Documentation on StompyMUX Documentation

Introduction

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

StompyMUX is a game server for creating and hosting text-based multiplayer games about Big Stompy Robots. It comes with a real-time combat system with AI, a unit repair system, economic building blocks, and much more.

Status

StompyMUX is an occasionally developed modernization fork of BattletechMUX. Our foundations are built from more than three decades of contributions. While the features in this codebase are very well fleshed out, we may occasionally break things, including backwards compatibility!

Installation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Clone the sources

If you don’t already have a copy of the sources, clone the repo:

git clone git@github.com:gtaylor/stompymux.git

Make sure to cd into the repo root and fetch the third party libraries that we’ve vendored:

cd stompymux
git submodule update --init --recursive

Install dependencies

Before compiling the sources and running your own game, you’ll need to ensure that the following dependencies are present:

SQLite development headers
CMake 4.3 or higher
Clang 22 or higher
Just 1.56 or higher
If you’d like to make documentation contributes, install Hugo

Building and running

Use the included just task runner:

Development workflows

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The sources are split across two different domains:

The src/ directory contains the C sources for the game server.
The game/lua/ directory contains the Lua sources for most of the in-game commands and logic. You should be able to focus most of your efforts here.

C/Game server development workflow

To make changes to the game server sources, a typical development loop looks like this:

Make your changes
Run just fmt-c to format the sources
Run just check-and-run to run the full suite of checks and launch the server if successful
To short-circuit the checks and just build and launch, run just build-and-run
You’ll need to CTRL+C the server and start over on the first step to make additional game server changes. Hot reloading the game server is not supported

Lua development workflow

The Lua sources in game/lua are where most of the player-visible logic lives. These are typically developed like this:

Contributing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Licensing notice

All contributions are governed by the StompyMUX License. Please make sure to read this before submitting changes.

To contribute changes back to StompyMUX, file a pull request with a descriptive title and body. Since StompyMUX is a hobby project, we are unable to make guarantees about timeliness and we may reject changes that don’t align with the project’s direction. Feel free to discuss ideas in our Discord server before starting implementation in order to reduce the likelihood of a contributing being rejected.

History

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This codebase is the result of over 30 years of development in one form or another. It started hosted on a TinyMUSE server, around 1992 or 1993. Its primary instance powered the most popular Battletech MU* to date, 3056 MUSE.

There after, the code was ported to/reimplemented for TinyMUSH by the Animudiacs crew, who ran, amongst other servers, 3034-II (which later evolved into 3035) and Varxsis (a non-battletech universe with similar theme and technology). Somewhat simultaneously, Markus Stenberg (aka Fingon) ported the original MUSE code to TinyMUX, implementing a lot of ideas from the Animudiacs sites and implementing a lot more from scratch, both official Battletech rules and brand new ideas. The main MUX site has always been 3030 MUX.

Future

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

With text-based gaming having entered niche status, the goal is to build on project’s rich history while adapting for the times. Some things that we’ll need to keep in mind as we build:

We must provide gameplay depth while looking for ways to make the experience more intuitive.
Fun factor should be prioritized over strict adherence to rule sets and technical readouts.
We should be open to re-thinking how things have worked for decades in service of the above points.