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MUCK

A TinyMUD descendant with its own Forth-like in-game language, and a social culture distinct from the MUSH side.

https://www.fuzzball.org/

Games running it

24 listed · 0 archived · measured, not declared

Counted from the catalogue on this request, over the same filter the link above carries — so this number and that listing are one query and cannot drift apart.

offered in their handshakes: MSSP, MCCP

MUCK — in practice almost always Fuzzball MUCK — is a sibling of the MUSH line rather than a descendant of it: both come from TinyMUD, and both put a programming language inside the game.

The language is the visible difference. MUF (Multi-User Forth) is stack-based and reads nothing like MUSH softcode; a builder fluent in one is a beginner in the other. Above it sits MPI, a smaller inline expression language used for the things softcode would do on a MUSH.

Culturally, MUCK is the home of a large part of the hobby's social and fandom worlds. Those games tend to be built around presence and conversation rather than around scenes with a start and an end, which is a real difference from the roleplay MUSH tradition and not a matter of theme.

What it looks like from outside

No MSSP. A pre-login WHO that answers with a count. No telnet options negotiated on the game we measured — and one detail from the survey worth keeping: its WHO reply ended in a trailing space with no newline, which is the kind of thing that makes a naive parser report nothing at all.

See also

  • MUSH, MUD, MUCK, MOO — what the words mean Four words for four traditions, none of which is a genre. What they actually tell you.
  • TinyMUSH The ancestor of the MUSH line, still running games. It taught this crawler that its own negotiation bytes can break the next command it sends.
  • MOO Object-oriented, edited entirely from inside, and as much a research and teaching platform as a game engine.