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I recently spent several days reconfiguring, both the Mud Listing here on The Mud connector and my Networking Tables on my server in hopes of getting a connection back to our Mud, 'visionmud.com 4000'. None of which made any difference. Finally, after retracing my steps for the past several weeks, it dawned on me I had set up a 2nd machine and a test mud so I could modify code with out having to recompile on the currently running Mud. This led me to set port forwarding on my router, utilizing the same port number, albeit on a different machine. This prevented anyone connecting to the original server. Moral: Change the port address to a different setting. Sorry, if this caused anyone any undue stress. :)
Anyone else dare to confess their Mud mistakes?
Lordcam

I've had the test port / real port mixup a few times before now, though the worst that's happened is that I've wasted half an hour trying to figure out why the heck code changes weren't taking any effect.

I did a "rm *" instead of "rm *.o" on my test port a week or two ago. Luckily I had all the files on my own computer and the only time it cost me was the time to upload all the source files again.

Biggest mistake I ever did was tweaking code without the benefit of using a test server. Um, "oopsie". I was smart enough to make backups of the files I was modifying, so everything was fixed once I deleted the .o files, replaced the screwed up .c files with the originals, and recompiled.

Needless to say I did a complete backup and set up a test mud about 5 mins after fixing things.

Once I accidently broadcasted the shell password on global channels. Had to go change it immediately.

As for the people I've worked with, one mistakenly deleted all the area files, but fortunately it was restored with OLC's asave world. Another mixed up the buy/sell margins on a few shopkeepers, so you could sell an item for more than you bought it. The players were quite stubborn in insisting that it was smart business tactics, not abusing a bug.

Sure, I once had this misguided idea that working on a mud would be a fun and rewarding experience.

Well thought it'd be a good idea to comment out some things from load_char. I chopped off a bit too much, namely the line that says something like:

//sprintf(strsave, "%s/%s", PLAYER_DIR, ch->name);
if( fopen(strsave) ...etc

One reboot later, me and 30 other people meet this after the hotreboot recover.

"Somehow, your character was lost in the flood. Sorry."

Course, I dont have an imm anymore so I can't shut the mud down, so after some extreme panic (and two people fully completing newbie creation, thus totally destroying their character for good), I gathered my wits and killed the mud process.



This is why you always make backups.

Regular backups aren't good enough for serious development. If you're not on source control, you should be. I recommend Subversion.

I have no experience specifically with MUD development but my suggested pattern would be:

1. Have a central subversion repository.

2. Make your changes to each developer's working copy and commit them frequently, providing precise log messages.

3. When a set of changes is complete, create a new branch and export it to your testing directory. A simple script could do this and set the port number automatically.

4. When your test has been fully completed it is then safe to export this branch to the main directory. Only the head developer should be allowed to do this after personally ensuring that nothing has been broken.

If bugs do get through this, subversion will allow you to quickly track down when changes were last made to the relevant file, decreasing the downtime.