How to host a small game?

Hi there, forum!

I am an old-time user of Pueblo, MUSHclient and Penn. Over the years, I became estranged to the lovely world of MU*, but never entirely forgot about it.

I have what I understand must be an extremely basic question - I've spent days trying to figure it out, and it clearly stems from a pure lack of understanding of how things work, so I'm going to have to bother the community for answers.

To be especially brief, I want to host and run the smallest MUSH ever for several friends (4 max), for nostalgia and RP purposes. Ideally, I would simply host this using my computer as a server, leave it running or let them know when it was up.

I only know this is possible because a friend of mine years and years ago did this for me - there was only the two of us, and we had lots of fun @digging rooms and describing them - it only needed to be us back then and it was a lot of idle fun. Now, I don't know how to do this myself.

Most of the documentation available is aimed at folks who want to start and run their own full-fledged game like the ones we all know and love(d). My 'game' really involves a tiny bit of hobby work to build and will host a very finite number of people, all of whom used to play these all the time. It won't get out of hand, and it would be ridiculous to pay for hosting (or jump on with other full-fledged MUSHes, which I couldn't justify) for this nostalgia trip.

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How do I set up my computer to be able to host?

I want people to use either Pueblo (which I think is super abandonware now) or MUSHclient to connect.

Do I need to run TinyMUSH or PennMUSH to host/build the game world?

Can they just use PennMUSH as a client, too? That would be simplest. ?


I can't even figure out how to connect to my OWN 'newgame' in order to build, which means that it's not 'serving' correctly. I have a static IP, and I understand I have to open ports but the results I'm getting seem to indicate I'm not being successful at opening them, though I've followed steps to do so.

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I just need a bit of unfortunate hand-holding as I stumble over this set-up. It can't really be hard given we did it as children?! I just can't seem to figure it out this time.

Thanks in advance to anyone who helps me out with this little project. It's dear to my heart. :j

It should be super-easy. First you need a server. I don't think you said what OS you have, but assuming Windows, look for the Windows port of PennMUSH here:

http://pennmush.org/#penn-win32

If not, get one of the other versions.

You just need to follow the readme file, you may have to rename the minimal database so it uses that.

Fire the server up, and set aside to keep warm. ;)

Now connect your client to it (eg. MUSHclient). For you, on your own PC, the IP address is "localhost", and the port is whatever the default is (see the readme).

You probably can connect as the God character, whose password you should immediately change, and maybe make yourself a "normal" character to play with.

For your friends to connect you probably need to "port forward" your router. You can Google that, but one post that might help is:

http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=8369

I made a two-minute video showing the process (for Windows).

It takes you from downloading, installing, starting the MUSH and connecting, all in two minutes. :)

https://vimeo.com/103981837

Ah! Yes, that clears up a lot for me! Deceptively simple, of course~

I think I'm sorted out for now, and pointed in the right direction - Thank you very much Mr. Gammon!

A bit of testing indicates:

• The God character is "One"
• Its password is "one"
• ie. connect one one
• To shut down the MUSH (as One): @shutdown
• To save the game (without shutting down): @dump

You should of course change the password for "One" as soon as possible.