NukeFire: A Post-Apocalyptic MUD That Built Accessibility Into the Wasteland

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I wrote earlier this month about Erion, the MUD that finally got accessibility right. I said it was the first MUD where I wasn’t fighting the interface to access the game. That’s still true. But Erion isn’t the only MUD doing this work. NukeFire is another one, and it does several things Erion doesn’t.

NukeFire is a post-apocalyptic wasteland MUD. You’re not an elf in a forest. You’re a freejack in the ruins of Tek Angeles, killing junker robots in a scrapyard and crafting gear from their parts. The welcome message warns you: “This MUD does not have a traditional fantasy theme. There may be things here which offend you.” It’s gritty, weird, and full of players who’ve been here for years.

I’ve been playing for about a day. My character is a Slinger — the mage class — named Liora. She’s level 40, alignment Evil, and she’s killed more sparkroaches and data grubs than I can count. Here’s what NukeFire gets right.

Erion has a screen reader mode. NukeFire has three. The sr setup command lets you choose between descriptive, balanced, and minimal profiles:

Descriptive keeps full room descriptions with clean combat and output summaries.
Balanced uses brief rooms with the same clean output tools.
Minimal uses balanced output and also quiets optional public communications like gossip and auction.

You can switch between them anytime. If I’m exploring a new area, I use descriptive. If I’m grinding the scrapyard for the fiftieth time, I switch to balanced. The game doesn’t assume one setting works for every situation.

Two commands help when things get fast. sr status reads your active profile, prompt mode, summaries, line gags, and presets — everything about how the game is currently presenting information to you. sr recap reads a stable snapshot of the current room, exits, resources, opponent, group condition, and immediate danger. This is specifically for when combat or group output moves faster than a screen reader can follow. You don’t have to scroll back through spam to find out what’s happening. You type two words and the game tells you.

Gags That Work for Screen Readers #

Most MUDs have some form of output filtering. NukeFire’s gag system was built with screen reader users in mind. The standard gag command shows a colored, organized guide for sighted players. sr gag shows the same controls in short, plain lines designed for screen readers.

There are friendly presets that do what you’d actually want:

gag comms quiets gossip, auction, congratulations, and newbie information.
gag loot enables loot, item-proc, and concealed-weapon summaries.
gag combat enables compact combat and the full Output Intelligence profile.
gag skynet hides ordinary lines containing the word SKYNET.

You can also build your own rules: gag exact, gag starts, gag contains. Matching ignores capitalization and display color codes. Type gag list to review saved rules, gag test to test a sample, or gag status to see both custom rules and friendly presets.

The Output Intelligence profile — enabled with toggle dedupe max — folds repeated lines, summarizes combat rounds, and compresses group movement. It changes presentation only. Damage, healing, drops, timing, and combat rules are unchanged. The game is the same. The noise is gone.

NukeFire has a GPS system built into the game. gps find searches linked destinations by partial name. gps set locks in your destination. gps route shows the full path. gps nearest finds the closest reachable destination. gps anchor speedwalks you to your saved anchor point. pindrop drops a personal waypoint.

The GPS list is organized by difficulty tier: newbie, fresh remort, early remort, low remort, seasoned, veteran, high, elite, advanced, extreme, endgame. Each destination shows its remort requirement and whether it has crafting. You don’t have to guess whether an area will kill you. The game tells you.

You can also save personal speedwalk routes with path save and replay them with path run. And bigmap toggles a local minimap that follows your GPS route — useful if you have some vision, but the GPS text output works fine without it.

This matters for the same reason Erion’s runto matters. With topographical agnosia, I can’t build a mental map of rooms I’ve been through. GPS navigation means I don’t have to.

Equipment Management That Doesn’t Require Memorization #

NukeFire’s equipment system is the most screen-reader-friendly I’ve seen in a MUD. The key commands:

GearCheck gives a broad gear review.
Compare checks an item against your current gear.
Upgrade suggests better equipment, implant, or tattoo options for a specific slot.
Upgrade All checks every slot at once.
Autocompare shows quick upgrade hints in your inventory output. Items are marked better, toss-up, worse, or cannot wear.
Highlight shows where a stat like damroll or spellpower comes from — which piece of gear is giving you that number.
SetWeights lets you customize how the upgrade system evaluates equipment for your class. If armor no longer matters because you’re past the cap, set it to zero. If spellpower matters more, raise its weight. The recommendations reflect the build you’re actually playing.
SocketCheck searches equipped items by socket shape. socketcheck round returns only items with round sockets, showing the full socket layout for each match.
WearBest removes your current gear and wears the best available items from your inventory for every slot.

This is the difference between being self-sufficient and being dependent on other players’ knowledge. I don’t have to memorize which area drops a better ring. I don’t have to ask the gossip channel whether this implant is an upgrade. The game tells me.

Crafting That Stores Your Materials #

NukeFire’s crafting system uses stored materials. When you kill a monster, it drops parts — servo couplers, nerve leads, ink ampoules, data wafers. You type addmat and the game sweeps valid materials from your inventory into saved storage. The materials live on your character, survive logout, and can be checked with materials.

When you’re ready to craft, you go to a crafter NPC and type craft. If you have enough materials, it makes you something. If you don’t, it tells you exactly what’s missing. You can also use gather to pull materials back into your inventory if you need to move them.

The scrapyard — the newbie crafting zone — has three crafters scattered throughout the area: Ratch for equipment, Suture-9 for implants, and a tattoo crafter for tattoos. Each one uses a different material family, and the Intake Sorting Yard has bins labeled for armor stock, ink stock, and implant stock so you know what goes where.

I crafted a rookie spinal damper implant at Suture-9’s chair, took it to Vlad the Implanter in Tek Angeles, and had it surgically installed in my back. It gave me +2 damage. That’s a crafting loop that works entirely through text commands and screen reader output, with no visual interface and no guesswork.

A Community That Answers Questions #

NukeFire’s community is active and helpful. When I asked on gossip what areas were good for my level, multiple players responded within seconds. When I asked how crafting worked, someone explained it. When I mentioned I’d cleared most of the scrapyard and crafted my first implant, a veteran player said “first steps :)” — the kind of small encouragement that makes a new player feel welcome.

The welcome message says: “Do not hesitate to ask questions. Everyone was new once. The wastes are easier with guidance.” That’s not just flavor text. The community actually behaves that way.

There’s also active development. The news file shows updates from August 5 through August 10, 2026 — WHO modernization, SetWeights cleanup, SocketCheck improvements, new zones, TinTin compatibility work, memory leak fixes. This is a game that’s being actively maintained, and the developers are thinking about accessibility. One player — The Eldritch One — is building a NukeFire client with screen reader functionality built in.

What NukeFire Does That Erion Doesn’t #

I love Erion. It’s still my primary MUD. But NukeFire does several things Erion doesn’t:

Multiple screen reader profiles instead of a single toggle. You can adjust output verbosity based on what you’re doing.
sr recap for recovering context when combat moves too fast. Erion has nothing like this.
Stored crafting materials that survive logout. Erion has separate craft and alchemy inventories, but NukeFire’s addmat and gather system is more streamlined — one command sweeps everything into storage, and materials persist across sessions without needing to manage multiple inventories.
Equipment comparison and upgrade suggestions built into the game. Erion has a database search, but NukeFire’s autocompare and upgrade system is more immediate.
GPS with difficulty tiers. Erion’s runto is great, but NukeFire’s GPS tells you whether an area will kill you before you go there.
A post-apocalyptic setting. If you’re tired of elves and dragons, NukeFire is robots, radiation, and Thunderdome.

What Erion Does That NukeFire Doesn’t #

Fair is fair. Erion has things NukeFire doesn’t:

A soundpack with an installer. NukeFire has no soundpack that I’m aware of.
Hotkeys for health, mana, and experience that work even when TTS is off.
Message history buffers you can navigate with keystrokes.
Spell numbers so you can type cast 832 instead of cast 'magic slash'.
Autoskill for repetitive combat actions, designed with carpal tunnel in mind.
A fantasy setting. If you want elves and dragons, Erion has them.

The two games complement each other. Erion is my medieval fantasy MUD with alchemy and faiths. NukeFire is my post-apocalyptic wasteland MUD with robots and crafting. I play both, and I don’t have to choose.

What Other MUDs Could Learn #

Most MUDs are technically accessible because they’re text-based. A screen reader can read the output. But “technically accessible” and “actually playable” are different things, and the distance between them is where multiply disabled players fall through.

NukeFire closes that distance with features that aren’t complicated:

Screen reader profiles that adjust output verbosity.
A recap command for recovering lost context.
GPS navigation with difficulty tiers.
Equipment comparison and upgrade suggestions.
Stored crafting materials that survive logout.
Gag presets designed for screen reader users.
A community that answers questions without making you feel stupid for asking.

None of these features are hard to implement. Most MUDs already have the text infrastructure. What NukeFire has that others don’t is the awareness that blind and disabled players exist, and the willingness to build for us instead of waiting for us to figure it out.

I’ve been playing for about a day. My character is a Slinger named Liora, level 40, alignment Evil. She’s killed over three hundred junker robots, crafted an implant from their parts, and explored a wasteland she can actually navigate.

For the second time in a MUD, I’m playing the game instead of fighting it.

How to Connect #

NukeFire is free to play. Connect with any MUD client (Mudlet, MUSHclient, TinTin++) at:

Host: tdome.nukefire.org
Port: 4000

Good first help files: help newbie, help class, help prestige, help qol, help gps, help screenreader, help gag.

Screen Reader Profiles, Not Just a Toggle #