The seed is planted

PurlMUSH will be reborn. This is something I have decided. This project existed a long time ago, and was relatively well-advanced before RL tragedy struck. All of the previous code was lost. This is a shame, because it was excellent code.

Regardless, it will be rebuilt. We will make it bigger, faster, stronger. We have the technology.

First off, what IS PurlMUSH? PurlMUSH is an endeavour to build a MUSH (a la TinyMUX, PennMUSH, TinyMUSH) purely in the Perl programming language. This is proof of concept more than anything else. It is never going to compete with the major flavours of MUSH, but it will be done for the sake of doing it. Perversity at its best.

Now, first off, I have to give credit where credit is due. Thomas Boutell of Boutell.com originally developed PerlMUD (http://www.boutell.com/perlmud/index.html) and it is FROM PerlMUD that a great deal of this is inspired. That being said, I have purchased a license for PerlMUD and from there I am developing my own version of this. I make NO CLAIM that this is entirely my code. However, all changes and differences from the original code of PerlMUD are entirely my own. My bugs are my own and will remain that way. I will fix them. Eventually. :)

Why am I doing this project? Because I love Perl. And I love MUSH. Therefore, it's the love child of my two online passions. I believe that I can make this a good piece of code. I know that I can write good Perl code, and I know that I have a very good understanding of how MUSHes operate. I've been on them for a long time.

So, all that being said, this project officially launched on February 15th. Thanks to the generosity of Lorinthal and Ti'Anna, PurlMUSH is up and running on the development server of supermassive.blackhole-ninjas.net, port 8301.

Before the code was functional, I had to strip out the http server that was bundled into PerlMUD. That took a while. I also optimized some of the code for readability according to my style specifications.

An example is, PerlMUD had code like this:
if (!&wizardTest($me)) {
&tellPlayer($me, "You must be a wizard to do that.");
}

Standard code, right? Yes, it is. However, I enjoy the following syntax MUCH much better.

&tellPlayer($me, "You must be a wizard to do that.") if (!&wizardTest($me));

It's more readable to me. If you're not a code junkie, you may not get the distinction, and that's okay. Read on, as I will document many more things to come.

One last note. Why PurlMUSH? Well, there's the obvious homonymic similarity between Perl, and Purl. The accusation was, at one point, that Purl was short for 'purloined', aka stolen. That I had stolen the idea from Boutell and was claiming it as my own. Not true. I wanted something distinct. And I also remember from my many years watching my mother knit and crochet that there is a stitch called a purl stitch. It can be done to put, for example, a golden or silver stitch around the edge of something. Which, in some senses, is what I am doing. I am taking the core server functionality of PerlMUD and gilding it, purling it if you will. There is also a definition out there of Purl being the murmuring sound of water. I may not be murmuring constantly through this, but...I like the idea. And last, a Purl is a Persistent Uniform Resource Locator. A permanent place on the web, if you will. I'm very persistent about making PurlMUSH a reality. Hence, the name. And so yes, the name of this blog is 'Culturing a Purl' and will continue to be so, because I have taken a seed, placed it in my oyster-ish brain, and I hope a true 'pearl' will emerge.

This will be the story of how this Purl is cultured.