Diffrences

I've been thinking of something :)

whats the diffrences between SMAUG and ROM?

They are both derived from Diku, or Merc even. :)

SMAUG has built-in some things that are not in ROM, or are available as extras, like the colour code, online building, mob progs, and so on.

so SMAUG is better if you are new to this mudmaking
am i right?

Depends, I know a lot of coders that avoid SMAUG like the plague.... actually, they'd prefer the plague. For players SMAUG tends to be a better startup codebase since there are so many "built in" features but I personally dislike it for just that reason as a coder. The code distribution is also seriously different in the two codebases which is another reason most coders hate SMAUG if they're very familiar with ROM at all. What you need to decide is how suitable your talents are to potentially finding and implementing whatever code changes you want to the codebase you decide to work with, but there really isn't a "best" codebase, just personal preferences.

If you have no great reason to use ROM (eg. you have used it previously and love it), then another codebase you could get started with is Dawn Of Time. There are lengthy discussions on the forum here about it, including its features. It is highly configurable, and may suit you better.

It is still based ont he original Diku code, so it has the same general look-and-feel as ROM.