Shattered Dreams MUD

Shattered Dreams MUD, or SDMUD in short, was my first large programming project, my sandbox for learning the C programming language and a lesson in managing online communities. It is approximately 3 years of development worth of multi-user dungeon (or, in a more modern term, ‘MMORPG’) goodness.

Gameplay is pretty simple and intuitive. Movement is done by typing compass directions such as north, south, east and west, or by using their respective short-hands, n, s, e and w, and so on. Similarly, to strike another player, one might type backstab 'player name', and the opponent might want to escape to safety by casting the ‘teleport’ spell, typing cast teleport, or c teleport. Here are a few screenshots of MUSHclient connected to SDMUD:

Features

SD offers a ton of features, including:

38 races, 7 classes, and four 201-level tiers for each class
Level 202: “Ancient”, available to players at the end of tier 4
Arena Duelling with associated waging system
Auto-questing
Global Quests
Immortal Quests
PK Wars and Battleground Tournaments
PK Bounties
Violent and Safe flags for World PK
OLC2 with MUDFTP, Path-tracking and Skill/Class-editing
Scheduled maintenance copyovers and reboots
Quest Forging/Enchanting
Automated Auctions
Player Housing
Message Boards (Erwin Andreasen’s Boards System)
PK/Non-PK Guild System with Guild Halls
Loner PK Guild (Loners can kill Loners)
PKNewbies Guild (Cannot be looted/Cannot loot others)
Fighting Stances (similar to God Wars’ stance system)
Minigames: Freeze Tag, Slot Machines, and more
Regular and Seasonal Events: Stock Market Collapse, Happy Moment, Christmas Bonuses, Easter Egg Scattering, and more
All of the features of DIKU, MERC, ROM, RoT, and DRM
Marriage, Exploration Tracking, and much more…

SDMUD is derivative of a line of popular MUD codebases, specifically DIKU, MERC, ROM, RoT and DRM. It is not intended to be a pinnacle of innovation but rather an experiment in combining existing ideas to shape a fun, enjoyable and addictive hack’n’slash game with some consistency and without a lot of nonsense.

Download

Shattered Dreams MUD — Version 2.0.2b – 2006.
Stripped Areas — Drop-in replacement for the stock DRM area directory. This empties most of the game world, allowing you to start from scratch using the OLC editor.

The source code available on this page provides a server for SDMUD. People wanting to play the game can then connect to it using the telnet command, available on most operating systems, or one of many clients designed specifically for MUD’s (GMud32, zMUD, MUSHclient, and more).

All of the original SDMUD source code is included in the public release, however the area and help data is not, meaning; information on rooms, NPC’s, zones and helpfiles is from the stock DRM release, not SD. You can use the stock DRM areas or a stripped down version of the area directory if you want to create your own world from scratch.

Server Requirements

To compile and run your own SDMUD server, you need:

gcc 3.4 or later (e.g. sudo aptitude install build-essential to install in Ubuntu)

SDMUD is written for Linux, but it should compile under most UNIX-based OS’s. Cygwin should compile and run SDMUD just fine.

Existing Games

If you would like to play a MUD based on SD, feel free to use a MUD client like MUSHclient, GMud32 or zMUD to connect to any of the following servers:

Malacious Bliss – darrens.ca 7000

If you run an SD derivation and would like it to be added to the list, feel free to throw me a message via the Contact page.

Support

Please do not contact me for support as I am no longer actively maintaining SDMUD. If you’re in a pickle, try seeking help from an immortal on one of the MUD’s listed in the “Existing Games” section above.

License

There are no SD-specific license restrictions. All I ask is that you give me a little credit for my work, either as ‘Rhaelar‘ or ‘Patrick Mylund‘. The respective licenses for DIKU, MERC, ROM and RoT still apply. Briefly, they are:

You may not use the MUD for commercial purposes.
You must give credit to the authors on the login screen (see Authors below).

Authors

DIKU © 1990-1991 Sebastian Hammer, Michael Seifert, Hans Henrik Stærfeldt, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe

MERC © 1992-1993 Michael Chastain, Michael Quan, Mitchell Tse

ROM 2.4 © 1993-1995 Russ Taylor

ROT 2.0 © 1996-1999 Russ Walsh

DRM 1.0a © 2000-2002 Joshua Chance Blackwell

SD 2.0 © 2004-2006 Patrick Mylund