Delusions of Grandeur runs on a Go MUD engine with a world authored entirely in YAML. Rooms, mobs, quests, dialogue, schedules and patrols are all data rather than code, and so is the balance: 352 tunable knobs in one config file cover damage scales, mitigation caps, regen rates, progression odds, shop pricing and NPC pacing, so the game can be retuned without recompiling it.
These diagrams were drawn by hand against the running source rather than generated from it, and checked automatically for label overlap. Each one opens full screen with search, click-to-focus, and a guided tour. Once a diagram is open, click Present to start the tour.
Every player connection, telnet or browser, funnels into one world tick loop that drives rooms, mobs and characters over a YAML data layer.
Start here. Every other diagram is a close-up of one box on this one.
View diagram → ArchitectureDaily schedules, patrol routes, NPC-to-NPC conversations, behavior trees and idle chatter, and how they arbitrate for one mob on one round.
Most MUD NPCs stand still until spoken to. The townspeople here follow a daily routine instead.
View diagram → SequenceOne swing end to end: how many swings you get, set by stamina and carried weight; a single attack roll contested by every defense the defender has stamina left for, with the widest margin winning; and damage through the shared three-channel pipeline.
Damage mitigation never touches the to-hit roll. Armor reduces a hit that has already landed, and a critical hit ignores it.
View diagram → SequenceAuthored YAML loads first, a saved instance overlays it, and then a restore pass copies certain fields back from the template so a stale save can never override them.
A deliberately incomplete overlay. On the fields tagged for it, authored intent wins.
View diagram → Data FlowEvery step you take rebuilds a map snapshot, ships it over GMCP, and redraws the browser client's tooled leather map with exits, party markers and fog.
Fog of war is filtered on the server. Rooms you have not walked are never sent, only a stub exit at the edge of what you know.
View diagram → LifecycleNo experience points and no levels. Using a stat rolls for a chance to improve it, and a soft cap bends the curve rather than capping the number.
The thing worth noticing is what is missing from this diagram.
View diagram →