Danny (00:10):
Welcome trolls, ogres, goblins, hobbits one and all to the Titans of Text podcast. We are your hosts Danny "Austerity" Nissenfeld.

Eric (00:20):
And Eric Oestrich.

Mike (00:21):
We have with us today Mike of StickMUD. We're going to talk about StickMUD's history, how it's doing today and what it has in store for us in the future. Welcome Mike.

Mike (00:34):
Thank you guys. Thanks. I'm appreciate being here and it's a, it's an honor.

Eric (00:40):
So one of the first things we always like to ask is sell us on StickMUD. Why should I join as a player?

Mike (00:48):
So I would say that for StickMUD we have, we have 12 races, eight guilds. I think one of the things that has drawn me most into StickMUD in the 27 years that I have been there is the trainable skills that it has. It has a really nice tree of trainable skills that they just start moving as soon as as soon as you start playing the game. So as you enter the newbie park and you know, you pick up the sword that is there and go battle something. You know, you get to see those skills start to train and it's the, it starts out with the basics and then you end up finding your other skills or spells that are that are part of the game and to really just to start to see those, those numbers start moving as a newbie player.

Mike (01:44):
And then you start digging further and further into what else can I do with this character? And you find out there's such a depth of skills that are, that are there that you know, that it gets really, really interesting. Some of the guilds have you know, just really have gone above and beyond the Guild coders over time too. Make it super interesting. I'm very creative and I think that's, that's one of the things that had had got me addicted to this game originally. And it's why I'm still there.

Danny (02:19):
So you say addicted originally who started StickMUD, what is its history, if you were not the one that started it?

Mike (02:28):
So StickMUD, it started in June, 1991, the founders of this were located at a university in Finland. And I guess at that particular time they had experimented with a Diku mud for a couple of months and you know, just decided that they, they liked the LP mud style mud a little bit better. The original, I think founder, his name was frobazz, that was his gamer tag. He didn't have very much experience in getting a mud up and running. So he found someone else on the university network is a name was Gras. Another one of the founders was running experimental muds on the university, a network for, for some time. And they got together and open StickMUD in June 17th, 1991. It was originally called JYU mud which was the domain name of the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland.

Mike (03:33):
And later it was decided as it says on our website with great imagination that the name would be StickMUD and it's because the name of the computer in English was stick. So that's how that came to be. And they'll say that you know, thinking about a stick in the mud was also something that was in mind at the time.

Danny (03:57):
How was your first mud how did you get involved in the community?

Mike (04:04):
Right. so StickMUD was not my first mud. It was my second mud. I had been going to a university at the time as my first year and popped into a computer lab. Like a lot of people had been using the computer labs at that time to just do printing and typing and things like that; Word processing. And I looked over at another row there in the computer lab and I saw someone that I distantly knew from high school. He was a year ahead of me in high school, so he'd already been there for two years and his screen was just scrolling like crazy. And he was, is basically looking at the screen and cackling maniacally at the screen. I mean, just, just so you know, laughing among everyone else that's there typing and printing his screen, he's there laughing and you know, it was like, what is going on here? So I got very curious walked over and sat beside and I was like, what, what is going on? He basically showed me what a mud was for the first time and how to get there at that time in 1994 and the internet of 1994 you would be you know, basically going through a chain of maybe a 10 different menus, slowly scrolling by too, actually find the muds and games out on the internet.

Mike (05:25):
So I wound up at this game called cross swords, which was running an early copy of the nightmare mud lib. I'm from the 90s, which was really popular. You know, I just got amazed to like a lot of the previous podcasts that you've had that you know, there's folks on there from all across the world. I mean, this game I'm dialing into is in Finland. It had players on it from as far away as Australia so this just progressed into me, like a lot of other people, skipping classes to go play the game. Eventually getting kicked out of the computer lab for playing games. And then I'm just finding, finding ways then to sneak into other computer labs to get onto the game. So I eventually became a game developer there on cross swords.

Mike (06:13):
I started to learn a few things. It inspired me to you know, take a computer science, move to computer science as a major in college. I followed a player named jibber over to StickMUD. They were continuously chatting on crossroads about stick stick stick, you know. And I was like, what is this? What is this sticky that you're talking about? And it ended up being this other game that's out there, StickMUD. And I jumped on that game which was three years old at the time. And there were 90 plus players online. I was like, well, this is, this is insane. You know, that there's these folks that are all here and I'm all the way over here and in Pittsburgh and you know, it's just amazing all these people out there.

Mike (06:57):
So StickMUD the time you know, really competitive with a lot of the other, the other muds are out there like bad mud. I think there's a lot of Scandinavian muds that you know, people had had played and jumped around. From time to time on, I eventually converted a lot of people from my college to be mudaholics and the place that I work, you know drew a couple more people in there. And that's, that's how things got got started for me over time. Just, just being amazed at the, that cool tech in the 90s. That was muds.

Danny (07:34):
So you started on a nightmare mud and then the second mud you were on was StickMUD. Did you ever flirt with any other code bases? I mean, you went LP to LP essentially. Did you ever ever get interested in any Diku style or, or, or any of the other any of the other code bases?

Mike (07:54):
So at the time I don't think I knew so much that there were, were others out there in the early nineties. But I'd say in the LP world there were things like the inner mud network and such that I began to see, you know listed these other games that were out there. And I started digging in. There was like a Lima mud lib and several other, the LP types. So those I got most attracted to and I'd say that it's actually only been this, this past few years now where I've began to do a little bit more research into how some of the other code bases do work. Because I find that you know, there's a lot of people that have played the DQ muds and are very much wanting to see those style of commands in any mud that they go to because there's so many of them.

Mike (08:51):
So I think a lot of us over here on the LP mud side are having to kind of consider some of those more standard commands that, that are out there. I don't know if it's a Diku mud command or not, but I mean, I think in the last week I've just made up like a loot command loot is now a command on StickMUD. I'm not sure if that's good or not, but there's things like this that we're seeing the newbies come in and they, they're expecting these commands and if they don't have them, they leave. So we are we are adapting as we go forward.

Danny (09:25):
You know, that's, that's a fair point. I can tell you that there is though loot command at least in base Diku or in fact any of the Dikus I've played, but I think that may stem from something like World of Warcraft where looting is not it's not an action like in muds, a corpse drops and you have a corpse and it's an object and it's a remnant of the thing that was alive a second ago. And in graphical mmos, looting is like an esoteric event almost. It's you press it and you loot everything in your vicinity. there's no real, there's no palpable transition between NPC and courts. it's not quite the same. So a loot command I think is a little bit indicative of that.

Mike (10:14):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's been for years and years get all from corpse, get all from chest and things like this. And so we're adapting as we go. I'm learning all the time. How did you get involved as staff with StickMUD? So I got started at at StickMUD being a apprentice wizard there. I was advanced to there after basically being sort of unhappy with some of the features that would StickMUD back in the 90s. And I wanted to, I wanted to make a change. I mean, I think a lot of us is as game players. I mean there's something about the game that either we don't like or we think that we could improve upon. And that was something that I had been whining quite a lot on the game boards that were there and eventually got the attention of one of the StickMUD administrators and he gave me a chance to get started.

Mike (11:14):
So you start out in on LP muds, typically with 'em? Yeah, just a small bit of a bit of access. It's kind of like you're actually working with the code base, live on an LP mud. You can see all the files that are there and you can compile them right inside of the game. So what I was able to do was to basically plug and as a wizard create my first areas. Then you know, worked on some commands and such. So sort of proving my way up to becoming you know, through advancing through the different ranks of being a wizard there at at mud and eventually over time in 1999, I got the chance to help out with a distributable mud live for a StickMUD that it was a cut down version that had a, basically only two of the guilds and you know, the basics that were, we're there for the mud lid.

Mike (12:13):
And I had a, got the opportunity to work more into the deeper, darker places of the, of the LP mud lived there for StickMUD and improve just a lot of the, a lot of the features that that I wanted to over time. I got to learn a lot about the different commands and daemons and such of the of the mud.

Danny (12:38):
What are you to stick them on right now? Are you the head, the top, the top staff person or are you considered the owner? How has that gone down?

Mike (12:50):
Over the past two years 2017, 2018 I sort of, I came back to, came back to StickMUD and I had been playing like crazy. I had gone through from like level level 65 up to the a hundred and forties in the game has right now about 150 levels. So I was playing super hard over 2017 and 2018 and you know, I found that the game was it was still really fun for me still that, that, that addiction was there. And you know, I had not been doing any coding on that game for, for about eight years prior. And just got to the point where it's like I'd love to see more players inside of this game. It is so fun for me. What can I, what can I do to, to help this game out to get it full of players. So I convinced one of the the administrators that was there to kind of pop me back into a coder role. And ever since I've been, I've been thinking about you know, what can I do to, to help bring more players into the game.

Mike (14:05):
I've been kind of studying out on the the internet what other people are doing to make their games exciting. I've been really tuned into the the Reddit for the mud the, for the, our mud for the discord following along what other people are doing just to see if I could find some kinda tips and tricks to add folks to, to the game. So right now I am the probably the most active administrator of StickMUD. I don't think that we would, any of us would consider that there is an owner for the StickMUD game. It's a, it's hosted out of one of the administrators houses actually in Canada right now. But so I'm the most active person that's there and really my quest right now is to find, find all the tips, tricks, gimmicks, anything that I can to a sort of change, change our game up to serve a greater, greater player base hopefully here in time. So doing everything that I can to, if it's, if it's advertising, if it's changing the game up, if it's adding user interfaces, I'm giving it a try, I'm doing some experiments and hopefully we get to that point where we can, we can kind of climb over the 20 player online mark again.

Danny (15:31):
How, how receptive has, has the other staff been to this, I guess, renewed effort? I mean, the mud's been around for nearly 30 years and suddenly there's a resurgence that you're, that you're leading the charge on. Are they happy about it or are they wanting to participate? Like how is that?

Mike (15:51):
That's a great question. I think that you know, it is, it is mixed to some extent. Because I will yeah, I've taken some, some drastic efforts to really get the game where in moving in a direction here. So for instance, some we've changed out the LD mud driver that's underneath the game. You know, and advanced it a lot of ranks. I mean, I think it was maybe 10 years old had been the last time that we had changed the driver version. So that was actually a very significant change that touched a lot of a lot of objects in the game and that took, took a little bit of time to get through. It's like you make that change and there there are errors or bugs and things like that that are popping up for the next month afterwards.

Mike (16:37):
So that's, that's one example there where that does create a little bit of pain. Luckily I've been on a pretty much every night to just try and you know, get that, get that back in shape. That was about a year, a year ago, that that was done. And now we're in good shape from that perspective. And there's not bugs popping up, but you know, I think another, another piece here is adding on things to the game. Like I'm a graphical UI like I'm a Mudlet UI and adding a GMCP into it. Yeah. You know, that's, it's something that as you add these things into the game and if the other founders of the game, the other people that run it are not necessarily developing that right alongside with you. You know, can cause some strain I think, because you are changing some things that, that others had had made in the past.

Mike (17:32):
And I think the only way that you can get through something like that get through these changes is you know, I think if you can show statistics that it is, it is improving things. So I think the the number of players says has gone up. I think we've got some good acceptance to some of these new features and it's just it's my responsibility to just document, document what, what I'm doing to the game and make certain that the other administrators are, I'm as comfortable with that as possible. So not everyone has time to be on that, on the game every day or every week. So just trying to keep people informed is the biggest challenge there. I think.

Eric (18:18):
What makes StickMUD unique? What are some of the more interesting systems that set it apart?

Mike (18:23):
So number one I think, I'd like to say that it's our, our player base the player base is, is really helpful. They, they do everything they can to, to help, help the game grow. You know, there'll be finding all those newbies that, that joy and, and you know, are offering there their help as possible too. Yet them started. So I think it's people, people first, that, that are important there. So if you log in to the game, I mean I think you'll over time you're definitely find somebody that will will give you a hand. I think second is how far with that we've gone with things like GMCP is the generic Mud communication protocol. And that is something that I'd actually learned about a little bit from, from Eric actually from, from grapevine and the documentation you had out there in a, in 2018. You know, I started reading up there, I started to figure out how can I get one of these mudlet UIs going? And the root of that was in using this generic mud communication protocol. It did a lot of research. I'd say it'd be about a month's worth of research into how games had implemented that, how some of the ire games and aardwolf and such had had gone and implemented that. And how could I do this in my, my game?

Mike (19:47):
So that really took off there where it was like this GMCP, these UI features feel like some way that we could expose the great stuff in StickMUD to two people, right at their time of being a newbie can we, can we show things in the UI that are going to be something that is going to capture, capture them. So I think that one of the differences is just bringing all that forward to the point that someone is starting. And we just tried to Excel at that over time. One of the, I think one of the most unique features that we have going for us today is that we've, we've sort of reinvested in the feature of sound inside of our game. So I had taken a look back in the two thousands at Mud sound protocol.

Mike (20:41):
I did a little bit with that, but it didn't seem like something that was up with the times mean a lot of the games are using the GMCP protocol today. So something that you know I invested in was researching that mud sound protocol and could I do something with that over GMCP? So this, this past a few months, I invested a lot of time into something that we are calling the mud media communication protocol. M C M P if I've got it right. And I think it's the mud client media protocol, mud client media protocol. There you go. And that's something that you know, over GMCP we can actually use to bring sound to the players as they move from from area to area. You know, we have sound matches up to the areas that those that the players in.

Mike (21:38):
So if, if you're approaching a river or something like that, you're going to get some sound that sounds like you're approaching a river. If you're going into a Tavern it sounds like this, this grand jovial place that's there's a party going on inside of there. So that's, it's something to just try to improve the environment there. That was something that Eric was also working on on his side was a way to do this. And so I think together we found a way to get the syntax for this protocol to match up and you know, to, to be something that could be be very effective. So the protocol's pretty much out in version one right now. And I think we're going to be finding some ways with the the rest of the community here too improve that over time.

Danny (22:25):
So you mentioned there's quite a few player levels in StickMUD. What what do you guys do to keep the game interesting for the people you know, that have been playing stick since the nineties of the two thousands of the 2000 tens even?

Mike (22:43):
You know, most of, I think what we do is it's as you invest more into the game, you get, you get more skills. I mean, as your, as your Guild levels improve that will give you, give you more skills. We do a lot with events at StickMUD. There are other events that are for holidays. There are events that are for just like double exp days, double training days. We have you know, zombie apocalypse events that happen and they'll just, you know totally flooded the game with zombies or for, for Thanksgiving turkeys and such. So it's a, it's a lot of you know, just, just trying to keep you know, people, people were interested through events like that. We, we, we tend to create events that also are interactive where players can, can work with each other and maybe some of those higher level players can help out others with the knowledge that they've gained.

Mike (23:44):
I think our most popular event is the scavenger hunt that we do where it's it's all the way across the mud. It's finding items, monsters, places and going there and kind of market it off your list. So that's another way that some of the higher level players can get engaged with a, those that are, those that are lower levels. And I'd say that it's just the skill system itself that just it just keeps going. it's a, it's something that it takes a long time really to, to work your way all the way through through the ranks. And my character on the game as is currently the highest level character that's there and I'm still not even all the way through all the ranks. Eh, for the skills that my, my character can can complete.

Eric (24:35):
Are there any things you've wanted to change for awhile that have just seemed kind of impossible to like deal with in the code base?

Mike (24:42):
So something that I would like to do is to be able to, to serve up web requests via web web sockets. You know, I think we're, all of our games are I don't know if we're blessed to be stuck inside of a Telnet or not, but I I can definitely see the trend there where folks are, are going more towards web-based clients and interacting with microservices and such outside of the game. And the LD mud driver something that they've recently done is you know, kind of added some Python capabilities underneath. So I think that is going to create a road for us to be able to help to expose the mud to using web web sockets and time or into browser framework. Some something that I put a lot of time into last year was trying to figure a way to get my mud tied into the gossip framework on a grapevine. I got to the point where using the ERQ daemon inside of a LD mud, I was able to listen to the framework. I wasn't actually able to send and receive to send messages and receive them back effectively through there. So I think that the web sockets is something that I want to invest into and see if we can tie more into these type of new intermod frameworks that are there and other external services.

Danny (26:09):
So you have, well you have guilds, LP MUDs tend tend to call them guilds instead of classes. Is, is there one that has a design that maybe you didn't design it, maybe it's been there since before you got there that you just regret some points in it. Is, is there something that you'd like to change in that respect but you can't because there's too many people already using it?

Mike (26:36):
That's a good question. So I'll say that I think StickMUD was a like that 15 years ago where it was there was, there was a number of different guilds that were there. They were all coded in different ways. The skills training was going all these different directions and one of the administrators there Excalibur, he had gone in the early two thousands and made a global framework for, for our skill systems. So he had sort of lined up all the guilds into a global skill system that it works much better together. The balance is great. I'd say if there's one particular Guild that you know, I think seems a little odd and stick mode, it's the healers Guild which is a Guild that really what they do is they heal and they heal and they heal.

Mike (27:34):
Which is a little strange for StickMUD I think overall because I'm a lot of the other guilds that are inside a StickMUD work geared for like half MK and half PK PVP type stuff. So when you throw in healers who are fairly invincible from a defensive perspective and can just he'll like crazy. All the other guilds that are there does throw things off a little bit and sort of takes away a little bit from some of the guilds like are, are a priest, a slash cleric Guild that's there that, that was already doing some healing and such are the majors, that sort of thing. He'll players a little bit more slowly, but you know, they had that capability as well. So if I could take one away, it would probably be the healer gambled.

Danny (28:22):
And we've talked a lot about guilds and, and I have a little bit of experience with LP. I played Discworld of course forever. I was on nightmare mud when it was originally up. How was the skill system there? Because a quite a lot of LPs go the skill tree route, which is more of a universal, but your, the Guild you choose if you choose one at all kinda gives you an advantage in specific areas. Is this more like a, you get this at level-X kind of system that the Dikus and the Roms tend to go down? Or is it more like a skills tree kind of thing?

Mike (29:01):
It is a skills tree so I think as there's a global skills tree, but all of the guilds only get to see their perspective of this tree. I mean you can actually can move. Let's say if I move from being a Ninja over to a fighter, there are going to be some of the things on the skilled trade skills tree that transfer over. So like if I have an awesome Dodge and Perry skill inside of the Ninja Guild, if I do decide to move over to the fighter Guild, that will, that will carry over. You build up your skills you get to see parts of that tree as a newbie and you sort of you have your Guild rank and you do a little bit of training your bump up that rank and you get more abilities.

Mike (29:46):
So continually, as you build up your Guild ranks, you get to see more and more abilities. But it doesn't matter really. Mostly your player level doesn't matter so much. it's mostly about the how much time you put into training these different skills. So you only get the you get the skills, the abilities that are within your Guild. We don't do at this time multi classing or multi guilding. So you don't, you don't you can't like be a core fighter and then pick up a couple the ninja skills. Today, that's, that's a request that we have out there from some of the players, but it's going to be something that if we do implement that, we'll have to be very careful about that. So we don't give away some particular awesome advantage that makes a particular guilds or character more Uber than someone else's.

Mike (30:42):
So I think, I think the entire framework that's there works out well with the skills tree, the fact that I really like it's the skills train as you use them. It's not something where I'm earning these, these sort of credits or points that you know, as I level up or I can buy credits and it, it pops into the skills. It's something that's it's everything that's in my character. I feel like I earned it. And that, that's something that I think is, is important to, to keep you on a game is that you feel that I've earned these, I've actually earned these skills and when I go out and use them to you know, get 50 million experience per hour, or if I I'm actually successful in a P K it feels like it's legit. It's feels like it's something that, that I have I've done and I've earned,

Danny (31:37):
We talked about events a little bit. I follow the StickMUD Twitter, so I kind of, I kind of see when the events happen, the double XV events and, and the holiday themed events. How are the events run? Is this, is this kind of like a you guys have the staff has set something up and it just goes on like a bunch of zombies show up and then the zombies eventually wane? Or is this more the staff directed like staff has game masters putting the pieces down and manipulating the event as it goes?

Mike (32:12):
Yeah. So I think one of our other administrators, saber, he's I think that he was one of the ones that had created a lot of the events and there is a nice system there where we can, we can schedule these ahead of time. So when our birthday comes up on in June every year, I mean we'll have a StickMUD birthday celebration that kicks off on its own. The Easter egg hunt was a scheduled scheduled events. So it's something that we can schedule, event goes off and does, does what it needs to do. It starts up, it's, it ends within like 24 hours or we can set how many hours it's intended to end. Some of the other events though, we'll, we'll schedule ad hoc. So let's say one of the nights that I'm on there, I see I take a look at the mix of players that's on and I'm going to be like, all right, let's, let's do a two hour a training event or a two hour exp event.

Mike (33:07):
I think it's those kind of little touches where the administrators the people that are running the game or they're watching what's going on and trying to find when's the best time for me to, to run this event to really it helps bloom the the player account because as you're attuning into Twitter a lot of other folks are, are doing so as well and that can help us kind of build up the the player count and just make things a bit more interesting in the game as as we do. So typically in the, in the evenings in the U S a is when we have our, our most most of the players, players that are on. But we're working with events and advertising and such to try to try to extend that how can we, how can we keep a good player account going all through the day around the clock if possible. So that's something that would be early, I've got to work on, because you know, I log in this morning and you know, there's like three or four people on I'd love to see the the 10, 15, 20 people that are on the evenings round the clock.

Eric (34:16):
And what is on the horizon for StickMUD. Is there anything interesting happening in the near future?

Mike (34:20):
I think that you know, I mentioned that you know, we're, we've invested in sound, we've invested in the UI. I'm trying to get a good, a good foundation set up for us too. Really renew, renew the StickMUD world that is there. Maybe reposition some of the areas and try to create you know, a story if possible. So world-building is, is, is my priority right now. And then connecting that in with a new web presence for the game. I someone had mentioned on the the mud Reddit just last week about, they were watching some of Brandon Sanderson's writing science fiction and fantasy BYU classes on YouTube. He's a, he's a certainly a science fiction and fantasy author.

Mike (35:14):
Well probably the one of the top 10 authors. Those are out there right now. And you know, he does a great job at creating a storyline. I'm very, very invested into pretty much listening every night to still like the wheel of time series now for years and years. I mean, it's every night. I listened to that. So I appreciate a good storyline. So we want to integrate that into StickMUD to, to, to create can we create some, some conflict that's there. And I have, I have actually some some ideas from, from my past that had cross storage, which is no longer there anymore that, that particular game or they had you know, kind of that, that idea of a clash of clash of elements, a class clash of cities. So I kind of liked that, like cities and kingdoms and such.

Mike (36:00):
If we could work that into the game with an being really something that's RP heavy, but if there's a story there that kind of encourages players to interact a little bit more, I'd love to do that. So storyline is first, I think second for us. Accessibility. I think from some of the earlier podcasts here and such a on Titans of texts. I mean, you've heard a lot about making the games more accessible. Accessibility is something that StickMUD needs some help on. I mean, right now we've, we've added things into the game over time that are, it's ASCII lines of a bunch of dashes and stuff to kind of set, set off tables into a a rough ASCII UI that's there for, for things. And that doesn't work really with 'em players that are visually impaired, they're not going to want to see here dash dash dash dash or whatever it is.

Mike (36:56):
So we need to take things like that back out of the game and you know, rework some things like the combat system to make the combat messages simpler, more crisp and things that, that folks that have you know, that are visually impaired can, can work with. So that's something that you know, it's one of those basic features that I'd love to see more in StickMUD. This year in 2020, I'd actually had said, okay, I'm going to go into mud lid and or mud light and, and see if you know, this is another thing that I can, I can add there is accessibility into the code base for, for mud lights so that people can you know, use a screen reader with mudlet. So Vadi, one of the core developers of mudlet.

Mike (37:44):
He's been really supportive on that as well. He wants to see that inside of that particular client. So I actually did get that working. I'm working somewhat, so it's kind of a pet project of mine right now to, to get a screen reader support for mudlet. And I think that's gonna open up an open up, a great audience for a mudlet overall. And just challenge, I think more more games to make themselves. I'm accessible to two people. So accessibility is like a second feature core feature that, that I'd like to add. And then you know, I think I had talked about a little earlier that it's just more more investment in GMCP. I think it's the best protocol that's out there in the protocol Wars. I want to see that you know, we're using as effectively as possible. So as I go through and you know, really rebuild the world, I just want every room in the game, every item in the game to have all the features of GMCP that it can and then also be as accessible as possible. So good things to come. And I think that's my goals for our 30th anniversary, which we coming up and 20, 21 in June. I'd row love to have all that ready.

Danny (39:05):
We, we definitely like hearing about the accessibility as as both Bartel and Seifert have said at this point on Titans, get some blind players, go into the blind community to get your player base going. So is there anything before we say our goodbyes I know bat mud as we, we had a few episodes ago, it's having a massive anniversary party. Well maybe before the virus happened, but is there anything planned for the 30th? Is there a big blowout in game or out of game?

Mike (39:47):
There's nothing planned like that yet. You probably have started that idea and begun the countdown now for us to plan that actually. But you know, we've, we've done things like that before. We've done parties, we've done stick cons especially. Yeah, the folks in Europe have partied hard over the years for our game. We've, we've had some gatherings and such here in the States for sure. So it's a great idea. I can't wait. I hope that we build up so much momentum that that 30th anniversary is gonna [inaudible] we're not going to have anything other than to do, than to, to celebrate and party for, for itself. I'm looking forward to it.

Danny (40:30):
And and on that note I'd like to thank you for, for joining us today on Titans of Text and for telling us a bit about StickMUD. It's always good to hear about development and new things for MUDs that have been with us since the beginning.

Mike (40:51):
Thanks so much for having me. Thanks to yourself and Eric for everything that you guys are doing for, for the community and just keeping people, people engaged. You guys are, are right at the center of everything. So I appreciate this podcast and all that you're doing on, on the the Reddit and the mud coders Guild. Thanks so much.