Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Anyone still play MUD games?

This is topic Anyone still play MUD games? in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 12-11-2008, 05:25 PM:

Topic says it all. Anyone?

I used to lose hours and hours and hours of my life on those things, but had such great fun. I came across the source code for CircleMud on a CD the other day and I was reminiscing.

[ 12-12-2008, 09:51 PM: Message edited by: Mike Olpin ]

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 12-11-2008, 05:35 PM:

quote: Mark J. Marshall
Topic says it all.

Except for WTF a MUD is... [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 12-11-2008, 05:45 PM:

Was that easier than going to Google and typing in "mud"?

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 12-11-2008, 05:47 PM:

Yep. [Smile]

Seeing as not everyone here who doesn't know is gonna take the time to Google mud (which will probably produce a trillion hits).

And there's this little thing about teaser subject headers... [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Anslem Rayburn (Member # 1267) on 12-11-2008, 05:54 PM:

But if you don't know what a MUD is then you don't play them! [Razz]

Link

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 12-11-2008, 05:57 PM:

Amazing the trouble people will go thru to aviod answering a simple freakin question... [Razz]

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 12-11-2008, 05:58 PM:

Perhaps Wikipedia can help!

quote:

Mud (disambiguation)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mud can refer to one of several things:

* Mud, a liquid or semi-liquid mixture of water and soil
* Mud, in the construction industry, is wet plaster, joint compound, stucco, cement; see also slurry
* Mudslinging, saying bad things about one's political opponent
* Mud (band), a British glam rock band
* Coffee is sometimes referred to as "mud," either as a pejorative, denoting that it is stale, grainy, and distasteful, or just as shorthand, as it is used in diner lingo.
* MUD Coffee, a specialty coffee company in the East Village, NYC
* Mud, a record label, part of Parasol Records

MUD can mean:

* Master of Urban Design
* Multi-User Dungeon, a type of multi-player computer game
* MUD, in the game of contract bridge, is a defensive signalling convention that stands for Middle-Up-Down.
* Municipal Utility District, a special type of local government formed with exclusive rights to manage and distribute one or more commodities in the interests of the public shareholders of those commodities (typical examples include water districts or publicly owned electricity companies).
* MUD eXtension Protocol (MXP), a format for extending Multi-User Dungeons
* Master User Domain - In Windows NT 4.0 domains deployment strategies - a domain, containing only users, not resources
* Mud (TV series), a BBC television programme
* Manchester's Unbelievable Dungeon, a private members' club in the fetish community in the north west of England, United Kingdom
* Matched-unrelated donor in organ transplantation

Perhaps not. I'm betting it's the game based on the context.

Posted by Benny Walters (Member # 4894) on 12-11-2008, 06:10 PM:

I used to spend a decent amount of time on a few MUDs. There was a roman themed one I liked and a crazy Cthulu Mud based on the works of HP Lovecraft.

Once Everquest came out I got away from text based stuff. I played FF XI extensively and now just Wow and some Xbox live.

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 12-11-2008, 06:52 PM:

Lord...
I thought most of you guys were talented enough to build your own REAL dungeon instead of creating one in the computer...
GEEKS! [Wink]

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-11-2008, 08:18 PM:

Wait until you play "AOE" .. [Big Grin]

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 12-12-2008, 08:19 AM:

quote: Tony Bandiera Jr
Amazing the trouble people will go thru to aviod answering a simple freakin question...

Well, next time try asking politely instead of insinuating that it was somehow my fault that you didn't understand the subject and you'll find that I would be happy to answer.

"Anyone still do this?" is a teaser subject.

"Anyone still play MUDs?" is not.

For the record, MUD stands for "Multi-User Dungeon" or "Multi-User Dimension" or possibly some other things. They're basically multi-user text based role playing games, and they've been around since way before the Internet went all graphical. This was back in the days of Telnet, Z-Modem, Gopher, Finger, ... remember that?

I've personally played on several MUDs set in Middle-Earth, some in the Star Wars universe, and one based on Star Trek. Although I quickly discovered that I didn't know as much about Star Trek as I thought I did.

As a programmer I was also fascinated with the source code and what made them work. I always wanted to dive in and start modifying the code but never really got around to it.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-12-2008, 10:04 AM:

quote: Mark J. Marshall
"Anyone still play MUDs?" is not.

Yes, it is. Because a reader has to open the thread to find out what it's talking about.

Now after slogging thru about 10 posts I finally know what the hell "MUD" means. If it had been defined in the title I could have skipped the topic which holds no interest for my non-gaming self.

I hate when a newspaper or magazine article uses some acronym and never defines it. In order to make this topic user-friendly for everyone the acronym should have been defined in the topic title, unless it's a generally famous acronym like "FBI" or "WWW." Just my 2¢.

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 12-12-2008, 02:43 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
...Yes, it is. Because a reader has to open the thread to find out what it's talking about.

Now after slogging thru about 10 posts I finally know what the hell "MUD" means. If it had been defined in the title I could have skipped the topic which holds no interest for my non-gaming self....

Thank you Mike, you've proven my point. [thumbsup]

And Mark, now that is clear from at least two other people that your thread title is clear as MUD, why don't you do everyone a favor and edit it to say what you mean? [Big Grin]

And be thankful I'm the one pointing this out, and not having the Grand Poo-Bah delete the thread because of the teaser title.

Posted by Rachel Craven (Member # 1016) on 12-12-2008, 03:13 PM:

quote: Monte L Fullmer
Wait until you play "AOE" ..

Area of Effect?

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 12-12-2008, 04:08 PM:

Our dearly departed George Carlin would have disapproved of referring to FBI, WWW, etc as acronyms. "MUD" in this context IS an acronym as it spells a word. According to the late Mr Carlin, if I recall this correctly, FBI, CIA, KGB are not acronyms. They are dicks.
I do agree with Mike about being annoyed when an article uses abbreviations and the like and does not bother explaining what these abbreviations mean.
I am sure if Brad, Adam or one of the administrators finds the thread title wrong, they will jump in.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-12-2008, 06:31 PM:

quote: James Westbrook
According to the late Mr Carlin, if I recall this correctly, FBI, CIA, KGB are not acronyms. They are dicks.

I don't remember ever hearing Carlin say this but it sounds like him. Funny! [thumbsup]

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 12-12-2008, 08:02 PM:

I'm sorry, I disagree. The title does say exactly what the subject of the thread is. I'm sorry you guys don't know what a MUD is, but millions of people do. They've been around for almost two decades.

Ask yourself a question... did you read the title and for some reason NOT understand that this thread was about playing MUDs? Or was it that you just didn't know what a MUD is? I see threads referencing things in the subject that I don't know what they are. That's not the definition of a teaser subject. I did absolutely nothing to obscure the content of this thread in the subject. And this is the Yak forum, which is where we can talk about anything at all regardless of how many people know what it is.

If Brad disagrees, I'm sure he will lock or delete this thread. But then, he didn't delete this thread, so we'll see.

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 12-12-2008, 08:20 PM:

That was something George Carlin wrote in one of his books.
And if this thread is deem worthy to remain, I'm good with the decision.
And yes, I was curious what MUD was in reference to when I clicked on.
No harm.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-12-2008, 09:19 PM:

Mark - I think the problem is with the word "play" in the thread title. If you use "play" in any sentence read by a bunch of film people, they might think you are talking about playing some kind of film or trailer or something. That's what I thought at first. I clicked on the thread to find out what a MUD was and it took waaaaay too long to find out. If you had said "Anyone still play MUD games?" there would have been no confusion. I can see why simply "MUDs" is an acceptable term to the gamer crowd but not everyone here is in that crowd.

But I don't care if the thread stays either. Now that I know what it's about!

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 12-12-2008, 09:50 PM:

I've added "games" to the end of the topic, not only to clarify, but also to end this silly argument. Mark takes 20 damage for casting the Post Topic spell improperly, accidentally creating Foggy Mist instead. Anslem, Benny, & James receive 5 health points for being on topic; Monte receives 5, but then looses them for confusing Rachel. Tony and Mike got lost in Mark's Foggy Mist gone awry, and receive nothing. Now, who rolls next?

Seriously though, future posts need to be on topic.

Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 12-12-2008, 10:15 PM:

Monte are you talking about "Age of Empires"?

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-13-2008, 12:29 AM:

[Big Grin]

...something I could play for hours if I had the time...Microsoft had a good game going there..

Haven't decided if I want to get involved with "WoW" though - almost looks like "FA-X" or any of the earlier "FA" series.. Only biggie about doing "WoW" is the online playing and the monthly subscriptions.

Now, "Diablo" wasn't too bad...and adding the classic "Doom" games in this as well.,

Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 12-13-2008, 05:54 AM:

AOE was a great series, AOE Age of Kings was great as well as the Gold pack about Rome!! Word on the street is they are working on AOE 4. Sometime next year

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 12-13-2008, 09:01 AM:

Anyone played Star Wars Hyperspace? I tried it a while ago when it first came out and I don't know if it was buggy or overwhelmed or both or what. It was also my first try at the graphical massive multi-player stuff. I gave up on it after a short while, and haven't played it since.

Posted by Tom Doyle (Member # 1474) on 12-29-2008, 01:33 AM:

When I was an undergrad I got an account on my school's dusty ol' mainframe and discovered MUDs. I remember playing one based on the 'Discworld' novels by Terry Pratchett. A quick search reveals that it's apparently still up and running, and can now be played through a web browser:

http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/