The PennMUSH developers are proud to announce the release of 1.8.3p12. Lots of new features and many fixes and improvements.

Get it at http://download.pennmush.org/Source or at http://code.google.com/p/pennmush/downloads/list.

Pleased to report that I've just run my highest altitude MUSH. 35,000 feet, over Pennsylvania, thanks to American Airlines in-flight wifi, a win32 penn binary, and the power of reverse ssh tunneling.

When I need something softcoded, especially a function, chances are I'll code it myself. Even if it exists. Even if it exists on the same MUSH. There are several reasons for that, but one's a fairly big one: Softcode is hard to read. Doubly so if you didn't code it. What's worse, since softcode doesn't have a function definition like you would in C or Python or whatnot, you don't have even the self-documentation that comes from variable names, and in fact you may have to dig deep to even see how many arguments a function takes, let alone determine which ones are optional. I've been wanting to do something about that for a while (read: at least 3 years), but this time I actually did come up with a partial solution.

Kicking off 2010 with a bang, the devteam is proud to announce the release of PennMUSH 1.8.3p11. Get it at googlecode or download.pennmush.org or through subversion. Lots of changes, including some important bug fixes. All users are strongly urged to upgrade as soon as possible.

There had been a spate of spam comments on c.p.o lately. As a temporary measure, I've turn off automatic comment approval, but that leaves me having to approve comments for long-time users, and slows down the experience for all of you.

So, improved strategy. A new role, "verified user", is now allowed to post comments without approval. You can become a verified user by choosing the "My account" link and the "apply for role table". I'll verify anyone who I can reasonably assure myself is an actual MUSHer and has been around the site for a while.

Log available at http://walker.pennmush.org/logs/itbg_2009.html

After a hiatus last year, the Innovations and New Directions in Text Based Gaming Conference (ITBG) is back! This year, ITBG will be hosted on M*U*S*H (mush.pennmush.org:4201) the morning of October 17th, and boasts a handful of most interesting presenters.

M*U*S*H will once again be hosting the annual MUDtoberfest, a celebration of our shared pastime, through the month of October. You -- yes, YOU! -- are invited to stop by, partake of the festivities, and even run something should the inspiration strike you.

Currently scheduled events can be viewed with '+gda 10' on M*U*S*H. If you'd like to run something, schedule it with +gda (+gda/help for details). Don't be shy!

On a related note... The Innovations and New Directions in Text-Based Gaming Conference will be held on October 17th! Have you thought about where text is going? If you have ideas about the future of text gaming (online or offline), whether they're practical considerations or wild half-baked theories, we want to hear them! @mail Zebranky on M*U*S*H or email andzew@mezcuzic.net (replacing z with r) with your ideas!

This is a proposal sparked by a guest logging onto my game yesterday to propose an ad exchange. It made me think about this practice, which seems to have fallen by the wayside more and more over the years. Instead, it has been replaced by advertising on various community sites, either in the form of MUSHes or on the web.

After a hearty and well played attempt to work with this infamous theme of a canon Pokemon universe, which seems to have went through many iterations over the years by different people, I am willing to hand over the reigns of this recent attempt to a competent mush/mud/mux administrator.

[Pokemon Adventures MUSH] is a canon universe Pokemon MUSH built to be focused on roleplay. No combat system currently coded or involved with the current codebase.

MUSH:

PennMUSH 1.8.3p10 has been released, including a number of important bug fixes. All users are strongly urged to upgrade. Available at http://code.google.com/p/pennmush/downloads/list.