Hennepin is the world’s first PHP mud. I wrote it as if it were an entry for the 16k MUD Competition because I thought it’d be fun to scrunch it way down. It only uses 7,820 bytes, so there’s plenty of room to add more features like items.
In the stealth-based gameplay, you are a hacker in a network of computers and routing that’s both autogenerated and player-built. You advance by building up and protecting your own network and hacking through other networks.
Features:
- Area and room world, live-extended and -edited
- Persistence for players and the world
- Player stats: HP, Vitality, Strength, Stealth, and Perception
- Simple combat with attack, defend, hide, and regen
- Social commands like say, emote, and who
- Toggleable ANSI color with escape codes
- Commands can be recoded and reloaded live
During development the gameplay was actually about players building areas for each other to explore and conquer, but I couldn’t figure out a nice way to somehow balance an area’s payout vs. maintenance. Unfortunately, this code was lost over time.
In case you have a morbid sense of curiosity, you can view it on GitHub.
