dd4

Dragons Domain IV MUD.

View the Project on GitHub fromage-fraser/dd4

Dragons Domain IV MUD

The Dragons Domain IV (or DD4) MUD is based on the Envy MUD codebase. It has been significantly customised, with many original game mechanics and areas.

🐉   DD4 is currently hosted in New Zealand and can be accessed at dragons-domain.org on port 8888.

🐲   Visit www.dragons-domain.org for more information!

The codebase is ancient, but can be built and run fairly easily with Docker (see below).

Owl, Shade, Gezhp

O---=<  Dragons Domain IV   >=---------------- __----^^^^^^^^^^^------__ ---O
|          .              .         _//^    ^//====......          __--^^^  |
|    )              -_       _..--+^o`\     ||_   ^^^^^^::::... /^    .     |
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|   _((__||__))=^    |  -_-_       /  /-   / ||     -_     /   \_`   '__/   |
|  =  |     +|       |    -_-_    /  /-   /   ||      -_  /     |     -|    |
| /  _|__   #|       |      - ^-_/  /|- _/   .||        -/      |   '  |    |
| |^^ |     +|^^^^--_|_     ^==-/   | \--===^^        ./        |-_ [],|  . |
|     |- . '*|       ^|       /|    |-^\^       __--^^   .     _|______|_   |
|     |     +|   +    |^^^^-_/ |  ]--I-[-]-I--[   .         /\<=-=-==-=-=>  |
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|  \-\--|--|--/-/' `-' `-' `-' `-' | []     #|------_-_-_-_-_-_-|_'   #|    |
|   |     '     |=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-|      []*|-----________- -`-- ]   *|    |
|  .|  ` ` []   |    | | | | |     |-       #|      ,    ' ------['  _#|    |
|.: | '  `  '   | [] | | | | |  []`|  []    *|   `    []    . `  |'  I*|.: .|
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|   .        __----    _---^^^^^--/_._v_Y_,_v))-----^^^^       .        '   |
|     :   ---          --        `                       `          `       |
O---<   Welcome Traveller, to the   D r a g o n s   D o m a i n   IV    >---O
| DikuMud created by H.Starfeldt, K.Nyboe, T.Madsen, M.Seifert, & S.Hammer. |
| Based on the original Merc 2.2 source written by Kahn, Hatchet and Furey. |
| DD III code by Shade, Gezhp, Owl, Brutus, Jyhad, Tavolir, and Danath.     |
| DD IV code by Shade, Owl, Gezhp and the rest of the team.                 |
O-----< MobCode from Merc 2.2 >-----< Quest Code (c) 1996 Ryan Addams >-----O

Quick start

  1. Install docker.
  2. Install docker-compose.

  3. Recommended: install make.

  4. From the root directory, initialise the player directory:

     cp -r server/player_skeleton server/player

    This only has to be done once.

  5. From the root directory, build the server image:

     // With make
 make build

 // With docker-compose directly
 docker-compose build --no-cache server

    This will build a dd4-server docker image. Repeating this command will rebuild the server.

  6. From the root directory, start the server:

     // With make
 make up

 // With docker-compose directly
 docker-compose up -d server

    The MUD server will start up on port 8888.

  7. To view the log of the running server:

     // With make
 make logs

 // With docker-compose directly
 docker-compose logs -f server

  8. To stop the server:

     // With make
 make down

 // With docker-compose directly
 docker-compose down

The server container is not configured to always restart: edit the docker-compose configuration if you don’t want this behaviour.

Files

Directory Contents Notes
server/area/ Area files *
server/player/ Player files (“pfiles”) and tables The directory actively used by the server
server/player_skeleton/ Initial player and table data Initial player data: see below
server/src/ Source code  
faq/ Frequently Asked Questions See below
maps/ Maps generated from area files See below
builder/ Docs and tools for area building  

* These directories are both mounted when using the docker-compose file to run the MUD. Areas can be modified and characters saved.

The server/player/ and server/player_skeleton/ directories

The MUD server expects a server/player/ directory with the correct structure to exist when it starts up. There are subdirectories for each letter of the alphabet, plus a TABLES/ directory that stores the current values of various tables shown in the game.

As files in this location often change, we do not keep them under version control. The server/player_skeleton/ is provided as a starting point for new installations or checkouts.

Please create a copy of the server/player_skeleton/ directory as server/player/ before running the server for the first time. This only has to happen once.

cp -r server/player_skeleton server/player

Note The server will start if the player directory is missing, however it will crash when later attempting to save player and table information.

FAQ

An HTML FAQ for new players was hosted on the MUD’s original website. The rendered FAQ pages can be found in the faq directory: view the FAQ index.

There was a script and source files to generate the FAQ pages, but I no longer have them.

The FAQ is a good place to start if you have no idea about how to play, or you aren’t familiar with the DD4 MUD.

Maps

Maps of the DD4 world can be found in the maps directory.

Area maps

Individual area maps can be found in maps/areas directory.

Please note that the code used to generate these maps is far from perfect. There are currently some very strange layouts!

(Generating these maps is a fairly interesting problem, as the world seems like a grid, but it is not really.)

Spoiler alert: area maps contain information about healers, teachers, shops, no-recall and no-mobile rooms, and show all exits (apart from portals). However, the following are not shown: whether doors are locked or bash/pick/pass-proof; the location of any objects; the location of any mobiles (beyond healers, teachers and shopkeepers).

File Notes
Index Index of all maps
Midgaard Starting city
Haon Dor Wilderness west of Midgaard (many low-level areas nearby)
Miden’nir Wilderness east and south of Midgaard (many low-level areas nearby)
Town Of Solace Low-level city with many areas nearby
The City of Anon Key mid-level city

Immortals

Three original immortals are provided. Log in as one of the following; passwords are blank.

Gezhp
Owl
Shade

If you want to create your own immortal:

  1. Create a new character.
  2. Reach level 2 (complete the training area).
  3. Save your character: save.
  4. Quit the game: quit.

  5. Edit the new character’s pfile. It will be the file server/player/<initial letter>/<name>. Make the following changes:

    Set the characters level to 106 by altering the value of the existing Lvl key:

     Lvl         106

    Add the sset (skill set) skill under the existing set of skills:

     Skll        100 'sset'
  6. Log back into the game. The character is now level 106, the highest rank of immortal in the game.
  7. Set all skills to 100%. This grants access to every mortal skill and all immortal (“wiz”) commands. 
     sset <name> all 100
  8. Save your character.
  9. The wizhelp command should work if these steps were completed successfully.

Development

A development shell is provided to more quickly build, run and debug the server in environments that might have trouble compiling the code. The shell environment includes versions of gcc and gdb that will support the codebase. Using the shell can speed up development, as files can be quickly changed, compiled and debugged without constantly rebuilding the main server image.

To run the shell:

// With make
make dev

// With docker-compose directly
docker-compose run --rm --service-ports dev

This command will mount the MUD server files under /dd4-dev in a dd4-dev container.

Port 8888 within the container will be mapped to host port 18888.

Note that the working directory for the running MUD server is the area directory, so execution must occur from there.

Builder tools

The dev image has the contents of the builder directory under /dd4-builder. The area building tool Scribe is available as the command scribe.pl.

root@container:/dd4-dev# scribe.pl
DD4 Area File Scribe version 0.5
Usage: scribe.pl <source file> <destination file>

Building and running the server in the dev shell

Start the container:

user@host$ make dev

Compile the server:

root@container:/dd4-dev# cd src

// Or `make -j` for parallel processing
root@container:/dd4-dev/src# make

Run the server:

root@container:/dd4-dev/src# cd ../area

root@container:/dd4-dev/area# ../src/dd4

Debug the server:

root@container:/dd4-dev/area# gdb ../src/dd4

(gdb) run

Clean rebuild of the server:

root@container:/dd4-dev/src# make clean

root@container:/dd4-dev/src# make

Rebuilding the dev container (if you want to update installed programs or config):

user@host$ make build-dev