amateur wants a new MUD?

Hey,

Not sure if this is the right place to put this thread so sorry if it's not. I have dreamed of creating a mud for about 8 years now. So thats 8 years of ideas just piling up in my heads unused storage space, I mean I've got histories, classes, orgs, races, combat systems, items, mobs, just about everything I could dream of floating around in my head exvept the know how to actually make it a reality.

So revently I've learned that alot of change is about to happen in my life, and I realized, I'm not getting any younger. So before my youth has evaporated completely I want to have my MUD up and running officially.

Thus I'm here to ask, How do I build my own mud? Where do I start? I mean I seriously don't know like at all. I know there's clients of some sort, like smaug and pennmush, but I don't fully understand much of that. I want my mud to be my own, I want it to be %100 original, Like I don't there to be anything I didn't put there.

but I don't know anything about coding... can someone help me out here? I need a guide, or maybe even a partner who knows the coding end of things?

Making a completely new MUD really does require coding.

You could adapt something like SMAUG with comparatively little effort (just modify area files to add new areas).

But from scratch? It's a big undertaking.

I understand that from scratch would likely take alot of work and coding. But even if I use smaug or pennmush I would need some help because neither of them are built to easily do what I want. I am wanting to build something that will eventually have somewhere in the neighborhood of probably 500k rooms, a minimum of 9 play run city orgs, with a minimum of 45 play run guild orgs and who knows how many clans, villages, shops etc.
So I would likely need coding anyhow. I would honestly love to learn coding and I'm even hoping to go back to school for it.

If I am going to use smaug or pennmush, which one should I use? and How would I go about deleting the pre built areas and rooms already in the code? How would I go about editing or overhauling the existing class system? Is there an organized manual or list of syntax commands to help me achieve these goals?

Sorry if I overcomplicate this, it's just that my mud idea is like my baby, metaphorically speaking that is.

You have to consider this though; which would take longer: developing a MUD from scratch, which includes designing combat + developing OLC + communication systems + file formats, etc... or modifying an existing codebase to accomplish your goal?


These are good reads:
http://www.gammon.com.au/scripts/showfaq.php?productid=7
http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/bbshowpost.php?bbsubject_id=2293
http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/bbshowpost.php?bbsubject_id=5959


I don't know about PennMUSH; but it all depends on how much you want. Smaug has a theme already built into the game, do you want to consider something lighter?