It's either a text MUD or a video game. It can't be both. Text games aren't "video" by their very definition. Video requires moving pictures of some form, be it animation, or film clips (like the old Firefox game with footage from the Eastwood movie and the animated planes rendered on a photographic background).

Draugnar, you pedant.

Anyway technically when you are playing a MUD you are viewing the game's text on your computer screen, so the text of the MUD is actually a visual image that you're viewing via a video display.

And I guess they have reclassified Text Adventures and MUDs as video games even if they are purely text.

Yeah, this is pretty much exactly the type of conversation I expected when opening this thread.

But, seriously, show us your last game.

@Al - Seriously, I might be interested in helping some, but with going back to school after 27 years plus the hours I work plus having a home life, I can't promise how much time I'd have to dedicate to it.

What help are you looking for? I'm learning some js at the moment which is funbut i'm not sure what kind of MUD you're aiming to do, is it browser based? A desktop/phone app? Details, i need them!

I know nothing about MUD but a quick Wikipedia search covered the basics. I'm surprised that there isn't a MUD game software maker. If there is I'd love to know about it. I've had a game concept rattling away around my brain for years and think it could suit a graphical MuD layout. My game has an educational purpose and has 300 plus characters already. I'm assuming the OP already has his concept but if not I'd be willing to collaborate. I think my game could be commercially viable if schools buy into it.

@maniac, out of interest, what is the educational subject matter?

You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

You are in a room with 3 doors [North ,South ,East]. There is a ghost in the room.>
Attack the ghost carefully with the sword>
There is the body of a dead ghost on the floor.>
E>
You are in a room with one door [West]. There is a fireplace with a roaring fire in it to the East.>

I'm fairly handy with python if you want some help.

@speaker W>
You are in a room with 3 doors [North, South, East]. There is the body of a dead ghost on the floor.>
Pickup ghost>
You can't do that.>
Pickup Body>
You can't do that.>
Pickup Body of Dead Ghost>
You can't do that.>
RAGE QUIT!>
You can't do that.>

@orathaic - foreign vocabulary

Okay, thank you for your inquiries.
I accept your offers to help. The MUD is going to be an RPI MUD, which stands for "role-playing intensive." That means that players will spend most of their time on the game in character. Those of you who have enjoyed the "Extreme Personalities" games here sponsored by Fortress Door should be quick fans of this game.
The game is going to be a Post-Apocalyptic action game. In the context of the game, players will play a person stranded in an isolated village. The hills outside of the village are drilled through with a variety of dangerous caves, inhabitated by groups of alien beings that somewhat resemble zombies. The village elders will "volunteer" the characters for weekly expeditions to go purge the caves of zombies. Technology has debilitated to roughly the bronze age. Which means that the poor characters will be stuck in a small-scale zombie war, using only materials like swords and axes. Just to keep things interesting, the hills will also be populated by roving monsters of various descriptions, most of which will be more than strong enough to eat the hapless characters should they make a wrong turn.
While groups of players may cooperate to achieve shared goals, most players will compete through a process similar to the Diplomacy game. Corruption, shady-dealing, lying and betrayal shall be the normal way to accomplish business. The strong shall prey upon the weak. This game will be more difficult than most MUD, with a difficulty level comparable to Diplomacy.
Players will be playing mercenaries, outlaws, criminals, warlords, or other characters suited to the rough and tumble lifestyle of the isolated land.
Main inspirations for the game will be Dune, Fallout and the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. We will be pulling as source material primarily from the public domain to avoid copyright problems.
Here is the game roadmap outline:
Selection of codebase (probably from Atonement, SOI or Bristlecone) (probably in ANSI C)
Building game infrastructure (SVN, SILC)
Selection and implementaiton of (minimal) new features
Game writing/building
Alpha Testing
Beta Testing
Opening
How can you help? Principally what I need at this point will be beta testers, which means that (starting in about a month or so) I will need people willing to log on once per week at the scheduled time and follow the leader down into a dark cave where you will be assaulted by monsters and zombies. So if you're scared of zombies, this probably isn't the role for you.
Obviously, technical talent will be at a premium. The main thing I'm looking for in a coder is someone who is willing to work on the technology selected by the steering committee. I'll probably be hiring a part-time professional coder, and possibly be hiring part-time professional game staff. We might need one or two hard-core coders to work on the MUD, but there will certainly be opportunities for junior technical people to work on the Discussion Forum, CVS and support software.

How big are you looking at for this MUD? How many zones and the what not? Also will rping be required for leveling or can you just go hack n slash for xp?

*IN*....depending on details, when you will do this, etc...but I'm totalyl down for some role playing of extreme personalities...lol (Old D&D'er...miss my pen and paper...)

I play Discworld MUD a bit. It's excellent. I recommend it to you all.

I played for years on a Tolkien MUD, but it just got boring doing the same stuff over and over to me.

@krellin - Did you ever play the original Gamma World? One of my favs of the D&D type games (same basic rules, even published by TSR at the time, but with mutations and not always good ones, in place of spells).

Draug - Gamma World sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't say that I played it D&D, we played some post-apocalyptic role playing game for a while where we were basically ex-military roaming the wastland...nothing like owning your own RPG...then we primarily moved to the Middle Earth Role Playing system...which was (my opinion) far superior to D&D - way better combat system.

http://d2oadd98wnjs7n.cloudfront.net/medias/463642/primary_pictures/full/20121014185413-castinruintitlebig01.jpg?1350266058

This is what made Gamma World fun. Getting to play intelligent beasties with guns!

http://www.hoboes.com/library/graphics/biblyon/old/games/GammaWorld.jpg

The original cover.

@Maniac

Thank you for your interest. As it happens, I already have some (post-apocalyptic) subject matter in mind. For what it's worth, if you're serious about your super-awesome educational software idea, my recommendation is to go out and sign up 100 schools for your software at a $1 license, promising them a copy in six months when development is finished. Bring some potential screen-shots and mock-ups when you go to pitch.

Believe it or not, there is already a surplus of software (educational and otherwise) available to people, often for free. The profit bottle-neck relates more to sales and marketing ability. In other words, if you are unable to sell a hundred licenses (or convince someone to sell a hundred licenses for you), then you're unlikely to get anywhere with your idea. Thanks and best of luck with your project!

@Draugnar - I think that you're really going to like this MUD

@CelticFox

Thank you for your inquiry. According to the metrics that the MUD community uses, my MUD will be classified as a ULTRA LARGE (among the biggest), certainly spanning 10,000 rooms at the very least. Of this number, probably 1,000 or so of the rooms will be original. My motive for repeating a lot of rooms is because certain rooms are by nature repetitive - If you're character is running down a dark tunnel trying to get away from zombies, my assumption is that you as a player will be more interested in finding a way out or a place to hide, rather than reading about a stalagmite or some slime dripping down the wall of the cave. Residential areas of the game, etc. will be fleshed out in greater detail. It's likely that I will be writing approximately 500 (half) of the room descriptions or so, so you can refer to most of my postings for a sample of the writing quality that players can look forward to.

I want to have a lot of rooms because I tend to find myself unhappy in MUDs where you feel like you're wandering around in a little box. I want to make sure that players have to work pretty hard to find the edges of the game, if they are able to at all.

How many zones? I'm picturing about 8,000 rooms worth of post-apocalyptic wasteland (maybe divided into about a dozen zones?) as well as about a dozen or so little villages or outposts, which I presume you would count as a zone. In addition there will be a few dozen monster-controlled regions, etc. for players to explore, but only if they are able to locate them and at their own peril. Finally, there will be approximately a dozen regions that count as "special" regions, places that will not normally be accessible to most of the players (e.g. private castles, etc.).

Does that make sense?

You asked about the role-play requirements, which I will describe as "relaxed RPI". This means that role-play will be required of all characters, to the extent that they will be required to remain in character and avoid disrupting the serious RP of those who are into it.
I believe we will have reasonable tolerance for people who want to play simple, straightforward characters such as hitmen or mercenaries that won't really be doing much talking, for example if you just want to go around and stab things. My guess would be that raiders would be especially good for this sort of role. In any event, "hack and slash" style characters should be able to comfortably hit the 50% power level, which is all that most characters will be likely to hit anyway.

Obviously someone wanting to play Wolverine or the Punisher will need to comply more strictly with the role-play requirements in order to earn such a bad-assed character.

@Al Totally understood. I have built for MUDs in the past, in my younger why the hell not I have time days. I even played on one that required RP points to level thus the question.

@ Al: "my MUD will be classified as a ULTRA LARGE (among the biggest), certainly spanning 10,000 rooms at the very least"

Is that really going to be "among the biggest" ?

The only MUD I play with any regularity is Discworld, but that has over 1,000,000 rooms.

No clue how many room the Tolkien Mud I played on has, but it was quite large and quite well done.