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![]() These days, we use it the same way others use Slack or Discord. We check in with each other almost daily on CaveMUSH, the MUSH I started in March 2000. I made friends back then that I still have today. I first connected to a MUSH in the fall of 1994. ![]() It’s a programmable text environment in which I can build any location I’d like to visit-and my imagination is the rendering engine, just like when I read a book. I MUSH (the term is used as a verb, too) because it’s the ultimate form of linguistic creative expression. The community values creativity and good conversation. On a social/coding MUSH (like mine), you’re free to build whatever you want. Other games are more open and experimental. Some players roleplay a character within the setting and live out a fantasy life of their choice. They usually have a specific theme, such as Transformers, Tolkien books, or vampires. Each MUSH server (or game) is a virtual playground for your imagination. The administrators who run MUSHes are known as wizards. You can use built-in commands, such as “look” or “say,” or custom commands programmed by other players, to interact. When you first connect to a MUSH, you see a description of your environment and a list of objects or players in that location. ![]() Exits are the links that connect everything. Players are the people connected to the game (basically, live objects). Objects move around within rooms and other objects. Rooms are basic locations with their own descriptions. Structurally, MUSHes are divided into rooms, objects, players, and exits. Another is via program interactive environments that use an internal scripting language called “MUSHcode,” which runs within the game environment in real-time. One way they can do this is by using in-world commands (such as to build a room). On a MUSH, players can build rooms and link them together. Prior to this, the room structure of a MUD was either hard-coded in a compiled language (such as C), or by editing configuration files and restarting the server. The defining characteristic of a MUSH, though, is someone can extend and program it from within the environment. Like a MUD, a MUSH is entirely text-based. The Basics: What’s a MUSH Like? A MUSH circa 1995. ![]() The term MUSH is a pun with no fixed meaning beyond wordplay on the term “MUD.” Some people later coined the backronym “Multiuser Shared Hallucination,” but it wasn’t universally accepted. He added an in-world programming language and called it “TinyMUSH,” and, thus, MUSHes were born. The following year, developer Larry Foard used TinyMUD’s code as the basis of his own server. In 1989, Jim Aspnes created one of the first socially-focused MUDs called TinyMUD. Soon, a few MUDs distanced themselves from combat and became purely social platforms for chatting and experimentation. As MUDs grew in popularity throughout the 1980s, several variations emerged in terms of game styles and codebases (the server software that hosts a MUD). ![]()
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