JediMUD 7.0 — The D20 Rebuild

Where we are

7.0 — What's new

Everything below is built and running on the alpha tree. As features pass internal testing they promote to dev for wider validation, then to prod for 7.0 launch.

🎲 D20 system rebuild

• 22 classes across 3 tiers — 9 base, 2 Epic (Bard/Ranger), 11 Prestige
• 16 races with size, family, ability mods, attack types, gender/alignment rules
• ~353 feats with prereq chains (feat / ability / class-level / race / BAB / spellcasting / alignment / weapon-proficiency)
• Live editors — cledit, rcedit, fedit, spedit — all changes apply immediately, persisted in SQL or disk
• Formula evaluator — every spell field (damage, applies, duration, summon-req) is a live expression with caster/victim/object variables
• Spell runtime consults a per-spell catalog for 7 mag_*() functions; falls back to hardcoded behavior gracefully
• SPELL_ACQ_INHERIT — Prestige casters inherit their base class's spell list

🏛 Account system

• Cross-character accounts — share gold + questpoints + remorts across all your alts
• Unlock store — buy access to Prestige classes + exotic races; the unlock is permanent and account-wide
• Cumulative pricing — first unlock is cheap; the tenth costs 36× base. Keeps the economy balanced over an account's lifetime
• ATM-gated banking — three money commands need an ATM object in reach; account session works anywhere

🤖 AI-driven NPCs

• OpenAI + Ollama fallback chain — cloud LLM first, local model as backup, static fallback last
• Four behaviors per mob: dialogue (tell), greet, emote reaction, combat taunt — each on its own cooldown
• Per-NPC personality strings stored in SQL — staff write 2-4 sentences, the LLM stays in character
• Async response handoff — worker threads never touch CircleMUD state; main-thread drain delivers lines
• Prompt-injection sanitizer — all player input is cleansed before reaching the LLM

📡 PubSub event bus

• Synchronous in-process bus with topic-based subscribers
• Sound layer subscribes to combat/weather/chat/player events → emits MSP triggers to capable clients
• MTRIG_PUBSUB — DG-script mob triggers can subscribe to any topic with wildcard arglists (combat.*, player.lowhp, etc.)
• Staff dashboard at /staff/pubsub shows live event tail

🌦 Weather + day cycle

• 15 rare weather events per zone — sandstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, thunderstorms, etc.
• Zone terrain flags (desert/water/mountain/forest/city/island/artic) gate which events can fire
• Movement cost modifiers + minor damage during severe weather
• Control Weather spell — magic can suppress or amplify events
• Six sunlight transitions per game-day driving outdoor messaging + DARK-room visibility

📊 Observability stack

• SQL audit log — every shutdown, admrole, load, purge, discipline action recorded with verb.subverb codes
• Entity load events — every mob/obj spawn attempt tracked; surfaces "this mob never spawns" via load-fail rate
• Class level events — level-up history with HP/Mana/Move deltas per class
• Combat kill log — PvE + PvP balance dashboard
• Performance monitoring — instrumented sections with per-pulse percentage breakdown
• Staff web dashboards for every stream

💾 Persistence layer

• SQL-authoritative player records + object sets, with disk-file mirror for transport + safety
• Object instance system — every loaded obj tagged with (vnum, uid, generation) for dedup + forensic provenance
• plrset / objset commands for full SQL ↔ disk repair, archive restore, recovery from self-delete
• automysqlbackup daily dump as a second independent backup beyond the file-level snapshot
• Object version upgrades — edit a prototype, every player's instance auto-upgrades on next rent-load

🗺 World & content tools

• Offline zone builder — single-file HTML editor for building zones without being online (try it)
• 8 new cross-zone reset commands (L/C/K/N/U/J/F/H) — chain zone events, set room flags across the world, force weather
• Live OLC for D20 content — cledit, rcedit, fedit, spedit + the classic redit/medit/oedit/zedit/sedit/trigedit/qedit suite
• Achievement system — auto-granted milestones with public leaderboards
• Raffle campaigns — multi-prize, multi-account, ticket-ledger-audited
• Help system in SQL — instant edits via hedit, no more flat-file fan-out
• IBT system — players submit bugs/ideas/typos; staff triage via ibtedit + a web dashboard

🌐 Web stack

• jedimud.net rebuilt in Astro 5 — fast static site, no slow CMS
• Browser web client at /webclient/ — telnet-over-WebSocket, audio, MSDP/GMCP support
• Staff dashboards — 12 cookie-gated tools for audit/load/level/combat/economy/IBT/pubsub/perf/MUD controls
• 72 documentation pages for staff + 10 builder guides + 4 interactive tools, all downloadable as .md bundles

🎵 Client integration

• MSP sound bridge — 13 event sounds + 9 weather sounds with 5-category mute
• MSDP variables — character vitals, combat target, weather, party state pushed every second
• GMCP packages — IRE-standard Char.Vitals/Status/Stats + custom Char.Environ/Group/Items/Skills/Event
• Discord bridge — gossip + auction + shout mirror out to a Discord channel

🛠 Built but not on prod yet

Features that live on alpha + dev but haven't promoted to prod. These need a prod restart to land:

• fedit / spedit — the feat + spell editors are alpha-only currently
• Formula evaluator for spell expressions — alpha-only
• SQL class/race overlay at boot — alpha+dev have this; prod doesn't
• Some MSDP variables introduced 2026-05-18 (WEATHER*, WORLD_EVENT, GROUP_MEMBERS) — promotes with prod binary update
• Achievement events — schema is there, runtime fires on alpha+dev
• Account unlock store v2 (cumulative pricing) — alpha+dev
• AI service — gated behind a feature flag pending API budget review on prod

📋 Path to 7.0 RC

What needs to happen before we can call something "Release Candidate":

1. Alpha smoke testing — every D20 path exercised against the formula evaluator. Spedit content tested end-to-end.
2. Dev promotion — alpha → dev port, dev acts as staging for a week+
3. Player content audit — convert/upgrade all existing prod content (zones, mobs, objects) to D20-aware versions where applicable
4. Account migration plan — existing prod players need accounts created; pooled-gold seeding from per-character bank balances
5. Documentation freeze — staff + builder + player docs locked in (this is the part that's basically done already 🎉)
6. Prod restart drill — disaster recovery rehearsed; rollback path validated
7. AI service budget — final go/no-go on OpenAI cost ceilings before flipping the feature live on prod
8. Performance baseline — perfmon over a week of player traffic on dev shows healthy headroom

📅 What 7.0 launch looks like

1. Announce 1-2 weeks ahead on news + Discord + login banner
2. Pfile + SQL snapshot — full backup of prod state before the cutover
3. Rolling downtime — ~30 min for the binary swap + first zone reset
4. Account migration auto-runs on first connect for legacy chars (one-time form prompt)
5. Login banners + new MOTD announcing what's new + key changes that affect existing players
6. Active staff presence for the first 48 hours to triage issues
7. Rollback plan — if anything's catastrophic, downgrade binary + restore SQL within 2 hours

🔭 Post-7.0 directions

Ideas in the someday-pile, listed so you know where the wind is blowing:

• Persistent player journals — first-person logs of major events, exportable
• Live-streaming the world map on the website — see player positions update in real time
• Visual character sheet on the website rather than just terminal display
• Cross-tree player visits — temporary character snapshots from dev to alpha for staff testing
• Mobile-friendly web client — touch-first input, larger buttons, no chord shortcuts
• Voice integration — text-to-speech for AI taunts, accessibility for sight-impaired players
• Federated MUDs — protocol for player-character travel between cooperating muds (very speculative)

Nothing here is committed. Treat as inspiration for what 7.1+ could include.

How to follow along

• Discord — discord.gg/EQfuEkV for daily progress chat
• News — /news for milestone announcements
• Changes — /changes for per-change build notes
• Want to help test? Reach out on Discord. Builders + active testers welcome on the dev tree.

Roadmap last updated 2026-05-19. Detail subject to change without notice; that's what an alpha is for.