I wrote a Multi-User Domain in Node.JS! http://seanmcbeth.com:8080/

The content is pretty thin right now, but it features:

• Scriptable AI: there is a basic tutorial at the beginning that is driven by a scripted bot, and there is a room with two bots reciting Shakespeare at each other.
• Craftable items: though I've unfortunately not put most of the crafting materials in the game world yet.
• Dynamic map layouts: exits can lock and unlock, or go visible or invisible based on time or keys that the user holds.
• Open source code and content: you can fork the shit out of it!

I've had a few dozen people try it out, but so far nobody has given any feed. I'm afraid the tutorial might be too dense for them to get through. I'm at a loss for how to fix it. Most people quit after a few seconds, and for the people who stick around and complete the tutorial, they never leave the first room. So perhaps you folks who seem to may possibly understand the history of games better than randos on reddit can check it out and leave some feedback. Thanks!

Yeah, I've been watching the server and saw those crashes (and have fixed them). It's so strange. Those are things that I've tested a lot already.

• The two-pane interface is confusing, although that might just be because I'm used to Telnet :-)
• Lots of little grammatical mistakes kinda detract from the experience a bit
• A way to skip the tutorial(s) would be cool
• I got into the fight with Lucy's-goblin and beat the ever-loving shit out of it but it never died, so I gave up.

eat rope

hah, the grammatical mistakes are auto-generated text. Users get informed of other users' actions with basically the verbatim event message. I wanted to get the thing out and didn't want to waste time building scaffolding around those sorts of things.

I'm torn on the split interface. I did it that way because the chattiness of the right column pushes the large blocks of the left column text out to oblivion before you have a chance to read it, figure out what items you want, what exits you want to take, etc. The font probably doesn't help, either. I was hoping I'd be able to develop a more dynamic text generation structure and that would make the whole thing flow more like paragraphs, but it doesn't quite work like that right now.

I think I'm actually going to get rid of scrolling text and have it only update specific blocks. There will be a scrolling chat window, but it will be *only* for inter-user chat (not NPC messages), and the change of state in exits and user/NPC state in rooms will be updated live, instead of waiting for the user to move or "look". So that will be singificantly more "client" than just a telnet style, but I think it will stay true to the MUD ethos still.

And yeah, you probably knocked out the goblin, just didn't see a message regarding it. It should have only taken two shots. There is just no message updating to the fact. ADDING TO THE ISSUE LIST!!!

Pretty good, but I'm definitely not used to such clunky interfaces any-more -- years of games with UI have obviously killed off my appreciation for such games to an extent!

I also never saw any message about knocking out the goblin, fortunately I'd read everything here first.

Could you perhaps make it a bit more forgiving with regards to capitalisation? I had a couple of times where I had to repeat commands because I didn't use an upper-case letter, and I think some people would probably just give up instead.

The typeface isn't great, I found it a little difficult to look at. Like Apoch, I found the grammatical errors a bit niggling.

Perhaps you could try breaking the tutorial down into smaller sections? Maybe leave out Dave to cut down the dialogue a bit? I thought Dave was funny, but removing him would cut out several lines of text from that tutorial and get players into the game that little bit faster.

Pretty good foundation over all, I think other than adding content it's just the little details that really need fixing up.

heh, I forgot about a test of the AI reaction system had gotten left in. When it was early and I only had 2 or 3 bots in the game, whenever someone would yell I would have the bots yell "SHADDAP". Then I forgot about it and added a bunch more bots for this demo. Then someone yelled.