What Coding Skills Are Needed to Create a MUD?

bastilleangel: You're welcome. Feel free to post here if you get stuck. I meant to agree with deadelf's post a few days ago but got distracted. He(?) highlighted something I'd alluded to in how he(?) learned to code...

Programming really amounts to a thought process that you translate into a language the computer can read. A lot of coders start out (and this can persist for a long time) thinking, "You type X in order to make Y happen." They get mired in the mentality that the code made it happen instead intuitively understanding that what they said through the code made it happen. Sometimes this turns them into technology chasers, who endlessly adopt new frameworks or languages or resource management tools under the mistaken idea these things create good code. Sometimes it manifests in endlessly looking for how other people do things instead of learning the process themselves, thinking they can end any debate where they are required to explain why their solution is better by parroting "best practices" and making their lead want to murder them. Sometimes it stays subconscious, leaving the coder feeling intimidated by new languages because they are overwhelmed by the things they'll have to memorize in order to make the computer go.

At some point you have a breakthrough (hopefully) and you get that you are a computer who is talking to a dumber computer. You're not building a shopping center out of bricks, you're giving instructions to a moron. Once you subconsciously accept that, you will only be limited by your ability to conceptualize what you want and your ability to speak it clearly. Well, those two things and problems every job has: time, ability to focus, research needed etc.

as someone who's developed a mud before, it's mostly a case of persistence and willingness to ship something before it's really done more than any kind of formal education.

if you're gonna go 100% from scratch, pick a language, figure out how to do sockets, then hack up a rudimentary parser and you're about a combat system away from a basic dikumud.

e: though these days i just stick with the engine my team knows best, which happens to be some ancient monstrosity of cruft and rust.

e:e: also any game that you've played and enjoyed is almost positively a goddamn nightmare under the hood. it's certainly good practice to write good code, but when it comes to hobby projects, often the only way that gets you a game at the end of the rainbow is the grotesque hacks.