EntertainMUCK Technical Information

• Hardware Information
• Operating System
• Game Server Software
• Muck Programming
  • MUF Programming Tutorial
  • MUF Frequently Asked Questions
  • MUF Reference Manual
  • EMuck Programming Macros

Hardware Information

EMuck runs on a Intel Pentium MMX processor running at 200 Mhz. The system has 64 Mb of RAM, and close to 7 Gb of disk space. In addition, it has another 8 Gb of disk space accessible to it via NFS on a private local network.

EMuck's Internet connection runs at 1.5 Mbps (close to T-1 speeds).

Operating System

EMuck's Linux operating system comes from the RedHat 5.1 distribution. This includes the latest stable kernel (2.0.35).

Game Server Software

EMuck's game server is based on daemonMUCK, a TinyMUCK derivative that splits from the TinyMUCK development tree at TinyMUCK 2.2.

tinyMuck 1.0 -- tinyMuck 2.0 -- tinyMuck 2.2 -- tinyMuck 2.3 -- tinyMuck 2.4
                                    |
                                    +---------- FuzzBall 
                                    |
                                    +---------- daemonMUCK
                                                     |
                                                     +------- EMuck

A number of modifications and enhancements were custom-made by AmberThree Productions to the daemonMUCK 0.14 server, incorporating modifications made to daemonMUCK 0.15, some features in TinyMUCK 2.3, features in FuzzBall, and some (rather unusual) home-grown features, including the following:

• Built-in support for multiple ownership of objects (eg, @SHARE).
• Formatted `look' support (@FORMAT global)
• Game server is 64-bit clean (runs on Digital Unix without a hitch!)
• Command "cookies" (from TinyMUCK 2.3)
• "Puppet" and "Vehicle" support
• Extended socket directives available in MUF programming language
• Server support for time zones (local to muck, and offset from GMT)
• Split Database (ie, EMuck's database is not one contiguous array in memory, reducing memory fragmentation).
• Embedded HTTP server -- EMuck has built-in web-support for the information commands (@DOC, help, info, and man), as well as two versions of the WHO status command. Indeed, with no modification to the source code AT ALL, EMuck could actually run as a full web server (lacking only generic CGI support).

In addition, there's an ongoing project to rewrite the entire EMuck server from scratch and implementing it in C++ or Java. This project is known variously as "Muck3" (as in 3rd Generation Muck Server) and "MuckJ" (Java Muck Server), depending on current whims. Development on these next generation servers starts and stops, depending on the workload of the EMuck technical administrator (lar3ry).