Cyber Mudhole

Table of Contents

Cyber Mudhole, version 0.1
©2025 by Mark Damon Hughes
cyberhole.online/mudhole/
Text licensed as CC BY-NC-SA Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license
Code licensed as BSD, see LICENSE.txt

Mudhole

The Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) was invented by Richard Bartle in 1978, though a few online chat dungeons preceeded it. Since then, a vast number proliferated into the 1990s, then mostly went dormant, while "MMO" (Massively Multiplayer Online) games took over.

The Mudhole is a trivial, throwback, old-school MUD, or MUSH (Shared Hallucination). While there may be some adventure/combat parts to this world, for the most part it is a social space, rooms standing in for chat rooms, items standing in for props you emote with.

The normal interface to the game is a terminal, and you type at the bottom, while text of what's happening scrolls in above it. Things can happen while you're not typing, but slowly (likely every half-second), not like a 60fps shooter.

Tutorial

When you connect, you are alone, in the Registry. You're asked to either create or connnect:

• create NAME PASSWORD EMAIL
• conn NAME PASSWORD

For example, create mdh 1234 mark@example.com (I have the same password on my luggage!). Some time later, I'm either told I can log in, or get email about it. From then on, I can conn mdh 1234

The password on these lines won't be kept or shown to anyone else.

If creation or connect succeeds, you're brought to The Lobby. From here, you can explore, and read this manual for commands and other hints.

• To move around, n, e, s, w, u, d
  As north, east, south, west, up, down.
  Some rooms also have in to go in somewhere, out to go out.
  If you get lost, you can always type home to return to The Lobby. Eventually you'll be able to set your home somewhere else.

• To talk to other people, say something like this
  Which shows up as NAME says, "something like this"
  You can also use "shorter

• To emote, emote dances in circles
  Which shows up as NAME dances in circles
  You can also :fingers a widget

• To scheme in secret, whisper CONSPIRATOR You have the REPL ready?
  Which only they see. You can also -CONSPIRATOR Read, eval, and print loop.

• When you're done for the day,
  afk I'll be back Friday afternoon
  Sets an away message.
  quit
  Logs you out and removes your body from the game world until you return.

Rooms

There is one pre-defined room: The Lobby. Everything must be attached to The Lobby to be walkable.

Wizards create new rooms with @dig, and once a player has their own rooms, they can also @dig.

Commands

• UPPERCASE are things you fill in.
• NAME or ID is a unique name for any player, room, or item. IDs are a sequence of letters, digits, _ (underscore), or . (period), like Space_Hole.123. Special names me are for your own NAME, here for the current room, all for all relevant (usually items in inventory or here).
• DIR is one of n, e, s, w, u, d, in, out.
• ID... means you can repeat "ID" one or more times, separated by spaces.
• TYPE is one of player, room, item.
• TEXT can have spaces, and runs to end of input line. {} and | in text may have special meanings, so avoid those.
• COMMANDS is text divided by | (pipe). Each segment is a normal command, but may have some text replaced.
• Special @commands can be used on things you own, or by Wizards anywhere.

TODO: Most of these commands don't work yet, they're aspirational.