Can you guys point me to some basic game code for me to look at? Anything would be good, but I'm especially interesting in finding code for a very basic MUD environment.
I don't know why you need to limit yourself to one langauge, but MUD games as well as MMORPG servers and similar types of games usually have a few components such as:
1)Internal representation of world, with a public (but possibly still internal) and well-designated way of interacting with the world, as well as internal ways the mechanics of the world is updated
2)Networking subsystem which handles incoming clients, decoding/encoding sending/receiving packets. For a MMORPG this means the client actually has to handle the things like describing the world to the client (draw pretty world), while for a MUD, you don't implement packets directly, but instead take on the task of making a text-based console client as part of the server (which can be remotely accessed)
3) Networking subsystem connects to the internal world in way to influence it as well as access it
4) Optional scripting subsystem which allows customization of the internal world in a variety of ways without actually changing the world's intimate details just so you could add minor details (new critter/npc/etc). Optionally alternative language for programming (more newbie friendly?).
That's the general idea, but things do get rather complicated on large projects.
From personal experience I noticed C-based projects usually end up skipping on step 4 and instead they tend to bloat up the game engine with all kinds of things that tend to belong outside the engine, C++ ones sometimes make up inadequate languages which are rather limiting (compared to the direct approach the C-based games usually take), while fancier ones like Java/C# (or other high-level languages) tend to take more ENTERPRISE approaches at separating the engine from the world descripption, usually coming with clever ways to serialize/deserialize(save/load) the world and customize it, however these projects tend to end up quite bloated in the end. Each has its advantages/disadvantages, and you should decide carefully how you plan on structuring your game. While the shape of the code that I have in mind vs the language used is usually the common outcome, if you have a strong discipline and patience, you can avoid the usual pitfalls, however this is difficult as most authors realize the problem after many years (when the game is already mature enough).
so hard to find? If you are looking for someone to knit it all together for you you are at a loss. Why not start from scratch?
If you want to create something innovative there's no way around a ingame scripting language.