Deploy and Host SharpMUSH (Stable) on Railway

SharpMUSH is a modern MUSH server for text-based roleplaying games, written in .NET and compatible with PennMUSH softcode. Players connect from any MU* client over telnet, or from a browser through its web portal, which has a web terminal, a wiki, scene logs and an admin area.

About Hosting SharpMUSH (Stable)

The template runs three services. edge holds every player's connection, along with the web front and the message bus. server runs the game, with the world stored on its volume. renderer formats output for each client. Railway gives the portal a domain and telnet a TCP proxy address. Until you open the setup link in the edge's deploy log and claim the admin account, the game stays locked. Updating server or renderer keeps players connected, but updating edge disconnects everyone, so automatic updates stay off. The world is copied to the volume every six hours.

Common Use Cases

Run a roleplaying game that players reach from a MU* client or a web browser
Move an existing PennMUSH, RhostMUSH or TinyMUX game, importing its database and mush.cnf in the setup wizard
Try SharpMUSH, or test softcode, before hosting a game yourself

Dependencies for SharpMUSH (Stable) Hosting

A Railway Hobby plan or above, for the volumes and the TCP proxy
The sharpmush/sharpmush-edge, sharpmush-server and sharpmush-renderer images from Docker Hub (stable tag)

Implementation Details

Service	Image	Volume	Public
edge	`sharpmush/sharpmush-edge:latest`	`/data`	domain on port 8000, TCP proxy on 4201
server	`sharpmush/sharpmush-server:latest`	`/data`	none
renderer	`sharpmush/sharpmush-renderer:latest`	none	none

The services find each other over Railway's private network. Players connect MU* clients to the TCP proxy's host and port, which are shown in the edge's deploy log. Railway's TCP proxy can't carry TLS telnet, so players who want an encrypted connection use the portal's web terminal, which runs over HTTPS. The latest images are manually on major milestones.

Why Deploy SharpMUSH (Stable) on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying SharpMUSH (Stable) on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.