Rolling your own? Why?

[Yui Unifex]

I started quite a few years ago with a Dikurivative. It was either Merc or Rom, I can't remember which. Lacking in any practical programming knowledge, I thought it'd be a neat exercise to write a little game from the ground up, so I began work on Dys Deus while pouring over the Diku source code and my C For Dummies book. Deus is only derived from this beginning mud in concept, and its source code was never released.

I've used muds and their related programs to teach myself to write software. Moved from C to C++ to C#, rewriting the codebase from the ground up along the way and applying my new design knowledge as I went. There wasn't any need to build anything in particular, I just needed to build something to gain experience. Almost every technology I've had any personal interest in, or I've had to use professionally has made its way into some mud-related project of mine.

Aetas was started with the intent of writing an actual game, instead of just a codebase. I've failed miserably in this because I find myself a better programmer than game designer, but it's serving (at least on paper so far) my need to analyze game mechanics and world design. The theme and setting of the game was chosen to give maximum flexibility, to dispense with realism from the beginning, and attack everything from a clean slate.

[Greggen]

I've been building MUDs for the fun of building them, mostly. I'm one of those programmers that will skip sleep to code in something interesting that I've never done before, but as soon as I hit the boring work I give up. I never finish anything.

The reason my attention was drawn to MUDs in particular is that most RPG designs make me weep with anger and frustration. I just thought I could do a much better job (should I ever actually finish anything).

My aborted attempts include:

A few pure C++ MUDs.
A C++ MUD with a crappy bytecode scripting system.
A C++ MUD with a much better ruby-like scripting system.
A lisp MUD.
A database-driven, persistent ruby MUD. (best attempt so far)

I'm currently writing my own lisp interpreter with a heavy MUD skew.

I bought a domain name and some hosting with mudmagic and set up a website for my MUD. I thought this would motivate me to actually finish something, but it hasn't worked so far.