The CDP is a project to document all aspects of CircleMUD for players, administrators, coders, and builders. This is an ambitious project and outside contributions are encouraged. This area also contains links to some MUD-related documentation that is not CircleMUD specific, but applies to MUDding in general.

Information for Players
Information for Immortals
Information for MUD Administrators
Information for World-Builders
Information for Coders

Information for Players

Information for Immortals

How to Make Good Quests [off-site document; not CircleMUD-specific]

A general guide to making effective, fun, and fair quests for the players of a MUD and other adventure games.

[ An HTML-ized version of the 'wizhelp' file will go here soon, as well as more information on making quests and generally being a good Immortal ]

Information for MUD Administrators

The CircleMUD Administrator's Manual [ FUTURE - NOT YET COMPLETED ]

A to help new CircleMUD administrators get started with the code. This document describes how to compile CircleMUD for the first time, configuration information, how to run the server including documentation of command-line options, a description of system logs and how to use them, and a description of daily and long-term maintenance required by the MUD. and running CircleMUD for the first time.

CircleMUD FAQ

The CircleMUD Frequently Asked Questions list with answers, maintained by Alex Fletcher (Furry). Any changes should be sent to him at furry@circlemud.org.

CircleMUD WTFAQ

The CircleMUD Way Too Frequently Asked Questions list with answers, maintained by Brandon Brown.

CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ

A great place to ask questions about CircleMUD is on the CircleMUD Mailing List, read daily by several hundred CircleMUD administrators and coders. This FAQ describes how to use the list and what rules should be observed when using it.

Information for World-Builders

The CircleMUD Builder's Manual (Revision 1.14, 30 September 1996)

This document describes all of the file formats required for world building (rooms, objects, mobiles, zones, and shops), and the values of all flags for mobile, object, and room bitvectors. Note, this manual is meant to be a technical reference and not a tutorial, and is somewhat dense. It is meant for area writers or anyone else who needs to understand the world file specifications.

Also available as ASCII (93kb) and Postscript (40 pages, 232kb); and in compressed form as gzipped ASCII (29kb) and gzipped Postscript (80kb).

Builders' Handbook [off-side document; not CircleMUD-specific]

A guide for world-builders written by Alex Fletcher (a.k.a. Furry) from the Curious Area Workshop team.

Guide to Writing Good Descriptions [off-site document; not CircleMUD-specific]

Jamieson Norrish's document giving tips on how to make your MUD's descriptions effective, interesting, and enjoyable.

Information for Coders

CircleMUD coding.doc

This isn't complete yet.

CircleMUD Code Cross-Reference

A great way to find your way around if you feel lost in the CircleMUD code! This is a fully-cross referenced list of all global variables and functions in the Circle code automatically generated by the excellent ``cxref'' program written by Andrew M. Bishop.

Each global variable has a list of functions which use it, and each function has a list of the global variables it uses. Similarly, each function has a list of all the functions it calls, and all the functions which call it.

The complete listing

The Art of Debugging

A short tutorial on the art and science of debugging written by Merc Diku MUD Coder emeritus, and all-around nice guy Michael Chastain. This was originally part of the Merc DikuMUD distribution and has been included as part of CircleMUD with permission.

Also available as ASCII (9kb) and Postscript (5 pages, 55kb); and in compressed form as gzipped ASCII (4kb) and gzipped Postscript (23kb).

GDB Manual

The GNU Debugger manual in HTML format.

CVS Manual

The GNU Concurrent Version System manual in HTML format.

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