Dead Souls FAQ, v2

Written by Cratylus @ Frontiers, October 2005
Updated January 2006

%^GREEN%^ What is Dead Souls? %^RESET%^ 

	Primarily Dead Souls is a "mudlib". There is also a Dead Souls 
MUD, but this is not what people generally mean when they refer to Dead Souls as a 
game. It also happens that a book by the Russian author Nikolai Gogol is named Dead 
Souls. That book is wholly unrelated to the Dead Souls software.

%^GREEN%^ What is it for? %^RESET%^

	It's for building a game. If what you want to do is play a game, 
you're looking for something else. 

%^GREEN%^ What is a MUD? %^RESET%^  

	A MUD is a computer program that uses text (very rarely do MUDs 
use graphics or sound) to describe virtual environments you can manipulate. 
You enter a command, the program tells you how the virtual world responds 
around you. Typically there are other people connected to the same program 
over the Internet, and you can interact with them as well. A MUD can be mostly 
social, or mostly game oriented, with quests and puzzles to solve or 
villains to defeat. The name MUD is an acronym that originally stood for 
"Multi-User Dungeon", in accord with the "Dungeons and Dragons" style of 
many early MUDs. Now it stands for different things to different people, 
but the basic concept of operation is the same, whether the game is set 
on the moon, in Manhattan, or in Middle Earth.

%^GREEN%^ What's a mudlib? %^RESET%^ 

	Generally there are two main parts to the MUD program. First is the 
"driver". This is an executable program file (in Windows, you'd see the driver 
has an .EXE extension) that enables the input and output of data, accepts 
network connections, performs basic calculations, etc. The other part 
is the mudlib, or, more properly, MUD object library. This is usually a 
large set of files in plain text that the driver reads and uses as a 
basis for the game. Some files provide information about rooms and 
environments, some files provide information about objects or creatures, 
etc. When players connect, the driver provides them the world that these 
files describe. 

%^GREEN%^ When I configure Dead Souls, it says it is a MUD. If it is really a mudlib, 
why would that be? %^RESET%^ 

	Dead Souls is not intended to be a fully-developed MUD when you 
install it. Instead it provides you with the basic framework you need to 
make a MUD of your own. After you set up Dead Souls, you should rename it, 
and customize the lib (that is, library) files to create your own world. When
 you first run Dead Souls, you will have some rooms available to explore. 
This is not your mud. It is just a set of sample places and objects to help 
you understand how to build a MUD of your own. So in a way, Dead Souls provides 
you a kind of "starter" MUD, but since it's just examples, you can't really 
consider it a MUD until you change it to suit your creative vision. 

%^GREEN%^ Is Dead Souls really Nightmare in disguise? %^RESET%^ 

	Let's break this question down into its components:

%^GREEN%^ What is Nightmare? %^RESET%^ 

	Nightmare was a mud. It was part of a branching of mud development 
that occurred early in the days of popularized mudding. Some folks 
decided to take MUD library development in a particular direction, 
and eventually made available what is now known as the Nightmare mudlib. 
Nightmare went through a few major changes, most notably from version 3 
to version IV. By that time, the development of Nightmare was solely 
managed by a coder who called himself Descartes.

%^GREEN%^ What is the relationship between Nightmare and Dead Souls? %^RESET%^ 

	It appears that Dead Souls began as a "development" MUD. This means 
that while Descartes ran his own MUD, he also worked on improving that MUD's 
lib. It is unwise to make major changes to a MUD that people are playing on, 
so the Dead Souls development MUD was one which served as a platform to 
develop, extend, and improve the Nightmare lib without risking harm to active players. 
Sometime after the release of the Nightmare IV mudlib, Descartes decided to 
withdraw it from distribution. Based on their interpretation of copyright 
law, people now do not distribute the Nightmare mudlib on Internet servers. 
However, somewhat inexplicably, Descartes released the mudlib for his 
development mud, Dead Souls, into the public domain. This meant that the 
Dead Souls mudlib was completely free to be used by anyone in any way they 
chose, be it distribution, modification, spindling or folding. Because Dead 
Souls was the development mud for Nightmare Mud, which was the base of the 
Nightmare mudlib, the relationship between the two is an extremely close one.

%^GREEN%^ How close? %^RESET%^

	Frankly, almost identical. A close comparison of the Dead Souls lib 
that Descartes released (version 1.1pre) against the last released Nightmare 
lib (IVr6) reveals that they are very nearly the same thing, file for file. 
The main differences between the two are:

* A small number of Nightmare library files aren't on Dead Souls.
* Dead Souls doesn't come with the driver or install script the Nightmare had.
* All documentation files were removed from Dead Souls.
* "Nightmare" in file headers was changed to say "Dead Souls"

This might sound like a lot of difference, but consider this: not counting 
documentation, Nightmare IVr6 lib contained 1064 files and directories, and 
the Dead Souls 1.1pre lib contains 1082. Dead Souls 1.1pre actually had more 
lib material in it than the last release of Nightmare.

%^GREEN%^ Why mess with Dead Souls, then? %^RESET%^ 

	The main problem was that Dead Souls was a bear to set up. Because 
driver development had not stopped (the driver is a separate software project), 
but lib development had, incompatibilities grew in number over time. Using 
the original driver from 1997 created a MUD that lacked important features 
of modern muds, and risked instability. Using a modern driver required a 
modification of fundamental lib systems that required some expertise to 
perform. People stopped using Nightmare because they couldn't get it, and 
they didn't use Dead Souls because the damn thing didn't work right. My own 
Nightmare lib MUD, Frontiers, continued to chug along, quietly fading into 
obscurity along with all other Nightmare IV based MUDs, while scrappy young 
newcomers like CoffeeMud lib started elbowing their way into the MUD community. 

	Then a funny thing happened. I really got into lib coding. I mean, full-on 
lib obsession. I can't really explain it, other than to say that when I was 
younger it seemed hard and impenetrable, but now that I've been working in a 
technical field for years, I have the mental tools (and patience) required to 
disassemble  and understand complex systems. I got turned on by analyzing and 
understanding stuff that I'd considered over my head in years past. But I 
realized I was living in the past. I couldn't share my exciting lib ideas 
and discoveries with anyone else, because the Nightmare LPC community was 
in the very last stages of extinction. 

	I decided to do something about it. Maybe I'd be whistling into the wind, 
tilting at windmills, or even worse, just talking to myself. But I decided 
I'd make Dead Souls a viable lib for people to use, because it would be fun, 
and because it might be nice to have other people to bounce ideas off of and 
steal code from. At worst, I'd be doing nothing more pathetic than, say, 
building model ships in my basement. At best, I might revive a once-thriving 
MUD development community. Either way, it sounded like an enjoyable project, 
so I proceeded.

%^GREEN%^ Fine, but what's so special about Nightmare/Dead Souls? Why are you making such a 
big deal of wanting people to use it? It isn't better than everything else, 
surely. [insert mudlib name here] is newer and has [insert feature here] and [other feature]! %^RESET%^  

	Yes, that may be. My experience with other libs is limited, and I'm sure 
that Dead Souls pales in comparison to others in one feature or another. My only 
answer to that is, go ahead and use the lib you're comfortable with. I make no 
claims of superiority. Hell, I'll be the first to admit there are still things 
to fix and systems to implement. But if you are not sure which lib to pick, 
Dead Souls is an excellent choice as a solid, stable, flexible and powerful platform 
to build your MUD. You can do anything in a MUD with LPC, and I mean anything. 
If you happen to have Nightmare experience, Dead Souls will be a homecoming...
like an old comfortable shoe....but without the holes or the stink.

%^GREEN%^ What's LPC? %^RESET%^ 

	LPC is a kind of programming language. Dead Souls lib files don't 
just contain descriptions of places and things: they have a format that describes 
their relationships to the driver and permits you to do fancy stuff...pretty much 
any text MUD thing you can think of, you can do in LPC.  

%^GREEN%^ How do I get started? %^RESET%^ 

	Download the latest version from http://dead-souls.net/ 
or http://www.mudmagic.com/codes/download/lpc/mudos/dead_souls and 
install it. There are versions available for Windows and for Unix. The main 
difference between the two is the driver. The Windows driver is a Windows 
executable. The Unix driver is in source code form and must be compiled.
	The lib files for both versions are identical.

	Once you log in, read the Players Handbook and the Creators Manual.


%^GREEN%^ Anything else? %^RESET%^

Read the Dead Souls Admin FAQ.
 

The end.

Dead Souls Homepage

