About

If you’re not already sitting down, please do; this could be a long read.  I expect it to be updated as I (or others) remember key points.

Covenstead: Land of Shadow was born in September of 1998, while I (Freyja, now Astina) was studying at The University of Kansas as an Astronomy major.  I had begun to play a nifty online game called Realms of Despair some time before this and decided I wanted to know how it was done and how to start my own.  I found the SMAUG source code and went to town.  Once online I started to look for ways to promote and attract not only players but builders, coders and admins to my new creation.  Using primarily The Mud Connector as a recruiting tool I was able to bring together a group of people interested in making the game bigger and better.  During this time I also met Astera, and given having similar mindsets and visions for the future of the game she rose through the ranks quickly to become a full blown administrator and coder and eventually with the new bases, co-owner.

Skipping forward a bit, we began to work on improving the code and adding in extra bits and pieces we felt would add to the game.  Unfortunately, SMAUG really doesn’t take kindly to being poked in such a manner.  Eventually we ran into some very serious stability problems and a fatal bug on June 30th 2000, crippling development and play for nearly 6 months.  As a result causing the loss of a large portion of our player base and some of our staff due to lack of ability to do anything.  After fighting with it for some time, Astera and I decided in December of 2000 that it would be best to venture out into the fledgling world of custom Mu* design and start from the ground up.

The first iteration of this attempt was MUDure (MUD Using Recycled Electrons) which moved forward fairly well for a time, but we ran into a few more code problems which caused development to stagnate and die.  Astera and I both took some time off from the development to get on with life and allow time to take its course, skills to develop further and our understandings to mature even more while still holding on to the desire and the vision that originally kindled the idea of our own codebase.

In January 2004, we joined forces again; briefly contemplating a journey into the world of graphical MMO’s and after we slapped some sense back into ourselves moved back onto track with a MU* design.  Some work was done over the course of the next several months and the new base, EDEN, was born in August of 2004.

EDEN was subject to very accelerated development tracks and moved forward in giant leaps at times.  Even so, better understanding of programing, sockets, data structure and the like lead to a complete revision and rebuild of the code, EDEN v2 which then moved forward and became a base for a short time.  The code worked, we were just short of a battle system in the way of basic needs and the forces of nature, better known as life, stepped in and caused havoc for a while.  We revisited things in November of 2007 at which time we began working on the software specifications for EDEN v3 (Phoenix) with the intent to be as dynamic and revolutionary as possible.  However, with this, we took a hard-line approach to software specifications which produced a lot of idea and development progress but no code and EDENv3 went stagnant in December 2008.

Which brings us to today, January 2009.  Astera and I are once again back together working on pushing forward.  Although it might seem like our project has had troubled waters from the start, it is far from lost time.  These experiences and discussions, successes and failures have all provided us with a very serious ammount of development resources, documentation all leading to the ability to improve things that much more as we’re moving forward.  That said, it is with much pride, vision, and hope for the future that we announce the start of work on the newest codebase; MuGears.  At this point, code is moving forward as well as additional discussion.