Meat MUD Classic

So a while back I set up the front page for the Meat MUD Classic website with an embedded FMud (F for Flash) client that automatically connects to Meat MUD Classic as soon as you open the page, giving instant access to the MUD.  I've wanted this for a while to entice new players - nothing makes getting into a new game easier than having it automagically start working as soon as you open a web page.

Due to Adobe requiring a special permission tool running on a certain port for the FMud telnet app to connect to Meat MUD, and due to the tool repeatedly freezing, resulting in no connections being possible without a server reset, and due to the frequency of this occuring, I have disabled the FMud client for the time being.

You may still access the MUD directly using our Java based JamochaMUD Client in the meantime.

Please contact me immediately if you experience any problems with this.

Yet again I am dissatisfied with the layout and design of this website.  Part of it is probably envy of Sloth III's site, which in my opinion is rather fresh and awesome.

Truth to be told, I've got some plans to completely rearrange how things appear here, but the question is when/how I'm going to get around to doing it.  At least in the meantime we now have a working WYSIWYG editor again.

So that's that.  Expect appearance to change more drastically in the not too distant future.

UPDATE: It appears that the bug has gone away, for now.

In case anyone was wondering - we do offer manual character file restores in cases of file corruption, or any other situations that are not part of the game (crashes, backup restores gone awry, etc). We do not, however, offer restores for equipment, gold or objects that are stolen or destroyed by in-game monsters, non-player characters, or characters that are PK or have managed to become Vampires.

Original post:
I'm not entirely sure what the issue at hand is, but for some reason we seem to have player file corruption issues that we are having problems resolving.

Please bear with us while we are working on this issue.

Thanks!
Your Implementors

I created some tintin++ aliases that will display the level for an area, and after a programmable delay, recall and speedwalk the directions. I took most of the directions from Dorsh's directions. Sorry about the ugly formatting :)

Some of you are already aware that we were experiencing an issue with player file corruption. This seemed to be related to how the MUD handles idle player characters.

Originally MERC based MUDs would send idle players to the Void if they were idle for more than a few minutes. If you returned to play within a certain period of time, you would return from the Void and reenter the game in the room from which you had vanished. This was a good safety mechanism particularly if you were in an area filled with aggressive monsters.

If you did not return to play after a certain amount of time the game would force you to quit. The issue with this is that (presumably) a small bit of code left over from the days of needing to "Rent" at a Inn to prevent loss of your equipment would result in your player character losing their equipment in the Void. After the MUD rebooted, the equipment would be lost permanently.

For some reason (I imagine conformity to AD&D rules) it has been necessary to practice the skills listed above. This was never part of the original Meat MUD, and as far as I'm concerned detracts from the fun of the game. Therefore it is no longer necessary to practice these "skills". If anyone has spent practices on these, please contact me and I'll reimburse your character up to 3 practices per skill.

While I steadily get around to wrapping up Meat MUD Classic 1.0, I also would like to list a batch of ideas I would like to see happen with the next release series (1.0 to 2.0):

I was never really happy with the Mud Magic Java MUD client that we had set up here, particularly because it was a closed source binary package that could not be customized. I didn't like that the default window was not sized properly, and the appearance didn't really strike me as very good either.

Today I finally got around to seeing what else was out there, and checked out the JamochaMUD Java client.

I just had a sudden realization that it would be foolish to stop development on Meat MUD Classic just because I want to preserve it the way it is now, and not improve upon the original. You would think that by now I would pick up on the fact that while I may miss the original Meat MUD from the early 90s, there are not many other people who do, and even more importantly very few new players who want to get into such a game.

For example, this would be like current World of Warcraft players going back to Ultima Online - it just ain't gonna happen. I made the mistake of assuming that because I miss the old goofy group of players of the original Meat MUD then lots of people would love to jump into a practically stock MUD with the same tired features and gameplay that have been MUD staples for decades. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) things have changed - drastically - on the internet and elsewhere.

So where am I going with this line of thinking?