects are all original. While the general code architecture shows its Diku origins, very little actual Diku code remains, and the combat system in particular has been completely rewritten. Most notable in its architecture is the fact that it was one of the earliest DikuMud derived codebases to support an embedded scripting language.
LegendMUD, its web site, and its web forum are all privately hosted on an Ubuntu Linux system running an Athlon 1.8 GHz CPU with 1.5 GB of RAM. It is connected to the Internet through ADSL, with a 768 kbit/s upstream data rate.
