Integrating an Old MUD with ChatGPT

Greetings! Today, I would like to share a personal project that combines the nostalgic charm of a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) with the modern capabilities of ChatGPT. It certainly makes you feel old when you stumble upon code you wrote yourself back in 1993, but this gave me the perfect opportunity to breathe into it new life. Join me as I walk you through this fun project that integrates a MUD with ChatGPT, and let's explore the possibilities that this kind of integration offers.

Rediscovering the Magic of LPC and MUDs:

Before delving into the integration process, let's revisit the essence of MUDs. Think of them as virtual worlds where players can connect, explore, and interact with each other through text-based adventures. In this case, the MUD was an LP (by Lars Pensj?), there were other types, with Diku MUDs arguably being the most popular.

What set LP MUDs apart was LPC, an interpreted programming language specifically designed for creating and modifying objects, rooms, and game mechanics in LP MUDs. In a separate post, I intend to delve deeper into LPC, exploring its various functionalities and capabilities.

Giving NPCs a Voice with ChatGPT:

One of the frustrations players have with MUDs is the limited interaction with game characters. My initial idea was to address this frustration by enhancing select Non-Player Characters (NPCs) within the MUD. By leveraging the conversational capabilities of ChatGPT, I was able to make the NPCs more dynamic and engaging and informative. They now respond to player inquiries and hold interactive conversations, injecting flexibility and a fresh dose of life into our virtual world. Full disclosure, the first thing that came to mind with the advent of ChatGPT and other LLM was their potential with role-playing games. The gamer in me made me develop and implement this prototype.

The Restful Gateway: Connecting MUD and ChatGPT:

To bridge the MUD and ChatGPT, I created a separate app, see the bridge application. This intermediary application handles the communication between players and ChatGPT.?When players interact with NPCs, their queries are seamlessly transmitted through the app. I can build the calls to ChaGPT API and add some caches to the conversation. In LPC I created several new inheritable characters that call the intermediary app with messages. This is triggered when players enter the same room or interact with the characters using say or tell. For the http calls, I did not use native LPC, I just allowed "curl" to be used with in the MUD. The responses from ChatGPT are parsed in LPC, this has been a little bit more challenging as they are frequently inconsistent. I will post the different elements that I wrote inside the MUD in a separate post.

Exploring Memorable Conversations:

Ok, it could very well be that for the experiment I did not choose the most fantastic NPCs. The first example is an annoying cat:

An old woman who is there to give advice to newbies:

And a rat:

Join us in Aurora

Yes, Aurora is the name of the MUD. It closed shop at the beginning of this century after its glory days in the mid 90s. It was based on Discworld Mudlid, a MUD with a much larger community.

It is a humble MUD, but if the idea of it strikes nostalgia or if you just want to experience retro gaming, the MUD is currently is running in a free server.

• Traditional old-school users can use telnet to 130.61.249.129 port 4000
• for less adventurous you can use the web sockets version in https://130.61.249.129:8000