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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
    • Powered by Rust's regex and aho-corasick libraries, the same matching engines that power ripgrep.
    • Smudgy's internal benchmarks profile a session with 10,000 triggers sustaining over 100 MB/s of throughput
  • Scripts powered by Google V8 JavaScript engine
    • Scripts are JIT-compiled by V8's optimizing compilers
    • Scripts have access to the npm and jsr package ecosystems
    • Technically-inclined script authors can build using their preferred IDE (VS Code, Neovim, …) with full autocomplete, type-checking, and inline docs
  • A unique-to-smudgy package repository, allowing script packages to be uploaded, shared, reviewed, and updated
    • 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
  • Further trigger engine optimization, particularly around insertion/removal
  • Support for other MUD standards, e.g. MCCP, MXP, MNES
  • Customizable panels
  • More accessible documentation
  • More interesting example packages and tutorials
  • 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