Mud hosting

I am currently looking for some mud hosting... it will be my self and possible a few other people working on the mud ... and I do not really want to pay a monthly fee for it, cause the public will not allowed on it for at least a few months
I am at college right now or I would host it my self

Are you still around?

If you're still looking for hosting, unfortunately your wishes aren't likely to come true. If you ask somebody else to host it, they are very likely to charge you for it. Many hosts do however have plans where you pay much less per month, but can only have so-many connections to your game at once. This is probably your best bet if you want it hosted, but cannot host it yourself.

What kind of limit on connections would a home computer impose for hosting? Ball park figures.

If it's a computer you run and manage yourself, then in principle there is no limit (well, other than the operating system limit, which is more than a thousand, if not much more). The only limit is that of bandwidth - and even then, if all people are doing is building, you're not likely to have much trouble.

Keep in mind, though, that even heavy use on a MUD is relative. Assuming you're typing a continunous 120 wpm of commands at the MUD (which is very fast typing), at an average of 5 letters per word, that's 600 letters per minute, or 10 letters per second. That's tiny. Now let's assume that the MUD is sending back a paragraph (room desc) per second. Those are about 80 characters per line, with about 6 lines. That's 480 characters.
So per player, at very high - implausible, in fact - usage levels, the MUD server needs 10 bytes incoming, and 480 bytes outgoing, per second. That's tiny.

So, to answer your question, if you have a decent connection (low-latency, not just high bandwidth), you shouldn't have to worry too much about connection limits for less than 10 people - maybe 20, 30, 40, even 50. Again, 'heavy use' on a MUD really doesn't use a lot of bandwidth.

I suspect that the reason hosts provide these connection-limited packages is not because it saves them money/resources to limit connections, but because it attracts MUDs-in-progress to their service.

Wow, good answer Dave. I have a Cable connect through a broadband router.
The reason I'm asking is, I'm curious to know if dextermovie could use my computer as a server, in exchange for helping me configure everything properly.
I have a couple of extra HD's sitting around that I could add as dedicated to a MUD only.
I know some about networks but not enough, so I'd need the guidance for configuring a server.

You should be fine, since the MUD isn't going to be public. For that matter, you could probably run a (small) public server.

The big issue, I think, will be latency, not bandwidth. Sometimes a connection can transmit lots of data quickly, but it takes a while to make the transmission. Think of a CD drive, for instance. You have two factors in reading off a CD drive: how fast you can get the optical reader to the right place (latency) and how fast you can spin the CD reading bytes off of it (bandwidth).

Anyway, yes, you should be fine. There's only one way to find out for sure, though, and that is trying it out and seeing what happens. If things don't work out quite right, interacting with the MUD will have a slight delay. But remember that since it's all text-only anyhow, that delay will probably not even be noticeable.

Great info Dave thanks. I know what you mean by latency, like when you try to read a Floppy drive and it's mechanically slow.
I ran SMAUG on a Win32 drive for awhile and had it working, this was an older version.
I'll start researching and setting up today. First, do the CGYWIN install thing, then download and compile SMAUG (put my other HD in first of course), and then fire up AreaEditor (of which I am a proud owner.) :)
How hard is it to find testers and builders?

What system will your home server be running? If at all possible, run Linux of some flavor. I recommend Fedora (http://fedora.redhat.com/) but that's just my preference. It'll make a number of things easier. But, if you're on just one computer that is both your computer and your server, you might have to stick with Windows. Or, you could set up a dual-boot system, but that requires some know-how, not to mention that when you're in Windows you can't run your server, and when you're running your server you can't run your Windows stuff...

As for finding testers and builders: I don't really know the answer to this, since I've never had to go looking for them, but I can speculate.
From my experience running a MUD, lots of people want to build because they see it as a source of prestige. Of course, this is an already established MUD, and they have peers (other players) to impress. People probably wouldn't feel the same about a start-up, unknown MUD.

Keep in mind that good builders are usually busy with their own projects already, be it on an existing MUD, or starting their own. The question you'll have to answer to attract them is: "Why is your MUD worth working on, perhaps more than what I'm working on now?"

I'd recommend starting out on your own, playing with things and getting the hang of it all. Once you have a clearer idea of where things are going, you can get a team together. You'll know what you're doing, and (hopefully :P) you'll know what you want. You'll be able to provide direction, and keep things under control. When you delegate responsibility to other builders, you have to trust that they'll do the job right and not mess up mob/obj stats, etc. Or, you go and verify everything by hand, in which case it's worth asking the question if you shouldn't have just done it yourself in the first place.

Good luck!

Ah crap, I didn't think of that, not being able to run Windows in Server and Client mode. Does Fedora allow that?
Anyways, you've been very helpful and gave me lots to research. I won't worry about builders and such yet. I'll be happy messing around till I know what I'm doing somewhat. Even if I find a handful of people to try it out would be ok.

Well, you *can* run Windows in both "server" and "client" mode. It just means that whenever your turn off your Windows machine (or log out or whatever) you will be shutting down your MUD server, as well.

Still, you can certainly run the server on Windows. Using Cygwin will make your life much easier in that respect. I strongly recommend against using native Windows, because it's harder to monitor and control. If you can't go with a full Linux installation - and if you don't have a separate PC and aren't willing to only run Linux, then you can't - use Cygwin.

I just did that today. I installed CYGWIN or whatever, using the advice from Gammon help downloads. I also got the SMAUGFuss files, and the AreaEditor. I'll need to get familiar with cygwin, for one thing.

Nick has lots of guides on compiling SMAUG and using Cygwin around here. You might have to browse through the forum sections, or look around on the website. His guides are good - they should give you a pretty decent idea of how to do the basics. From there, you should be able to start up your server and connect to it.

Yeah, I noticed the guides, they are good.

One minor problem you're likely to run into is that the current SmaugFUSS uses a different reset system than the old Smaug which is of great advantage to you, except that Area Editor doesn't support the new room based resets which means that you can still use Area Editor to create new areas and edit areas that are to be imported or original stock areas, but once an area has been installed to the mud and the command foldarea has been executed on that area then Area Editor will no longer be able to open that area file.

Duely noted.

http://www.frostmud.com/ is still accepting applications.
Completely free server. Guy who runs it is pretty trustworthy, I've been using it as a test server for the past two years.

Another alternative for free hosting:
http://www.muddomain.net/

Necro or not, you can build a custom 24/7 server around 100$-150$, and hopefully you already have high bandwith net access (more than a 56k modem) @ home. No monitor or keyboard needed after you installed an OS.

Steps:

1.) buy cheap integrated mini-itx motherboard built with Via Epia or Intel Atom CPU around 50-70$ per. They can play back HD avi movies without flickering or lag, so it may be enough for running the main loop of your mud server.

2.) Just throw in 128/256 or 512 MB RAM, buy CF to IDE adapter then install an 1-2 GB Compact Flash card as the main drive (no moving parts, less power needed), plug in one dedicated eternet cable coming from your router and buy a cheap 20-30 W power supply and a cheap mini house. You can alternatively use an USB pendrive, or an SSD drive as the main drive.

3.) Install a linux distro like debian or ubuntu server, or win2k/xp on your comact flash drive.

4.) Solve to get a static IP adress with dyndns or whatever. Many faqs on the net.

5.) Install/compile the mud server.

6.) Put your server under your table or a secluded corner of your house, never switch it off, manage it through your home network if needed.

7.) profit.... ok not really, but fun

PS:
Typically Via Epia boards comes with Eden CPUs run @ 500, 800 or 1200 MHz with !!!passive cooling!!! and they have integrated 10/100 MBit ethernet, ide/sata/usb/audio/vga/firewire/whatever as well. Some of the Intel Atom CPUs have passive cooling as well. You can build an absolutely silent little box that do the work all the time consuming very little power.

Example: Via Epia 500 or 8000 (rather old boards) or brand new INTEL D410PT.