List of MUD clients

A MUD client is a game client, a computer application used to connect to a MUD, a type of multiplayer online game. Generally, a MUD client is a very basic telnet client that lacks VT100 terminal emulation and the capability to perform telnet negotiations. On the other hand, MUD clients are enhanced with various features designed to make the MUD telnet interface more accessible to users, and enhance the gameplay of MUDs, with features such as syntax highlighting, keyboard macros, and connection assistance.

Standard features seen in most MUD clients include ANSI color support, aliases, triggers and scripting. The client can often be extended almost indefinitely with its built-in scripting language. Most MUDs restrict the usage of scripts because they give an unfair advantage, as well as the fear that the game will end up being played by fully automated clients instead of human beings.

Prominent clients include TinyTalk, TinyFugue, TinTin++, and zMUD.

History
The first MUD client with a notable number of features was Tinytalk by Anton Rang in January 1990, for Unix-like systems. In May 1990 TinyWar 1.1.4 was released by Leo Plotkin which was based on TinyTalk 1.0 and added support for event-driven programming. In September 1990, TinyFugue, which was based on TinyWar 1.2.3 and TT 1.1, was released by Greg Hudson and featured more advanced trigger support. Development of TinyFugue was taken over by Ken Keys in 1991. TinyFugue has continued to evolve and remains a popular client today for Unix-like systems.

TinyFugue, or tf, was primarily written for Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the earliest MUD clients in existence. It is primarily geared toward TinyMUD variants. TinyFugue is extensible through its own macro language, which also ties to its extensive trigger system. The trigger system allows implementation of automatically run commands.

Another early client was TINTIN by Peter Unold in April 1992. In October 1992 Peter Unold made his final release, TINTIN III, which was a much more mature and feature rich program. Development of TINTIN was continued by Bill Reiss who announced the release of TinTin++ 1.0 in July 1993. The client gained popularity quickly because of its easy to use scripting language and the popularity of DikuMUD for which it was designed. Being open source with originally no license restrictions, many current clients like GGMud, MudMaster, and Pueblo are based on TinTin++.

Following on from TINTIN's success, Mike Potter was keen to produce a Windows port of the client resulting in the release of zMUD 1.0 in December 1995. zMUD was initially licensed as freeware, but Mike Potter realized that he could make a living from sales of the client and started selling zMUD 4.0 as shareware in September 1996. zMUD is particularly noted for its automapping capabilities.

MUSHclient
MUSHclient is a MUD client and peer-to-peer chat system originally written and maintained by Nick Gammon. The client is released as freeware. The source to the client is also available on GitHub.

Features
MUSHclient is highly flexible, and provides aliases, hotkeys, triggers (text-matching), command-execution timing, variables, multi-session support, ANSI-colour customisation and speed-walking. In July 2008, support for "miniwindows" was added, which allows MUD programmers to customize graphical elements to the screen, such as a map.

MUSHclient is compatible with screen readers such as JAWS, which read text out loud and allow blind users to play MUDs.

MUSHclient offers extensive scripting support via the Windows Script Host-supported languages, such as VBScript and JavaScript, as well as the platform-independent Lua-scripting. It also supports MCCP and MXP.

MUSHclient is also a peer-to-peer chat system using TCP/IP, featuring group calls and file transfers. This chat system is vulnerable to penetration attacks.

Portability
Although primarily written for Microsoft Windows, MUSHclient has been successfully run both under the Linux operating system by using Wine, and the Mac OS X operating system via Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop for Mac.

MUME
MUME, Multi-Users in Middle-earth, is one of the early offspring of DikuMUD, created in 1991 by Philippe "Eru" Rochat, who was soon joined by Claude "CryHavoc" Indermitte, Pier "Manwë" Donini, and David "Nada" Gay. The game was built as an homage to J. R. R. Tolkien's world as described in The Lord of the Rings. MUME has since released several new versions, incorporating new changes and areas that recreate Tolkien's world in text format.

MUME enjoys a measure of popularity in the MUD world. MUME is included in The Historical DikuMUD List hosted on the official DikuMUD web site, marking it as one of the longest-running DikuMUDs. In a September 2000 interview Raph Koster, the lead designer of Ultima Online and the chief creative officer of EverQuest II, lists MUME as one of the games that influenced him as a game designer by "doing such interesting things with player conflict".

In April 1998, MUME was named MUD of the Month at The Mud Connector.

Technical details
MUME is based on DikuMUD. The core of MUME is written in C, while the mudlib (global critical code, such as game commands, justice system support and shop functionality) and game world (code for specific rooms, mobiles, and objects) are written in Mudlle.

MUME makes the standalone version of its building and scripting language, Mudlle, publicly available. Mudlle was created by David "Nada" Gay and developed by him and Gustav "Dáin" Hållberg.

MUME uses PowTTY, a client based upon Powwow (for unix) and PuTTY.

Operating systems
The operating systems the clients can run on.


 * CPI: Cross-platform or Interpreted software

Protocol support
Information about what protocols the clients support.
 * A locally ran MCCP or TLS proxy server can be used by clients that do not support MCCP or TLS natively.
 * Many MUD clients will be able to display Unicode characters but will have wordwrapping issues without proper support.

Other uses
MXP is also used by the CERDEC as communication protocol.