What’s New?
- Guided UI tour and new feature callouts,
- the Base UI starter interface with health bars and chat windows,
- browser-based sign-in support.
The focus of Mudlet 5.0 is first-time player experience, and we have truly delivered on that promise. 5.0 now includes first-launch tutorials, tours and highlights and a redesigned profile selection experience.
Important Notes
Installation
Uninstall your current version. Download the latest release. Reinstall Mudlet.
Your profiles, maps, and settings will remain intact.
Auto Updates
Enable automatic updates in Preferences to receive future fixes and improvements automatically.
New Games
Four new worlds join Mudlet in 5.0. Each one is already in the game list: open All Games, pick it, and Mudlet fills in the connection details for you.
Dark Mists
Roleplay is required here, and playerkilling is part of how a character grows. Pick from 24 races and 11 classes, nine of which branch into subclasses, then find your place among the clans and Houses that shape the world, still being built by its Immortals.
Rites of Passage
Good and Evil have been at war here forever, and the loot is the front line. Clear one of 80+ areas for legendary gear, then hold on to it: the enemy faction may be waiting for you to walk out weakened. Remort, and come back stronger with each life.
PhoenixMUD
A free classic DikuMUD that has been running since 1996: 20,685 rooms across 276 zones, 16 classes, 15 races, and 400+ levels once you count the three remort climbs past Hero. Its official Mudlet package installs itself on connect, mapper already filled in.
Federation 2
Space, where the weapon is commerce. Build a bigger fortune in Imperial Groats than anyone else and climb the ranks by trading, forging alliances and knowing the right people, all in real time. Cooperation, not conquest, is the name of the game.
A Better First Experience
Mudlet has always been powerful, but 5.0 makes it far more welcoming.
New players are now greeted with:
- first-launch tutorial invitation,
- guided UI tour,
- feature callouts highlighting important functionality,
- redesigned profile selection experience,
- the new Base UI, a starter interface with health bars, chat windows and a map already configured.
The Base UI can also be customized. Health bars, maps and chat windows can be repositioned allowing players to create a layout that works for them without needing to learn Geyser first.
The game browser has also been improved with separate My Games and All Games views, making it easier to manage profiles and discover worlds.
Browser-Based Sign-In Support
One of the flagship additions in 5.0 is support for browser-based authentication.
Games can now allow players to sign in using external identity providers such as Google, Discord and other supported platforms. This modernizes the login process and enables integration with contemporary account management systems.
Copying Text Just Works
- Selecting across several lines no longer drags the leading spaces along with it, so what you paste keeps its shape (#9560).
- Ctrl+C keeps working after you click on the game window. It is no longer taken away from the command line (#9305).
Major Performance Improvements
Mudlet 5.0 contains extensive optimization work throughout the client.
Notable improvements include:
- faster processing of game text,
- faster trigger matching,
- significantly improved text throughput,
- faster colour tag handling,
- reduced memory allocations in exact-match and pattern triggers,
- better handling of line rewrapping, copying and pasting.
Several optimizations specifically target high-volume MUDs processing for heavily scripted profiles, helping Mudlet remain responsive even under extremely busy playing conditions. For display-heavy workflows, throughput has nearly doubled compared to previous versions.
Compared to 4.22.0, version 5.0 delivers performance gains across the board: the display pipeline paints 89% quicker, Geyser layout operations take 47-54% less time, ISO 8859-1 decoding is 48% faster, and trigger matching is 24% faster. Running two real Achaea combat systems over 100,000 lines of real game log end to end, Mudlet 5.0 is 12% to 24% faster. Importing 15,000 rooms via Lua code is now 151x faster (66.6s to 0.44s), while removing a 400-child Geyser layout is over 520x faster (4.17s to 0.008s).
Full Changelog
Interested in every change? Here are all 263 of them, each linked to the pull request behind it, with Lua functions linked to their wiki page. The complete changelog on GitHub adds the 156 infrastructure updates.
Show all 263 changes
Added:
- Czech (Čeština) translation (#10198)
- Rites of Passage MUD as a default game (#10183)
- Fantasy and sci-fi looks for the starter interface (#10002)
- Dark Mists as default game (#9313)
- getTextFormat() reports which underline style the game asked for (#9972)
- Load profiles without connecting, with --offline (#9971)
- drag the starter UI's map and chat anywhere too (#9863)
- drag the starter UI's health bars anywhere you like (#9840)
- PhoenixMUD (#9874)
- adjustable containers can be dragged out of their parent (#9850)
- widget state getters for titles, stylesheets, tooltips and scroll bars (#9645)
- getWindowGeometry(), windowVisible() and getLabelText() functions (#9528)
- help links for packages, wired to the Module Help button (#9453)
- full-window background image/gradient support (#9394)
- starter interface with health bars, map and chat for new players (#9454)
- Federation 2 Community Edition (#9500)
- remainingNamedTimer() to check time left on a named timer (#9411)
- keyboard shortcuts to switch between game tabs (#9460)
- option to undo the game's own line wrapping (#9455)
- warn when two keyboard shortcuts clash (#9449)
- Show tutorial invitation on first launch (#9169)
- sign in to supported games using your browser (e.g. Google, Discord, or the game's own account) (#9378)
- feature callouts (#9390)
- UI tour to complement the Mudlet tutorial (#9385)
Improved:
- New Crowdin updates (#9721)
- downscale images/assets (#10075)
- link to the full list of changes between your version and an update (#9380)
- game text draws faster by not laying out blank spaces (#9976)
- undoing the game's own wrapping is marked experimental, and no longer advertised (#9873)
- text throughput by not rewrapping lines that already fit (#9928)
- text and trigger throughput, and a CSI sequence that read freed memory (#9916)
- moving or resizing a Geyser layout no longer lays it out several times over (#9919)
- the ISO 8859-1 decoder no longer allocates a string for every character (#9856)
- base UI captures your gossips in its chat window (#9838)
- "Copy as image" now works without selecting text first (#9738)
- the starter UI's chat capture is now a trigger tree players can read and copy (#9736)
- OSC 8 hyperlink handling, and a setting to turn it off (#9731)
- credit seven more contributors in the About Mudlet dialog (#9675)
- make filler widget size in toolbars user settable (#9332)
- ship every default package as an mpackage (#9626)
- make the New profile button show what it did (#9607)
- do not copy leading spaces in multi-line select (#9560)
- split the games list into My games and All games tabs (#9452)
- honor XDG_CONFIG_HOME for Mudlet's config directory (#9552)
- show a simpler trigger editor by default (#9450)
- embed leak suppressions file in Mudlet binary (#9465)
- scripts can now match map menus with their map events (#9443)
- make keyboard shortcut settings work with screen readers (#9322)
- faster colour tag processing in cecho, decho and hecho (#9426)
Fixed:
- make MUDLET_CRASH_TEST work on clang builds (#10063)
- clear answer when committing a closed database (#10068)
- Crash reports are now sent on Linux and macOS (#10039)
- a detached profile window blocking the main window from coming to the front (#10025)
- Geyser menu parents and user window dock position (#10069)
- Databases are still created when an index names a column that isn't there (#10033)
- correct licensing details for (compiled) Mudlet application (#9808)
- Uninstalling the starter interface now removes it from the screen (#10030)
- Crash when resetting a profile that shows custom map info (#10004)
- Tab through shortcut settings in the order they are shown (#9988)
- Update downloads no longer pile up in the temp directory (#9986)
- Plain underline no longer keeps a wavy, dotted or dashed style (#9987)
- dropping an image whose name starts with a digit no longer fails (#9628)
- Applying an update no longer crashes Mudlet (#9970)
- Variables view no longer loses or corrupts variables in many edge cases (#9960)
- your interface no longer stays laid out for the size the window used to be (#9890)
- nine UI Lua API defects the Wave 4 specs had to pin as pending (#9830)
- Web links carrying a config or preset parameter are no longer misread (#9966)
- profile saves no longer leak Lua stack slots (#9895)
- A damaged trigger no longer crashes Mudlet while the profile loads (#9884)
- the starter UI's chat window no longer makes captured lines expensive (#9962)
- Undoing the game's word wrapping no longer merges separate sentences (#9872)
- Crash when an update download is requested twice in quick succession (#9948)
- Rare crash if a profile closes while an MXP tag is stalled (#9946)
- Crash on macOS 12 shortly after startup (#9945)
- keep the selected room when right-clicking elsewhere on the map (#9932)
- a game that cannot be reached now says so, instead of nothing at all (#9914)
- three first-screen defects in the connection dialog (#9894)
- triggers no longer act on the wrong line after another trigger feeds text (#9898)
- hidden control codes no longer leave stray characters in the game's text (#9901)
- New variables no longer occasionally vanish from the variable editor and profile saves (#9944)
- Windows CI builds again after an msys2 update broke Lua module installs (#9963)
- games offering several character sets no longer knock a profile out of UTF-8 (#9861)
- Mudlet no longer crashes when a multiline trigger's script feeds text back (#9897)
- Quitting a testing build no longer ends in a LeakSanitizer error (#9930)
- Music stopped with a fade-away right after it starts no longer plays on (#9907)
- a script connecting while the profile is still connecting no longer leaves it connected to nothing (#9896)
- replaceAll() replaces the wrong characters when a line has accents (#9906)
- the Carrion Fields loader no longer fails silently or re-downloads on every reconnect (#9921)
- the Variables editor no longer creates a junk copy of a variable it cannot name exactly (#9908)
- a profile save no longer blanks, drops or inflates saved variables (#9892)
- update notes no longer skip releases your platform never got (#9891)
- a killed alias, key binding or timer can come back to life and fire again (#9888)
- Geyser elements asked to start hidden no longer appear on screen (#9883)
- copying text no longer grabs an extra character or re-wraps the line per character (#9855)
- sharing an area from the generic mapper now carries its room hashes (#9364)
- a trigger with a blank pattern before a real one silently never matches (#9851)
- building a map from a script no longer slows to a crawl as it grows (#9763)
- the last line of a paragraph no longer goes missing when undoing game wrapping (#9859)
- reconnecting a profile to a different game no longer carries the last game's protocols over (#9773)
- pasted text goes in at the cursor, not at the start of the line (#9871)
- saved variables holding functions come back empty again instead of half-filled (#9860)
- game text no longer breaks into one character per line with GA forced off (#9858)
- Mudlet no longer copies the whole screen an extra time on every repaint (#9854)
- exact-match triggers no longer copy every line they check (#9853)
- trigger matching no longer allocates memory for every pattern on every line (#9852)
- a queued quit no longer runs from inside a profile save (#9813)
- Mudlet no longer crashes when adding an event handler after switching scripts (#9839)
- undoing the game's line wrapping no longer merges list entries (#9836)
- delete old maps/modules doing nothing when there is no backup folder (#9849)
- profile saves silently dropping saved variables that a second global references (#9762)
- preloading a sound no longer plays it, and IRC settings stop losing your password (#9817)
- three Lua API bugs the core specs found - command history, phantom profiles, package names (#9816)
- seven Lua library and mapper bugs found while speccing them (#9815)
- db:create crashing on a single column name as _index (#9799)
- gauges no longer make every line of game text expensive (#9766)
- a stray escape code no longer silences your game for the rest of the session (#9765)
- brand-new installs get the new-player experience again (#9745)
- deleting a big Geyser layout no longer freezes Mudlet (#9760)
- notepad, IRC client and toolbars outliving their profile (#9706)
- underscores and descenders no longer clipped at certain font sizes (#9743)
- an empty XDG config directory hiding every profile (#9712)
- MXP frames overlapping UI packages that reserve screen space (#9737)
- don't offer updates that don't yet have a sha256 sum (#9735)
- new profiles process game text about twice as fast (#9705)
- a profile named "." or ".." deletes every profile when removed (#9722)
- game text no longer loses a character to a stray escape code (#9723)
- triggers being deleted when a script creates a lot of them at once (#9724)
- macOS builds sometimes failing their tests for no reason (#9733)
- unbreak development - cloneExportDocument was renamed to takeExportDocument (#9732)
- getWindowGeometry() and windowVisible() answer for the main window (#9714)
- three full-window background bugs - vanishing console, lost border colour, huge cover scaling (#9711)
- two ways a profile save could lose or resurrect your data (#9704)
- three crashes in the game selection screen (#9702)
- four security holes in the new browser sign-in (#9713)
- pausing a track and then playing a different one left you with silence (#9710)
- mapper scripts stopped being told the map had opened (#9709)
- trigger editor and deleted item subtrees leaking memory (#9700)
- stop the test-only waitForEvent() wedging Mudlet on macOS (#9691)
- profile close during a map operation, Discord presence truncation, and interrupting ttsSpeak() (#9686)
- user key bindings on Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 and Ctrl+Tab (#9703)
- a trigger that re-creates itself freezes Mudlet (#9697)
- stop treating long-time Mudlet users as brand new players (#9695)
- module save reaching into the profile after it is destroyed (#9690)
- package lifecycle - queued save outliving the profile, unremovable archives, module priority (#9684)
- six command line and console bugs (#9683)
- temporary trigger/alias/key/timer cleanup evicting same-named items (#9682)
- eight Geyser layout and container bugs (#9680)
- four Lua API corrections - colours, room name offsets, map window state and printTable (#9678)
- stop the telnet reader writing a NUL past the data it was given (#9677)
- Mudlet freezing when a window is set to wrap too narrowly (#9623)
- Discord getters no longer treat presence text as a format string (#9660)
- don't replay a sign-in token the game already rejected (#9676)
- stop map saves polluting userData with fallback keys (#9469)
- Sounds going silent when a file fails to load (#9612)
- stop table.union modifying a table it was given (#9613)
- table.n_collect drops values that match an index (#9615)
- profiles with parentheses in their name can be opened again (#9610)
- removing a game's profile no longer hides it from the All Games list (#9608)
- compare() no longer rejects tables that hold false (#9614)
- event handlers no longer wipe the caller's Lua stack (#9621)
- killTrigger and killAlias report failure when the item is already dead (#9620)
- crash when opening settings on macOS (#9625)
- crash when closing Mudlet while an update is available (#9604)
- script error messages are readable in dark mode again (#9606)
- help banners no longer show up in the wrong editor section (#9609)
- Windows auto-update failing on a release binary with no checksum (#9617)
- strand no heap objects across the remaining lua_error() raises (#9605)
- tempTimer negative time, compile() error slot, killTimer idempotency (#9597)
- ttsSetVoiceByName return garbage and stale ttsSpeechStarted text (#9595)
- media start events fired too early when replaying a just-stopped sound (#9611)
- Geyser.Window:echo() keeps the stored message
- gauge three value CSS shorthand and non-positive maximums
- lay out new2 boxes, and apply the layout end_update deferred
- Geyser.Button:setState refuses 'down' before writing it
- Adjustable.Container resetTitle error and delete leaks
- setTextFormat leak, createLabel return convention, windowType scrollbox
- looping sounds playing only once (#9569)
- garbled error messages in networking and media functions (#9551)
- permGroup reports failure properly and listRemove removes consecutive duplicates (#9550)
- cap the length of inserted text like echoed text (#9497)
- ttsGetQueue out-of-bounds read and ttsClearQueue message (#9471)
- prevent a rare crash while saving a profile that uses modules (#9559)
- crash when a button uninstalls its own package (#9558)
- stop crashes while saving and profiles losing their triggers (#9557)
- replacing a temp item's script no longer keeps running the old function callback (#9496)
- clearing the screen no longer loses the last line from the log (#9486)
- variables added while playing are no longer lost when saving (#9492)
- highlight triggers no longer stop later color triggers from matching (#9425)
- getNamedTriggers no longer drops names when trigger types are mixed (#9549)
- replacing the game GUI download dialog no longer cancels the new download (#9519)
- scaleMovie collateral disconnect, isAnsi*Color returns, scrolling messages (#9474)
- colon-form underline styles now match other terminals (#9498)
- memory leak when perm* functions receive invalid Lua code (#9556)
- caret-mode Shift+Arrow selection off-by-one and Ctrl+C copy (#9393)
- bold text no longer brings back a colour the game already reset (#9515)
- exporting a package no longer destroys an existing file when you decline to overwrite (#9495)
- restarting to apply an update no longer leaves a second Mudlet running (#9487)
- harden the TLS-upgrade question against reconnects and profile closure (#9518)
- log no longer duplicates a line when logging is restarted (#9490)
- mapper API error reporting for getMapEvents and addRoom (#9473)
- color triggers now work inside 'only pass matches' trigger groups (#9442)
- triggers created by other triggers react to the current line again (#9458)
- flag invalid aliases and block loops while typing them (#9499)
- tempAnsiColorTrigger can match background colour only (#9494)
- MXP text now shows correctly on non-English games (#9491)
- non-English game text no longer garbles after a stray "&" (#9489)
- script output no longer breaks the game's colour and control codes (#9485)
- character-at-a-time warning misfires on password prompts (#9391)
- apply Discord API permission gating consistently (#9472)
- searchRoom returns nil+message for a missing roomID (#9467)
- tempButton and tempButtonToolbar return the created ID (#9470)
- remove duplicate cechoLink/dechoLink/hechoLink in GeyserMiniConsole (#9477)
- profile reset no longer forgets which variables to save (#9484)
- notepad arrows now visible in dark mode (#9488)
- align getTimestamp, getModulePriority, getModulePath failure returns (#9480)
- guard sendMSDP against disconnected/unnegotiated state (#9478)
- stop a malicious game from writing files outside the media folder (#9504)
- show connection details when picking a game on a fresh install (#9451)
- game information sent via MXP is no longer all-lowercase (#9447)
- 200 byte leak when loading a map (#9464)
- cap telnet subnegotiation length to bound memory use (#9440)
- recover from corrupt MCCP compression and stop losing data (#9441)
- stray ESC sequence no longer corrupts later text (#9436)
- script editor's info banner no longer glares in dark mode (#9414)
- script editor's search box no longer jumps around (#9444)
- keep non-ASCII characters in MXP custom entities (#9439)
- enforce the per-echo character limit (#9438)
- colon-form italic styling no longer corrupts underline (#9437)
- cap over-long escape sequences to bound memory use (#9435)
- hidden terminal control sequences no longer show up as text (#9433)
- certificate warnings now open settings for the right profile (#9432)
- package description images now work for packages with spaces in their name (#9431)
- tempAnsiColorTrigger now runs function callbacks (#9427)
- pasting several copied items now works for every item type (#9423)
- Variables view handles decimal numbers and true/false keys properly (#9422)
- editor copy/paste works after scripts create triggers or aliases (#9421)
- debug console shows its black background again (#9419)
- certificate warnings are now readable in dark mode (#9418)
- Copy button no longer oversized on the connection screen (#9417)
- main display no longer leaves a blank strip when the top border shrinks (#9413)
- word wrap changed by scripts now shows correctly in Preferences (#9410)
- clicking into the main window no longer steals copy from the command line (#9305)
- no more crash when viewing Variables after resetting a profile (#9430)
- deleting lines in triggers no longer corrupts the log file (#9429)
- save new modules to the location you choose (#9424)
- alias patterns no longer break after editing them (#9420)
- trigger editor's extra-options arrow is now visible in dark mode (#9412)
- Windows crash reports now show the actual cause (#9370)
- line-initial underscores no longer clipped at certain font sizes (regression of #7866) (#9288)
- updater not running on close, showing empty changelog (#9388)
- prevent crash from a trigger that endlessly feeds itself (#9368)
- variable editor keeps new variables nested in their parent table (#9285)
- trigger multi-line attribute resets when adding a sibling trigger (#9284)
- crash when a package uninstalls itself from its own alias/key/tr… (#9383)
- don't load a map if trying to create a mapper & map is already loaded (#9415)
- apply map label edits immediately in label preview (#9387)
- shrink preferences dialog to fit on 1377×768 screen (#9407)
- keep saved profile passwords working on Windows after qtkeychain library update (#9395)
- clickable links could show the wrong colours and styling after heavy output (#9406)
- add missing dictionary name (#9400)
- resize command line box for appendCmdLine/printCmdLine/clearCmdLine (#9301)
- console text not redrawing after resizing the window (#9369)
- editor keeps its maximized/full-screen state when toggled back to (#9303)
Community Thanks
A huge thank you to everyone who made 5.0 happen.
Code came from Andrew Johnson, Carl Yute, Delwing, EazyHood, elements-of-boredom, Ethan Hussong, fed2-community, gesslar, Giorgio Maria Federico Birnthaler, Jay Howard, Jesús Pavón Abián, Manjeet Pathak, Mike Conley, missionz3r0, Morquin, mudzereli, patrck17, Pavel Třešňák, Stephen Lyons and Vadim Peretokin.
Translations were written and kept current by Karlo Delgado, Kyrzam, Leris, Pavel Třešňák and Vadim Peretokin.
And thank you to our testers, wiki contributors, Discord community members and Patreon supporters. Mudlet remains community-built and community-driven.
