Discworld mudlib

The Discworld mudlib is an LPC framework, or mudlib, originally written for the Discworld MUD.

It has been regarded as one of the more advanced mudlibs around: according to Lauren Burka's MUD timeline, written in 1995, the Discworld mudlib was only the second widely available mudlib. At the time of its release it had the most advanced command parser and user interface available in a mudlib.^[1] It has been described as having "many concepts you will not see in other mudlibs for any server", as well as "too many frogs and wombles", possibly in reference to its frequent use of eccentric variable names such as "frog" and "womble".^[2]

Some design elements in the mudlib have become popular in other MUD libraries - for example, the library's player commands that express emotions are named "soul commands", and the way ANSI colour is encoded (e.g. %^BLUE%^) has been named "Pinkfish colour" after David Bennett, the main author of the library, who is widely known in the MUD community by his alias of Pinkfish.

Another notable MUD that uses this mudlib is Nanvaent.

FluffOS

FluffOS is Discworld's fork of the MudOS driver. Features added in FluffOS that are not present in MudOS include available MXP output, UTF-8 capability, support for running on 64-bit architectures, IPv6 support, and (optionally) stricter type checking of variables in LPC code. Recent versions of the Discworld mudlib only run on the FluffOS server. It is open source under the MudOS license.

The Dead Souls Mudlib is another FluffOS mudlib. Like the Discworld mudlib, it was originally written for MudOS, but current versions require FluffOS.

Medical use

The Discworld mudlib was used in a medical computing experiment into the wearable data collection devices, in which a small MUD was created.^[3] The paper referred to several features of the mudlib, such as the program's use of coordinates to describe room locations, its broadcaster (a mechanism for sending messages to all players within a given area), and its complex parser.

References

1. ^ Mulligan, Jessica; Patrovsky, Bridgette (2003). Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide. New Riders. pp. 456. ISBN 1592730000. "1993 [...] The Discworld MUDlib is released. "The choice of MUDlibs for MudOS helps add to the driver's growing popularity. At this time, the Discworld MUDlib contains the most advanced command parser and user interface available in a MUDlib." —George Reese" 
2. ^ Reese, George (1998-09-15). "LPMud FAQ". Internet FAQ Archives. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/games/mud-faq/lp/. Retrieved 2010-04-13. 
3. ^ Cruickshank, Don; De Roure, David (2004). "A Portal for Interacting with Context-aware Ubiquitous Systems". Proceedings of First International Workshop on Advanced Context Modelling, Reasoning and Management: 96–100. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/9975/. Retrieved 2006-04-26. 

External links

• About the mudlib on the Discworld MUD site
• Mudlib release 9.99 download
• FluffOS download
• The LPMud FAQ
• The MUD Timeline
• The LPMUD Timeline
• The LPmuds.net downloads page has a driver-bundled version of Discworld that's "easy-ish" to install.
• Discworld MUD's LPC for Dummies, first edition
• Discworld MUD's LPC for Dummies, Book 1, second edition
• Discworld MUD's LPC for Dummies, Book 2, first edition
• Discworld MUD's Being A Better Creator, first edition
• Discworld MUD's Working With Others, first edition