Talk:MUSH

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I intend to do a fairly significant revision of this article, since much of what it discusses is applicable to all sorts of TinyMUD-derived MUD servers, and the distinguishing characteristics of TinyMUSH are not properly discussed. In fact, I will probably move the article to be called "TinyMUSH", since that's the proper name, and leave a redirect from "MUSH"; I haven't yet decided whether to do a separate article on "mudding", or to create a new section within MUD. Squiddhartha 14:03, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Historical Note by Larry Foard

It is reliable. However designed might be too strong a word. The original TinyMush version was a set of many hacks on top of the original TinyMUD code. Done from a 2400 baud dumpster salvage terminal in an apartment next to the projects in North Hampton Mass. over 3000 miles of early 1990s internet to a machine at UCB. You typed a good fraction of a line of code before it echoed.

The time the company I was working for had hit hard times, so I had little in the way of work or money, but plenty of free time to fill. The work was done on a microvax system at Berkeley which I'd been graciously given an account by a nice guy who've I've met online. Sadly that machine died during an upgrade and that was the end of my role in TinyMush development. Luckily by that time several other people had the code and had started working with it, the first being the TinyTIM mud, which had started out as a TinyMUD. —User:64.81.61.206 02:46, Apr 15, 2005

[edit] Plural form

MUSHes? MUSHs? MUSH? I've seen all three. Which is most correct? Are they all good? More to the point: Should we standardise on one? Most of the internal article usage is singular, or adjective-style plural (MUSH servers), but some other pages use the plural noun form (of MUSH). (According to the Manual of Style, perhaps the 'MUSH server' form is most appropriate... their examples are 'blacks' versus 'black people', etc.) -- Wisq 16:56, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)

I'm a passionate MUSHer...I've seen MUSH as singular everywhere I go. MUSHes is the typical plural. --Penta 03:52, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article division

I fully intend to divide this article up into PennMUSH, TinyMUX, TinyMUSH, RhostMUSH, and so forth someday and leave this page as a glorified disambiguation. As a passionate MUSHer and a passionate pedant, I feel the differences between the four (particularly Rhost, which is one odd beast relative to the other three) need to be spelled out. Ain't got time to do it right now, though. Lord Bob 22:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

They could be spelled out, but I'm not sure it would be particularly helpful. To the player, I can say from 10+ years experience, you'd be unable to tell the difference between any of the codebases of MUSH and MUX. MUSH and MOO, yes. MUSH and MUX, let alone their internal derivatives like between PennMUSH and TinyMUSH? No. The differences hardly seem enough for more than a stub, at least. --Penta 03:55, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
As a player, I can usually tell the difference between PennMUSH and Tinyx as soon as I have to interact with a channel. :P I do see your point, but I was thinking seperate articles would be better more for their seperate histories than their seperate code. Lord Bob 04:54, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bad times, good times, and society

I'm wondering if the Twink Olympics, Andy Awards, and Online Gaming Resource MUSH are worth mentioning in this article. Do they have a place to fit in? Sketch-The-Fox 01:46, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Probably not. The former two are just bits of MU* culture that might deserve an external link but are hardly relevant in the big picture. OGR is technically a MUX, for one thing (yeah, I'm a pedant like that), but more importantly it isn't really anything more than a hangout. In broad terms, it has no real importance to the future of MUSHdom, although I hang out there and think it's a cool place. Lord Bob 02:47, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How do you know something is a MUSH server?

It's hard for me to see (even under a Pedantic standard) how any one of the four (PennMUSH, TinyMUSH, TinyMUX, or RhostMUSH) could claim the title as One True MUSH Server. TinyMUX and TinyMUSH are near to each other. The distance to PennMUSH is a little further, and parts of RhostMUSH are close to TinyMUX and TinyMUSH, other parts are close to PennMUSH, and other parts are yet further away from either. PennMUSH is neither the most distant relative nor at the center of the constellation. The majority of the distance of PennMUSH from TinyMUX and TinyMUSH is in it's parser (which is a proper top-down parser). This gives it a slightly different grammer, better handling of escapes in certain contexts, and makes it somewhat more vunerable to denial of service attacks. However, this does not set it apart as a separate, better class of MUSH server. So, this question of what makes something a MUSH server is probably a discussion topic in need of having. brazilofmux 22:59, 15, February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that either of them could say that they are "the one" server, no. I'd say that TinyMUX, TinyMUSH, RhostMUSH, and TinyMUX are all MUSH servers, and from there any smaller bases can be evaluated in relation to those four. I do not pretend this is anything more than one man's opinion, of course. Lord Bob 00:40, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Codebase Support Centers

Someone building a game will invariably interact with M*U*S*H, OGR, MPUG, or BrazilMUX. In two years, this list will probably change, and I may have left something out of the list, but these places (one is a PennMUSH, the other three are TinyMUXes) are the first line of support for people building MUSH games and using MUSH servers. Perhaps an argument can be made for why these places aren't appropriate for the MUSH topic, but it seems these places should be no more than one step away from this topic. brazilofmux 23:26, 15, February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think they're worth having articles of their own, but they could do with being mentioned on this page, if only as external links. Lord Bob 00:40, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BattletechMUX?

Okay, it's an actual server. What I get for getting lazy and not doing my research. :P But should it really be on the page regardless? I mean, as far as I can tell it's a not-particularly-notable fork of TinyMUSH. Has it really accomplished anything yet? I haven't heard about it being in something resembling common use, and there are plenty of custom codebases out there based on Tinysomething that justly do not have articles or links. Lord Bob 00:37, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't play Battletech myself, but I do know that it has been around for a while, its a reasonably complete implementation of the game. And there are several games that run the code. There are special MU-clients to go with it too, I think. I don't know how many players the various games have, but my feeling is that its probably enough to be at least mentioned. Ehheh 00:42, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
BattletechMUX has been around for ages in one form or another, it's accomplished much in the past and is certainly doing so now. Amongst other things, it's the first MUSH server to implement completely asynchronous SQL, it's the MUSH server that has the most available and developing in terms of graphical clients (see CHUD for a particularly impressive example), it has a well-developed and organized Documentation Site, Community Portal, SourceForge Project, and various other support structures. As far as modifications to the MUX source, most of it has been gutted and rewritten, taking a very aggressive stance towards speed. As mentioned earlier, the Battletech extensions allow players to fight and navigate in a realtime, 3D plane. There really is no more complex combat system out there in MU*, and that's not just a boastful statement, feel free to prove me wrong :) So in terms of it being a not-particularly-notable fork, do some more research before making a statement such as that as it couldn't be further from the truth. --SquishyWaffle 21:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fuzzball

Added this for a couple of reasons:

  • It runs some of the larger MUSHes out there, including FurryMUCK.
  • It is in reasonably widespread use, being generally considered simpler to administer than TinyMUCK/X.
  • It currently has a stand-alone stub of an article, which is up for deletion. I favor a merge and redirect. Shimeru 17:58, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Seems fine to me, then. (Also, I like the use of "rrv" ;) ) Sketch-The-Fox 18:34, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Since the page just was deleted a few days ago, I created a redirect from Fuzzball MUCK to MUSH. -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 13:35, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Uh, wait, this is wrong. Fuzzball isn't a MUSH at all. It's a MUCK server base. Fuzzball should redirect to MUCK, not MUSH. Fixing that now. --67.142.130.18 21:14, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Woops, that was me. I figured out now why I wasn't able to stay logged in. The changes to this article from the above IP address are also me. --67.142.130.18 22:00, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
...grrr. --Kynn 22:04, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Second Life

Is Second Life a mush?

Second Life would be more like an MMORPG. Typically, MUSHes have no graphics at all, barring the use of Pueblo or MXP (MUD/MUSH eXtension Protocol) protocols--and those aren't particularly widespread. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sketch-The-Fox (talk • contribs) 17:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC).
True, it is not a MUSH from the code base, but the fact that it encourages players from developing own rooms, items and contributing code, seems to put it apart from existing MMORPGs, as much as MUSHes and MUDs are different. But you are right, Second Life does not belong into this article. --Schoelle 12:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Second Life does allow (and encourage) building and coding which is one of the typical activities of a MUSH, however, it is unlike MUSHes and MUDs in more ways than it is like them. Second Life allows people to collect items and setup a dream home. It is also a platform for making graphical puzzle games. However, it doesn't support story-telling particularly well (limit pose length, the stage is the screen itself yet there is no way to control the 'frame' other players have of the scene, pre-authoring all the required graphics and scripts for telling a cooperatively-created story is still too much work). It also is not a game in and of itself in the way that MUDs usually are. To summarize, graphics are not a story. They are props to a story. -- brazilofmux 21:51, 21 August 2007 (UTC)