I'm considering developing a secondary MUD and possibly using something other than smaugFUSS to do it.
My question is: how do they compare to each other at the present: That is, SMAUG 1.8 just recently released, AFKMUD's latest version, and SmaugFUSS' latest?
How do you guys feel about the competitors?
I'd go with AFKMud or SmaugFUSS, no questions asked. Samson does a pretty good job keeping the bug fixes in sync between both codebases. SmaugFUSS will be more familiar to you which might be worth a lot.
Also worth keeping in mind is that SmaugFUSS 1.8 is going to come out soon with many of the SMAUG 1.8 enhancements.
I would not go with SMAUG 1.8 because they did not fix very many of the bugs that the FUSS team has long since fixed.
Great advice. Thanks. If I may ask, have you (or anyone else) found the version updating procsss of your current MUDs easy?
Erg. I wouldn't want to even think about upgrading my MUD to a more recent codebase. :-) Part of the reason is that the code has been around since 1996 and so much is so different that the process would be very complicated. Depending on how much you have changed, it will be more or less easy to upgrade to a newer version. It's sort of hard to give a more specific answer than that.
I'm probably not the best person to listen to in this case, but since you did ask :P
My personal preference for a new base, if you're looking to go that route, would be AFKMud. But then, I have a serious developer's bias. Bu as David said, I do keep up on fixes and new stuff for it, so you'd at least have something that's being actively kept up.
You'll find that most of the other Merc/Diku/etc stuff has been lying dormant for years. This causes all sorts of trouble since many codebases can be difficult to clean up just to get things going on modern compilers.
As far as updating, what do you currently run now? I've made a great effort to maintain as much backward compatibility with older data formats as possible with AFKMud ( and now with SmaugFUSS 1.8 ) to avoid having too much trouble caused when people try to migrate over.
Sorry guys. I think what I meant to ask is much simpler than I let on. I was curious how difficult it would be to upgrade between versions of the same base, particularly between smaugFUSS and AFKMUD. E.g. from smaugFUSS 1.7 to 1.8, or AFKMUD 2.0 to 2.1.
I imagine there are only certain files you need to copy over and leave behind ones like areas, help.are, etc. Maybe a compile too? I have no idea.
I'll most likely give AFKMUD a shot, btw, for my second project. :) Gotta support you guys.
Oh. Gotcha.
In that case, not that difficult. SmaugFUSS 1.7->SmaugFUSS 1.8 you could just drop all the new source code in and run a clean make and you'll be fine.
Pretty much the same with AFKMud 2.0 to 2.01 and/or 2.02.
The big difficulty in upgrading between versions of the same codebase, at least with regard to AFKMud or SmaugFUSS, is if you've made your own significant changes to the parts that are being upgraded. On the other hand, if you follow the forums for either of these codebases fairly closely and stay caught up with the bug fixes, the upgrades when new versions come out are usually pretty clean/easy as Samson said.