Why mess with Dead Souls, then?
The main problem was that Dead Souls was a bear to set up. Because driver development had not stopped (the driver is a separate software project), but lib development had, incompatibilities grew in number over time. Using the original driver from 1997 created a MUD that lacked important features of modern muds, and risked instability. Using a modern driver required a modification of fundamental lib systems that required some expertise to perform. People stopped using Nightmare because they couldn’t get it, and they didn’t use Dead Souls because the damn thing didn’t work right. My own Nightmare lib MUD, Frontiers, continued to chug along, quietly fading into obscurity along with all other Nightmare IV based MUDs, while scrappy young newcomers like CoffeeMud lib started elbowing their way into the MUD community. Then a funny thing happened. I really got into lib coding. I mean, full-on lib obsession. I can’t really explain it, other than to say that when I was younger it seemed hard and
