# The House of Icarus

**The House of Icarus** is a simple open source MUD inspired by classic early 2000s skilling MMOs like Runescape. It is a low-tech, neo-dark age, sci-fi game where edged weapons and bows are more common than computers and guns.

There is not much here yet.

# Gameplay

- Type and wait skilling.
- Attack and wait combat.
- Semi-AFK and active gameplay styles.
- 600ms game ticks.
- 28 slot inventory.
- Classless. Skills level 1-99 as you use them.
- Solo friendly just like you remember from 2001. Grind and chat with friends.
- Ironman-style, slow, grind up your own gear progression. Vendors generally don't sell craftable items.
- Non-violent ways to use combat skills with "dangerous work".
- Discoverable safespots for chill training ranged and science.
- A detailed casino for you to waste all the credits you grind up for.

## Skills

| Skill        | Description                                                                       |
| ------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Accuracy     | How accurate you are with melee weapons.                                          |
| Strength     | How hard you hit with melee weapons.                                              |
| Defense      | With higher defense you are less likely to get hit.                               |
| Hit Points   | Your HP is your maximum amount of health.                                         |
| Ranged       | Accuracy and effectiveness with using bows, guns, and thrown weapons.             |
| Science      | Accuracy and effectiveness using scrap for utility and combat. Almost magical!    |
| Technology   | Temporary togglable buffs that slowly drain your battery. Recharges at terminals. |
| Fishing      | Relax, AFK, and catch some fish for easy food.                                    |
| Mining       | Relax, AFK, and mine some ore. Or do sweaty 3-tick mining to mine a lot of ore.   |
| Woodcutting  | The best skill. Chop trees to get wood.                                           |
| Firemaking   | Burn logs to watch this number increase.                                          |
| Assassin     | Take on jobs to slay large numbers of creatures and rivals for big rewards.       |
| Hacking      | Follow rumors using illegal computer skills for personal gain.                    |
| Thieving     | Steal limitless credits and farming seeds from the rich NPCs of Vesta.          |
| Scavenging   | Pilfer junkyard scrap, then turn it into components for Science.                  |
| Farming      | Grow your own food and reagents. You terraformed Vesta after all!               |
| Cooking      | Cook food for HP and other minor buffs with your fish and crops.                  |
| Smithing     | Turn ore into bars. Turn bars into useful equipment and ammo! Modify weapons!     |
| Crafting     | Create jewelry, clothes, glass, pottery, and fine silver items.                   |
| Fletching    | Create cheap low-tech bows, crossbows, darts, arrows, and bolts.                  |
| Pharmacy     | Clean herbs and brew potions for temporary buffs.                                 |
| Construction | Build a player-owned house for fast travel or to show off rare items.             |
| Agility      | Get more stamina and shorter wait times when AFK travelling with APS.             |

# Building

Install Go then

```
git clone https://git.historia.vg/git/thehouseoficarus
cd thehouseoficarus
go build -o thoi ./cmd/thoi
./thoi
```

Telnet to the port configured in `config.yaml` or bring up the web client.

# Server Options (config.yaml)

The `thoi` binary checks for a file named config.yaml in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/thoi or the local directory. It creates one if it's not found.

The game is designed around 600ms ticks, but you can change the `tick_length` here. You can also set up telnet, SSL telnet, HTTP, and HTTPS on different ports here. For the secure options can provide a private key and certificate. Use something like [certbot](https://certbot.eff.org/). If you enable HTTPS/Telnet TLS without providing certs, a self-signed cert will be generated and used for you.

# AI Disclosure

The THOI **game engine and tools** are ~~completely vibe coded~~ ~~agentically engineered~~ written with "LLM assistance".

**LLMs do not generate any creative content** (e.g. story, characters, rooms, quests). LLMs do generate *example* content for dev testing, so you might see that somewhere, but not in the final game. I personally prefer mediocre solo dev writing to AI filler.

# License

0BSD. Do whatever you want. Have fun.