Getting started as a total newbie

[Leviathan-7]

I'm new to the concept of running a MOO as a whole, and I'm looking to run something serious RP oriented like Sindome. I'm fully prepared to spend any amount of time learning how to do this kind of thing. Could anyone point me on how to get started?

[Wolfgang Faust]

A few questions to get us started:

• What are your goals in running this MOO?
• How much experience do you have playing other MOOs?
• How much experience do you have with the MOO programming language? How much experience do you have with  *any* programming language?
• Have you done any *NIX server administration before?
• Have you compiled a MOO server already?
• Have you *picked* a MOO server already?

On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 10:00 PM, Leviathan-7 <moonman...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm new to the concept of running a MOO as a whole, and I'm looking to run something serious RP oriented like Sindome. I'm fully prepared to spend any amount of time learning how to do this kind of thing. Could anyone point me on how to get started?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MOO Talk" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to MOO-talk+u...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to MOO-...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/MOO-talk.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

The views expressed above are exclusively mine, if anyone's.

[Leviathan-7]

I intend to run a serious RP MOO, like Sindome, where character stats and gameplay mechanics go hand in hand with roleplay. I have a general idea of how MOOs work from a player standpoint, but not from an administrative or programming one. That said, I'd be willing to try learning whatever language necessary, as the only one I currently have experience in is LUA and I'm unsure if that's useful for anything. I have not compiled a MOO server already nor have I picked one, as I'm still trying to find out (and by extension, something I probably need a recommendation for to choose one) which one to use, though I've been told to look at LambdaMOO.

[Wolfgang Faust]

I can't give you any advice on which server to pick; most of my experience comes from programming on lambda.moo.mud.org and experimenting with the stock server. I've played around with Stunt a little bit but don't know much about it. Perhaps some of the other list members can give you advice here.

The rest of this message will assume that you've picked LambdaMOO, or perhaps some derivative such as Stunt or GammaMOO.

I recommend finding an existing MOO on which you can get a programmer's bit to learn about MOO programming, before you try running your own server. This lets you focus on learning the language and environment without dealing with server setup as well. (Hint: If you want a progbit on lambda.moo.mud.org, go to the Library Alcove (#95512) and ring the gong. When the butler arrives, ask him for a programmer's bit. Once you have it you can "install programmer's bit".)

The LambdaMOO language is fairly similar to Lua, though it's definitely not exactly the same. To get started, yduJ's wind-up duck tutorial is always fun: http://www.fringenet.net/MOO/yduJtut.txt

You will most certainly want to read the Programmer's Manual very thoroughly:  http://lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/ProgrammersManual.html

Once you're comfortable programming in the language, the next step in creating your own MOO is to compile your own server and pick a core.

There's not much to say about compiling; it should be a simple matter of reading the documentation, making any configuration changes necessary, and running `make`. There are various patches available to add features to the LamdbaMOO server (for instance waifs or Unicode support); I know very little about these.

LambdaCore is the "standard" core; it was derived from the lambda.moo.mud.org server and has basic functionality. If you really want to go all-out you could go with Minimal.db which has basically nothing whatsoever, but I don't suggest that--you'll mostly be reinventing the wheel. jhCore is another one, which offers a different feature set from LambdaCore. There are also other cores around as well.

Having picked your core, you can now go about programming your world. This is basically just a matter of figuring out what you want your world to be like and then writing code to make it happen--it's a lot of work but there's not much I can say about it.

At this point you will also want to read the Newbie Arch-wiz FAQ: http://www.moo-cows.com/docs/faqs/new-archwiz-faq.html (it seems mostly geared towards LambdaCore, but you may find useful tidbits even if you're using a different core.)

and also the Wizard Basics page: https://web.archive.org/web/20081206084116/http://moo.kcc.hawaii.edu/~moo/MOO/files/documentation/wizbasics.html


Some other useful resources:

• http://www.moo-cows.com/
  
• http://www.hayseed.net/MOO/
  
• http://www.fringenet.net/MOO/
  

There is also an archive of the MUD-Dev mailing list available at http://www.disinterest.org/resource/MUD-Dev/. This mailing list is not specifically about MOOs, but it has a lot of discussions about how to build worlds out of plain text, and you may find something interesting there. (Arbitrary example: I found the discussion of dynamically changing room descriptions interesting.)

Hopefully this will help you on your way.

[Leviathan-7]

All of this definitely helps and is mostly exactly what I was looking for, but my only question is where I could find some reliable hosting for a MOO.