The TinyMUSH/Mac Project

About

Introduction

TinyMUSH is a descendant of TinyMUD, both multi-user servers for text-based, interactive worlds, traditionally deployed on a unix system. The TinyMUSH/Mac project is a continuing effort to bring this to the Macintosh. TinyMUSH/Mac itself is currently shipping.

Frequently Asked Questions are addressed in the TinyMUSH/Mac Project FAQ list.

News

September 30, 2000: Major news -- this page has been updated.

TinyMUSH/Mac is now built with A-line. Because Metrowerks' IDE plugin compilers are no longer used, compiling PowerPC on 68K is no longer a problem. Of course, I have a Power Mac now so it's a moot issue anyway.

Although I will continue releasing new versions of TinyMUSH/Mac as I update the libraries it uses, I have no plans to work on the MUSH codebase or port another one. But if someone else is interested in working on this I'd be delighted to guide you and include your changes.

Netmush has switched back to GDBM for the DBM layer, and the source is distributed under the GNU GPL. I haven't released new 'binaries' yet, though.

January 3, 1999: TinyMUSH/Mac source code is now available!

Plans for the near future:

Release a distribution based on the latest source.
Recreate Game Wiz.
Create HI in Game Wiz that will send Start Up and Shut Down events.
Enable indexing by name in AEA. [Done.]
Modify AEA for PowerPC, then set up PPC target for Netmush. [Done.]

Feedback

Send me your_ feedback. (Please put "TinyMUSH/Mac" somewhere in the subject field for a faster response.)

I appreciate your comments. I'd love to know how you heard about TinyMUSH/Mac, what your plans with it are, and what improvements you'd like. And even what you think sucks. :-)

Or, if you want to share your thoughts with the world, visit the TinyMUSH/Mac reviews at The Mac Orchard and submit one!

If you're running a public MUSH using TinyMUSH/Mac, why don't you have it listed on this site? Send me mail with the MUSH's name, address and port, registration address (if any), and a paragraph of description.

Download

TinyMUSH/Mac is available as a single package which includes all programs and files involved in running the server. It does not include any client programs or system software.

TinyMUSH/Mac is now available exclusively via FTP, at <ftp://www.crosslink.net/users/j/jjuran/tinymush-mac/">. Individual distribution abstracts are part of the TinyMUSH/Mac product documentation.

Required software

None, other than System 7 (or later) and MacTCP (or Open Transport).

The current state of affairs

The latest release is version 0.6.0b1. The latest pre-release of Netmush is 0.7.0d7, which must be installed over the TinyMUSH/Mac distribution.

Requirements

Macintosh Plus or later. Really.
(Mac OS) System 7.0 at least.
MacTCP, or Open Transport with MacTCP emulation.

Remaining issues

Help and news topics must be typed out in full. (The status quo was an exponential explosion of leaked memory.) Concerns: player convenience. Remedy: modify topic lookup. Priority: medium. Projection: whenever someone asks for it.
Passwords are stored unencrypted. Anyone with access to the gdbm files and knowledge of the storage mechanism (which is unchanged from the unix version) can determine the password of say, object #1. On the other hand, only an understanding of crypt() and knowledge of the key (which is in the source code) is additionally needed to do the same with the unix version. But this makes the passwords non-portable. Concerns: security, database compatibility. Severity: low. Workaround: manually reset passwords when changing to or from TinyMUSH/Mac. Remedy: implement password encryption; Priority: low; Projection: not planned.
Some GUSI TCP calls may freeze the system for a few seconds. This is because GUSI makes synchronous device control calls to the MacTCP driver. The delay is minimal when using MacTCP, but more pronounced with Open Transport. Until these calls are replaced, the delays will continue to occur. Concerns: time-critical applications on the same machine. Severity: low. Remedy: reimplement networking core or sockets library; Priority: low; Projection: one of these years.

Prior releases

Previous releases of TinyMUSH/Mac are documented in the release history.

Related Information

GUSI (Grand Unified Socket Interface) and other Mac/unix-related items by Matthias Neeracher.
Mac OS Mudding Resources by John C. Daub.
The MUD Resource Collection by Lydia Leong (aka Amberyl).
Section 2, MUD Clients and Servers, of the rec.games.mud FAQ list.

Last updated September 30, 2000 by Josh Juran with mml2html
Metamage Labs