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What is Smudgy?

Smudgy is a MUD client written in Rust, built on the iced-rs framework for GPU-accelerated rendering on Windows, Linux, and macOS. The interface is deliberately minimal. Scripting runs on Google's V8 JavaScript engine with direct access to the client's internals, so scripts execute fast and stay close to the game loop.

It's an early-stage project under active development.

Features

  • Builds against Windows, macOS, and Linux
  • GPU-accelerated rendering
  • Hotkeys, aliases, and triggers
  • Customizable themes, mapper, and widgets
  • Light social features (share script packages or maps with friends)
  • Extremely fast trigger engine, built on the regex technology behind ripgrep
    • A test set of 10,000 regex triggers sustain over 100 MB/s of throughput in my benchmarks
    • Orders of magnitude faster than every other client I've been able to benchmark against
  • JavaScript scripting powered by V8 — the engine behind Chrome and Node.js
    • Scripts are JIT-compiled by V8's optimizing compilers, rather than interpreted like the Lua of Mudlet/MUSHclient or the built-in scripting language of TinTin++
    • Scripts have access to the npm and jsr package ecosystems
  • Exports TypeScript typings for the scripting API and every installed package
    • Edit scripts in your editor of choice (VS Code, Neovim, …) with full autocomplete, type-checking, and inline docs
  • Script packages run in sandboxed isolates governed by Deno's permission system.
    • Installed scripts can't run programs, touch the filesystem, or reach the network without explicit approval.

Roadmap

  • GMCP support
  • MSDP support
  • Support for other MUD standards, e.g. MCCP, MXP, MNES
  • Customizable panels
  • (Any) Documentation
  • More interesting example packages
  • Inline script editor
  • Expanded widget support

Vision

“I first played MUDs in a blinking terminal. Over the years, as I came to rely on more advanced clients, mappers, and sophisticated scripts, the terminal kept getting smaller to make room for toolbars and docked panels. It started to feel more like software than a game. If I were fond enough of a MUD, I could learn to ignore all that. I'd rather not have to.

Smudgy is built on two commitments. The first is performance. It's written in Rust, renders on the GPU, runs across multiple threads, and uses V8 for scripting, which keeps it quick and responsive even with a lot of automation firing. The second is restraint. It does what you'd expect from a capable modern client and shows as little of itself as it can while doing it, so the world stays in front of you and the client stays out of the way.” - W.

Download

Download Smudgy here