Welcome to the home page for the PennMUSH mud server, a freely available
(but not GPL) package.
This page is maintained by the PennMUSH Webmaster who can be reached
at
webmaster@pennmush.org
PennMUSH Translation Project!
See
http://www.pennmush.org/translation.html to learn how you
can help translate PennMUSH to other languages!
Herein lies what passes for wisdom:
- What is a mud?
- What is a MUSH?
- What is PennMUSH?
- How can I get PennMUSH?
- What about a Win32 or Mac port?
- Where can I get help with PennMUSH?
- What are the terms of the license under which I can use PennMUSH? (Is Penn GPL? No. Is it Free Software/Open Source? Yes)
- How can I learn about updates?
- Can you host my MUSH?
- Can I have a pennmush.org hostname?
- Where can I learn more?
- How did you create that cool logo?
A mud ("multi-user dungeon") is a form of textual virtual
reality program. A mud server is a computer program which maintains
a world database containing players, objects, rooms, exits, and
programs. People connect to the mud server by using the telnet
command or a dedicated mud client, and take on characters in the
virtual world, interacting with other players from around the
(real) world. Common activities include game playing, role-playing,
socializing, world-building, etc. These servers have also been used
for education, research, and artistic endeavors.
An example is
M*U*S*H,
a mud for people to socialize and build pretty things.
A MUSH ("multi-user shared hallucination") is a type of
mud which is often used for social and role-playing activities. It is
derived from "Tinymud", an early mud server.
Its distinguishing features are that any player can typically
extend the virtual world by building new rooms and objects, and
its internal programming language, MUSHcode, which is considered
to be fairly easy to learn.
There are a number of flavors of MUSH server freely available to those
who want to run their own MUSHes:
TinyMUSH 3.X,
RhostMUSH,
TinyMUX 2.X,
and PennMUSH 1.8.x.
TinyMUSH uses a disk-based database, while PennMUSH keeps its
database in the computer's memory (TinyMUX can do either). This makes PennMUSH suitable
for computers which have plenty of memory or little disk space.
From a user standpoint they offer many similar features and a
very similar command parser.
PennMUSH is being actively developed, and the latest version and any
patches are always available at
ftp.pennmush.org
in the /pub/PennMUSH/Source
directory (use a real FTP client, not a web browser) or, better, by
http at
http://download.pennmush.org).
Win32
PennMUSH can be built on Win32 operating systems (Windows
9x/ME/NT/2k/XP/etc.). To build it, you need to be able to ungzip and untar the
source code (WinZip, WinRar, 7Zip and most common archival applications
are capable of doing this), and compile it. Instructions are included in
the source tarball for compiling PennMUSH using the Microsoft Visual
C++ (win32/README.txt) and MinGW
+ MSys (win32/README.mingw) compiling environments. The cygwin toolkit may also be used in
much the same way as MinGW + MSys. Both Mingw/MSys and Cygwin provide
a UNIX-like environment for building and running the mush, which may
assist in transitioning to a Linux host for production games.
There are also precompiled binary packages available at http://download.pennmush.org/Win32Binaries/
and in /pub/PennMUSH/Win32Binaries on ftp.pennmush.org.
They provide the most common compile time configurations for quick
and easy usage. These are often simplest for users who wish to have a
private mush to learn, experiment with, and test mushcode without the
expense of paying for linux based hosting. They are named in the style
of 180p4_BSD.zip or 180p4_NT_SSL.zip (PennMUSH 1.8.0p4). The BSD and NT
represent the networking code used and the presence of SSL indicating
that SSL secure connection support is enabled. It is recommended that
the BSD networking code be used, as it allows @shutdown/reboot to work
properly on Windows NT/2k/XP systems.
Support for PennMUSH on Win32 systems can be had by emailing issues or
questions to pennmush-w32@pennmush.org to ensure they are reaching the
current Win32 support team. Some documentation and information may be
found on the PennMUSH
FAQ-o-matic. Additionally, some slightly
dated documentation and information is available on Nick Gammon's site from
his time as the primary Win32 porter and maintainer.
MacOS
Mac OS X is a flavor of BSD Unix, and PennMUSH builds out of the
box on it once the Xcode development tools are installed.
Dan Williams <dan@bigw.org>
maintained old versions of PennMUSH for Mac Classic (OS 7-9), which included some significant differences
from the stock PennMUSH distribution. You can get a binary
on the ftp site at /pub/PennMUSH/MacBinaries, but you probably
want to visit his page for the full scoop (may not be working):
http://mac.pennmush.org. Classic is not supported by modern versions of Penn.
You should be aware that most support is only available to "vanilla"
installations of PennMUSH - if you compile in a space system or
other code, the developers are unlikely to provide support, because
it would be too costly of our time (sorry). That said,
here's a list of resources:
- The documentation included in the PennMUSH distribution is
a good place to start.
- If you run into trouble, or want more
information on how to set up, hack at, or run a PennMUSH,
check out
Javelin's Guide for PennMUSH Gods, available on the Web as hypertext,
or on the ftp.pennmush.org ftp site as
hypertext or
plain ascii text.
- The PennMUSH
FAQ-o-matic is an interactive FAQ -- you can read questions and
answers and add to it as well.
- The community portal is another place to ask questions, and features several books about maintaning mushes, modifying their source code, and softcode.
- The TinyMUX wiki is yet another source, though it focuses mainly on TinyMUX, another mush-style server.
- Mailing lists: Mailing lists are currently down, but archives are available.
-
pennmush@pennmush.org is the PennMUSH mailing list.
To subscribe, visit
http://www.pennmush.org/mailman/listinfo/pennmush
The PennMUSH mailing list should only be used for problems,
bugs, suggestions, ideas, discussion, etc. that are OF GENERAL INTEREST.
It's often hard to say what's of general interest, but a good
rule of thumb is:
-
Anything that occurs before the MUSH process is running is
*not* of general interest
That is, don't report problems with downloading PennMUSH, compilation,
installation, restarts, or database corruption to the mailing list.
These are often system specific.
- The PennMUSH bug-reporting and tracking system is here. Bug reports can also be filed by email by sending them to pennmush-bugs@pennmush.org.
When reporting a problem, please always include the following
information:
- PennMUSH version number
- The type of machine you are using (Sun SparcStation, IBM RS/6000, etc.)
- The operating system and version (SunOS 4.1.2, AIX 3.2.4, etc.),
- The compiler and compiler version (gcc 2.4.5, SGI cc 2.10, etc. -- the
'file' command usually tells you the compiler version, if there's no
built-in option like '-v' or '-V' to give it),
- Whether or not you have made any changes to the code.
If the problem resulted in a crash and a core dump, a stack trace of
the core dump (see the section above) should also be included.
PennMUSH is a copyrighted piece of software. As of version 1.7.6 and
later, it is released under the terms of the Artistic License,
an OSI-compliant Free Software license.
In brief, in return for permission to use the software, you agree to:
- Retain all copyright notices
- Distribute (or return to the developers)
source code to any modifications that you make
and distribute (that is, you can't modify PennMUSH and distribute
only modified binaries).
This brief description is not a substitute for the full license.
The PennMUSH license can be read in full
here
If you join the pennmush mailing list (see above), or the
pennmush-announce mailing list, you will receive announcements
whenever a new patchlevel is released. To join pennmush-announce, visit
http://www.pennmush.org/mailman/listinfo/pennmush-announce
Don't subscribe to both lists - everything that's sent to
pennmush-announce will always also be sent to the main pennmush
list. Subscribe to pennmush-announce if you want a low traffic
announcements-only list with no discussion.
If you want to see what's coming before it's released, the beta test site
for new development versions of PennMUSH is M*U*S*H (mush.pennmush.org
4201). Note that this is a production game (a social MUSH) so
unconstructive intrusion is unwelcome, but it would enjoy having you
involved as a player. :)
There are several fine commercial services that host MUSH servers.
We do not provide MUSH hosting services. However, Javelin does run the
M*U*S*H Architect-in-Residence
program, a competitive program that can provide a year of free
development hosting to qualifying new MUSH creators. See that
link for details.
Yes! Although we don't provide sites or accounts on which
to run a MUSH, if you already have your MUSH up somewhere, we can
provide you with a friendly hostname in the pennmush.org domain
(e.g. yourmush.pennmush.org) that points to your current server address.
(If what you need is a hosting provider, check out the
rec.games.mud.admin or
rec.games.mud.announce
newsgroups where providers regularly post advertisements).
For information, please email Noltar at
noltar@pennmush.org.
Funding for the initial pennmush.org DNS registration was provided by:
- Naomi Novik,
- Caliban Tiresias Darklock,
- John Hutchinson,
- Tony Knopes,
- Sam Knowlton,
- Ashford (Anthony Ivan),
- Talek,
- Javelin,
- dennisd@BSM.
Without them, we wouldn't be here. Funding for registration renewal until 2006
has come from Javelin, with Noltar continuing to support the domain after Javelin's
retirement.
There's lots of good information about muds and mushes on the internet.
You can read the newsgroups mentioned above, or visit some muds yourself.
Here are some very handy links for further exploration:
With Net-Fu,
a terrific tool by folks at UC Berkeley, Javelin's alma mater, now accessible
at cooltext.com.