Seems like everyones using swr instead of smaug... What is it? Is it better than smaug, and how so?
Also, someone on my network is wondering about how secure smaug is, and risks of running it, thanks...
oh, and how secure is swr compared to smaug?
swr = Star Wars Reality
It's a Star Wars mud codebase based off of SMAUG. They both use the same base code and the setups are almost identical. There's really only a few considerable differences between the two. For example, SWR has starfighters and the like. You really can't compare the two as one being better then the other, considering that one is Fantasy based and the other is Sci-fi. They just happen to both use the same codebase. If I were to say which is more STABLE, I'd definitely probably go with standard SMAUG.
As for security, it's just like running any other network application. You need at least one port open to use it, and an open port is always a threat. However, if you're running your MUD server program as a user other then 'root', (which I pray you are) then the risks are slim to none.
SMAUG = SWR when considering security.
I agree with everything that Boborak said. I've been using SWR for a long time now, and I can say that SMAUG is more stable then it easily. Once you fix a few bugs found in SWR 1.0 (which I hope you are using, 2.0 doesn't work very well..) its accually quite stable. For instance I had one bug that would crash the mud every couple of hours, but when I fixed it, boom, it hardly ever crashes, and when it does its usually one of my coding mistakes (trial and error you know...). Anyways, both code base's offer good flexibility as for what you want to do. If you want a futuristic mud (doesn't have to be star wars or anything..) with space ships and all, SWR is the way to go. In SWR it is very easy to change all star wars related code to anything else. SMAUG is a good way to go if you want to add lots of snippets, and if you want really good race selection like Demons, Elves, etc. Both are fairly easy to warp into getting what you want out of them as long as you leave the credits in. Anyways, both have advantages and disadvantages. But if you are going for a mud that has ships, but your intent on using SMAUG then good like with porting the space system over, because writing one from scratch would be fairly difficult. Hope this helps, any more questions are always welcome. :)