So here I am. Cloudy day... somewhat warm... up late lastnight... big weekend... brand new music... old router system... OpenBSD boot disks... I'm bored.

One of my long time ideas is to create a fun and functional MUD. You know, multiplayer text games... acronym for Multi User Dungeon. (or Dimension or Domain... but I prefer Dungeon, since MUDs usually have a combat engine with hitpoints/magic/movement meters and such, and Dungeon has a battle-eqsue sound to it).

I've been fumbling around with the idea for... oh... 4 years at least. I'm extremely familiar with CircleMUD sourcecode, so I've been using that. The license is somewhat horrifically constricting, but most people tend to ignore some of the more "silly" clauses these days anyway. Haven't quite decided what to do... but since I can't write my own MUD system, I'll probably just quietly obey the license.

Anyway, I've been through several versions of CircleMUD... 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, 3.1 and now a custom bundle called CircleMUD with Goodies, which includes a lot of features patched in that I would have added myself anyway. (...and have added in past versions, so it just saves me time since I already know how to do it.)

Up until the CWG bundle, I've always compiled the game for Windows. It was okay... but it lacked some more advanced behind-the-scenes features and didn't support auto-restart in case of a game crash or advanced logging. So with CWG, I decided to compile it on Cygwin, which still made it easy for me to code, compile, and run on the same computer... but it still isn't quite what I wanted in the long run. I run Windows-related experiments on my desktop, and I'd like to be able to restart it at a moment's notice... I regularly powerdown my laptop, just because... my router uses all it's power just routing the heavy internet traffic I have to my entire network. I'd like to have a relatively powerful Unix-based computer just off somewhere that'll run all these server apps. Like CircleMUD, and Apache, and various other servers. Have it sitting in the closet with a single network cable running to it... completely remote.

My current router system is a 300mhz Celeron with 128MB RAM. I think it's quite strong enough for routing, but not much else... since it's usually running at 90% as it is. My old router system was a Pentium 166mhz with 32MB RAM. It was NOT strong enough for routing and was constantly slowing under the load and had to be reset. Maybe something was set up incorrectly, I dunno... but I upgraded and everything's fine.

So I'd forgotten about that old router for quite some time. In the meantime, I'd received a computer to repair that wouldn't power up. At first I thought it was the processor that was dead, since all the fans would spin up. But just a couple days ago, I tried opening the CD drive, and it wouldn't... and then the power supply started making odd noises... so now I'm thinking it's the PSU. At any rate, the repair cost would have been too high for how much the computer was purchased for anyway, so I told them that... and they went off and just bought a new one, I believe. So I'm stuck with a computer that technically isn't mine, but nobody remembers I have.

I think it's a 733mhz with an unknown amount of RAM. Maybe 256MB. So it's definately an upgrade to the 300mhz with 128MB RAM I have running the router. But I don't think the router needs anything stronger. So I might fix the 733 and use it for running the MUD, since I also have pieces to make a fully functional 1.8ghz system once I get a case/PSU, harddrive and cheapo RAM. (Old parts from when I upgraded my primary desktop to 3.0ghz.)

But right now, I've successfully installed OpenBSD on the old router (133mhz/32MB RAM) and will attempt to see how quickly it compiles and runs CircleMUD. I don't know any MUD administrators, so I don't know how strong things need to be to carry different loads... although I looked at some MUD hosting sites, and they give you a whopping 20MB of RAM and a little slice of processor time to run MUDs... so I don't think computers need to be uber-strong for 'em.

So I'm going to test compiling on OpenBSD on this little computer... see if I like it. If it turns out to be as good as I hope, I'll probably fix the 733 and run the MUD on that... and then later on, fix the 1.8ghz and move everything over to that. Maybe. 733 might remain commandline OpenBSD and the 1.8 might be a Debian or Ubuntu with a GUI.

Yeah... I'm bored.

Oh! I got the Independence Day soundtrack. It's awesome.