Design of kudlib

This document describes the kudlib design. It is a good starting point for learning about kudlib. If you feel that you cannot understand what is being said here, perhaps you can first look at a list of MUD FAQ's in the Yahoo Internet catalog.

Kudlib is a mudlib for MudOS driver. Specifficaly, it requires MudOS v21c2 or higher.

The design of kudlib has been directed by several principles:

  1. Kudlib is used for game MUD's, i.e. for MUD's where people actually want to play (as opposed to having conferences or just chatting). However, this does not mean that you cannot try to adapt it for your own purposes.
  2. Kudlib does not impose a style of playing. On the top of kudlib, you can implement a quest MUD, or a monster-killing MUD, or anything you like. However, we are aware that some of the design choices have been affected by LPMuds and TMI-based MUD's.
  3. We were striving for generality, but we did not hesitate to hard-wire one of several possible choices when that greatly simplified the mudlib.
  4. A mudlib should provide full control of security.

The mudlib is divided into two parts:

Core
The core is the part of the mudlib on top of which everything else runs. The core includes such things as the security system, the master object, the login/logout control, and some of the basic classes.
Library
the library is the part of the mudlib which you might want to change for your own purposes. For example, the types of weapons, and the types of monsters that come with the mudlib might not suit your needs. The library is designed so that you can easily remove or add parts of it. This is useful because you can get rid of the things you do not need, and you can add your own things. We hope that with time a large standard collection of library modules will be available, and you will just choose the ones you need for your own MUD.

Continue reading about the basic concepts, classes of objects and the technical solutions.