MUD Cyborgs

A cyborg is a program that performs automatic tasks. Whereas bots are designed to log onto a MUD and mimic human users, cyborgs are macro scripts you run on your MUD server to automatically take care of work you might otherwise have to do manually. You should only write or run macro scripts that you are sure you understand. If you are not careful, your scripts may perform undesirable actions that you cannot reverse.

Cyborgs can interact with others in their environment, and respond in preprogrammed ways to actions and words. For example, you can program a cyborg to automatically greet anyone entering a room, or to respond in various preset ways when it detects certain words.

Because cyborgs do not have human judgment, you have to be careful in their design to take into account potential interactions with other cyborgs. In particular, you want to avoid creating an infinite loop. For example, you might program a cyborg to say "Fine, and how are you?" to anyone that says "How are you?". If two of these cyborgs were ever to meet each other, and one were to say "How are you?" to the other, then they would start yelling "Fine, and how are you?" endlessly back and forth at each other until the server shut down!