Getting Started

Contents

Installation

git clone git://github.com/RanvierMUD/ranviermud
cd ranviermud
npm ci

Note: It is not recommended to run as a root user. Some scripts may malfunction and in general it's bad practice.

At this point you will have a very empty Ranvier install. From here there are two approaches: from scratch, or use the starter kit.

Starter kit

To install the starter kit run npm run init and choose Y to install the example bundles. This will install a series of bundles which demonstrate various features of the engine. You can use them as-is to make your own game or clone them to customize them to your liking.

NOTE: Be sure to read the Bundles guide before editing the example bundles

Once the command is finished start the server as described below. You will then be able to connect through telnet at hostname localhost on port 4000. The default login is admin for the username and ranviermud for the password.

From scratch

If you wish to create a Ranvier game from scratch it's recommended that at minimum you install a networking bundle to allow connections to your game. Being the telnet-networking or websocket-networking (or both) bundles. For details on installing and managing bundles see the Bundles guide.

Starting the server

Once you've installed (or not) the bundles you like to start the server run

./ranvier

This will start the server but it may stop when you close your terminal. To keep the server running after you close your terminal there are various tools like PM2, systemd, and many others depending on your operating system/preference.

Development workflow

When you make changes to bundles or the ranvier.json config you will generally need to restart the server to see the changes in game. This makes coding "on live" a Very Bad Idea™ as it would be very annoying for players. As such the recommended workflow is to have one checkout of ranviermud for development and another for your live server.

Hotfixing commands

While we do not support "hotbooting" the entire game without restarting the server it is possible to reload your commands from disk without restarting the server. If you have the debug-commands bundle enabled the hotfix admin command will allow you to reload a command in game by doing hotfix <command name>.

Next step

The next step is understanding what a bundle is, how they are loaded into the game, and how to manage and edit them. For this follow the Bundles guide.