When I first started using the internet, text-based Multi-User Dungeons were really the only way to play a game online. Games like Starcraft or the original “graphical MUD” Ultima Online didn’t come out until the late 90s when I was a teenager. Before then, I spent quite a bit of time on the Diku-based Mirkwood (which is still online!) exploring, killing monsters, and writing zMUD scripts.

Why Evennia

Every once in a while I get motivated to learn more Python. Making a MUD is the project I keep coming back to, using the Evennia engine. Despite being pretty niche these days, MUDs are really fun to make - all the interesting parts of gamedev with the low overhead of text. Evennia is specifically designed to be a teaching aid for new Python programmers and the maintainers are very friendly and helpful on their Discord. In my research it seemed like there were not very many “modern” MUD codebases left still receiving any kind of updates, although there are plenty of projects hacking on the legacy ones.

Game Recs

The most actively developed client these days is Mudlet, which fortunately is pretty good. Most MUDs that actively played/developed will have a Mudlet plugin available that has a custom UI, auto-mapping, and other integrations which are pretty crucial for modern play.

The most populated fantasy-themed server is Aardwolf MUD which has been around forever and is absolutely massive.

While I’ve hoped that the rise of #LLM would maybe revitalize interest in the genre, it seems that kids these days prefer to consume their text-based adventures solo in the form of interactive fiction. I tried a few of these and enjoyed Wayfarer by Idrelle Games the most.

MUD Resources

Evennia

• Evennia Python MUD/MU creation system
• Evennia Documentation
• evennia/evennia | DeepWiki

Programming

• mudcoders/awesome-mud — curated list of bookmarks, tools, tutorials, and resources for text-based game developers
• MUD Standards
• The MUD Coders Guild
• Think Labyrinth: Maze Algorithms

MUD

• Discworld MUD - Soul Commands
• Roguelike Keyboard Conventions

Web Clients

• xtermia2 — alternate webclient for Evennia based on xterm.js
• evelite-client — lightweight webclient for Evennia

Maps & Editors

• Maps of classic MUD engine areas with JSON files
• Tiled — 2D level editor for game content
  • Python Scripts — Tiled docs
  • bitcraft/pytmx — Python library to read Tiled TMX maps
  • hazeliscoding/tiled-to-ascii — convert Tiled maps to ASCII representation
• Trizbort / trizbort.io — probably the simplest mapping solution. Could be modified with custom specs and deployed as a custom tool.
  • james-bryant’s fork
  • PR for custom attributes
• mapmaker — has Evennia batch support
• AW OLC Tools — might tick all the boxes for area building
• MUD Area Editor — promising 3D tool but limited
• Interactive Fiction Mapper — supports Trizbort files

ASCII Art / TUI

• REXPaint — powerful ASCII art editor by Grid Sage Games
  • pyrexpaint — Python package for loading REXPaint .xp files
• PabloDraw
• WebTUI
• 16colo.rs — ANSI/ASCII art archive from the BBS era

References

ASCII Colors

Colors — Evennia latest documentation

Trizbort Example

Trizbort in action (from Evennia Discord):

See Also: Evennia MUD Design Ideas