Our Orange has done an interview with the definitive MUD journalism outlet, writing-games, about the Cryosphere and its future. Check it out, and while you're there check out all Andruid's other excellent articles as well!
Write up in Writing Games 27th October, 2025
Version 2.7.3 9th September, 2025
Hi, it's been a little while since the last release. We hope you have been well.
- We have moved to a new server. We would like to thank Ellyll for hosting us these past twenty-two (!) years.
- Our web site is also back online, at https://cryosphere.org/.
- Our webclient, Chrysalis, is back, and is a nice modern web app.
- We now have a Discord bridge. And, in fact, a Discord! The 'intercom' and 'gossip' channels are synchronised between Discord and the MUD.
We have already been working on 3.0 (in fact, we've been working on it since 2014). Player-owned spacecraft are happening, any time now!
Big thanks to Bingo, Michael, Simon and Vesper for testing and feedback.
Version 2.7.2 20th September, 2014
Only a point release, but all sorts of things to report!
- Over 200 bugs, typos and feature requests dealt with!
- A new mission, Lab! This is an easy one, but everyone must do it if they want to get...
- CYBERNETICS! A range of new equipment with various varieties available across the game worlds that can let you see in the dark, boost your combat prowess or resilience, and more... read info implants for more information.
- No more magic free commbadges for Warrant Officers and above. Buy a commbadge implant instead.
- Beasts of burden: your carrying capacity is now substantially increased when you're mounted on an animal or vehicle.
- You can now more conveniently buy and sell items that are too heavy for you to carry, like motorbikes.
- The new liquids system is largely in place. No cocktails just yet though...
- We have a new, experimental emote system, which is a bit easier to use than myact and is available to all players. Read info emote for more information.
- The parser now understands that "examine foo's sofa" means examine the Sofa that Foo is sitting on.
- You can now jump into, onto or over some objects...
- Commanders can buy a new Officer's uniform, which they can use even after demotion due to new missions being added, etc. Its very nice.
- The Zoo and the old Combat 1 and Combat 2 simulations have been removed. A new Zoo is under construction on Eden, however...
Still no player-owned spacecraft or the updated spacesuit system yet. It'll come, though!
Version 2.7.1 17th November, 2013
More small fixes and world improvements.
- We've made our beta webclient, Chrysalis, available to the public. It is still a work in progress, but feel free to try it out if you're feeling brave!
- We now have slightly better support for the Mudlet client, which amongst other problems has terribly broken compression handling.
- There's now a reward of 50 credits for the first time you complete each of the 5 training simulations. If you've already completed them, you won't get any reward, sorry!
- There's an additional Crewman-level mini-mission available on the station - Robot repairs. An easy mission point for everyone!
- The Combat mission is now worth 2 points to better reflect its difficulty. If you've already done this mission, you'll be awarded the extra point automatically and may gain a rank as a result!
- Dr. Washington on the Cryosphere can now sell you "antibooze" pills for instant sobriety even following near-fatal doses of alcohol.
- Crimes committed on French soil will no longer result in your arrest and fining by British police should you escape back to Empire space, and vice versa. The police of all nations will punish acts of piracy, however.
- The parser now understands stuff like "remove knickers from head".
- There is now a bugstodo command, which is shown in brief to players and staff every now and then if there are bugs that they should be paying attention to. If you've submitted a bug, typo or feature request that was fixed, you should verify it was fixed correctly!
- We now support a new @foo syntax for all commands that accepted targets of the form foo>, such as sing, say and the communications channels like intercom.
- You can now drool, dribble and snore in your sleep.
- Commanders now get to use (amongst other things) the echo command, see a whole load more logmessages about what's going on in the game, get to see more information about the game world around them and can use the dynreset command.
- You can now examine and interact with people's outmost items of clothing and held items, in the same way you could already interact with their weapons.
- setcol now accepts background colour codes for non-channel custom colours. If you really wanted objects to be shown as magenta text on a yellow background, well now you can indulge yourself.
- You can once again steal things from other people. Most jurisdictions frown on this sort of behaviour, however.
- We've also dealt with over 100 bugs and feature requests, and there are new missions, spoilers and privacy policy files you should probably read.
More to come soon, possibly including a revamped spacesuit system and maybe even the long-delayed promise of cybernetic implants and player-owned spacecraft!
Version 2.7 23rd September, 2013
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Another update with more technical changes than content improvements, but it isn't all bad.
- We've a new Basic Combat Simulation, by Decroix.
- Commbadges are now considered emergency equipment, so you can get them for free from every hospital.
- We've upgraded our scripting language to Lua 5.2.2.
- We now have a whole new memory management system that might just make the game engine a little more reliable, but I guess time will tell...
Decroix has been granted the rank of Captain (Retired), in return for his work on the new training sim but doesn't get a full Captain rank given his long absense :-(
And that's your lot (there are more interesting changes if you're an admin or developer, honest!)
Hopefully we'll have some more new game content before Spring!
This version of the Cryosphere brought to you by the letters R and C and the number 189.