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MUDs Turn 30 Years Old
Posted by
Soulskill
on Tue Oct 21, 2008 03:20 PM
from the still-waiting-on-mod-10 dept.
from the still-waiting-on-mod-10 dept.
Massively points out that today marks the 30th anniversary of the first Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) going live at Essex University in the UK. The game, referred to as MUD1, was created by Roy Trubshaw. Richard Bartle, a man who also worked on the game as a student at Essex, has a post discussing the milestone and talking about how MUDs relate to modern MMOs. What MUDs did you play?
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ahhh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ahhh (Score:4, Funny)
(disclaimer: it is also very possible to teach yourself software engineering the wrong way using MUDs and MOOs and such. Especially in a learn-by-example environment...)
Parent
Aardwolf! (Score:5, Funny)
Kobra mudding (Score:4, Interesting)
30 years old (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ya know, I have to say, of all the places I've ever hung out: bars, rock concerts, bike races, SecondLife, IRC, MySpace -- MUDs were the places that most reliably turned acquaintences into lovers. Dunno what it was about that social space but it seemed like all you had to do was sit there and type long into the night and eventually you'd end up negotiating where and when you were going to meet.
I'm not saying *easiest* -- there are lots more people on SecondLife, and a lot stupider people on MySpace. I'm s
Re: (Score:2)
Actually both the MUDs addictions I've had (Animud.net and Dragonball Evolution) have unfortunately been broken by girls. I wish I'd stuck with the MUDs to be honest, they were a far more rewarding use of my time.
I've never been a big fan of modern MMORPGs, but I love MUDs for some reason :)
AnimeMUD (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, that's right, AnimeMUD. And this was back before Dragonball Z was all the rage. We're talking Akira and MD Geist level anime here. I was bored with most of the standard Tolkein-esque MUDs, so this one was a nice change of pace.
forests edge (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.theforestsedge.com/ [theforestsedge.com]
still good enough to play, i just find that with kids, school and a full time job, i don't have as much time to modify my bots...err play.
Various LP muds (Score:2)
I always liked the LP-style MUDs. I hated playing the diku/circle style. One of the primary reasons for that may have been that the LP style was a lot more fun for me to develop on. I had great fun developing for various MUDs, but eventually they all sort of petered out and I stopped. It's no fun coding something if you know that no more than one or two people will ever see it.
The one I developed the most on was Styx, which was a local MUD run from New Mexico State University. It was fairly small, but
Re: (Score:2)
I started playing MAREs, which are based off of MUSEs, in 2002 and continued for two or three years. It was limited to a small community, but I had a lot of fun programming in the engine's scripting language. I developed some clever tricks with the parser and queue-based execution system to get some interesting results, expanding my programming experience (this was around the same time I was learning C/C++).
This culminated in my writing a scripted mapping engine that would take in static geographical data a
Re: (Score:2)
Ahh Genocide! I'll never forget my "I trashed Vargas!" tattoo! I played that mud for years (as Xqwzwc and Azurensis) and never got any good at it, either.
Tinyworld and the Univ of Northern Iowa (Score:5, Interesting)
DikuMUD (Score:2)
You are at a narrow road between lands... (Score:2)
I was lucky enough to play the "original" Essex MUD back in 1984-86. At that time I was employed working nights as a Network Operator in one of the main NOCs on the UK university network, JANET. With my blistering 9.6k connection to Essex Univ I used to spent FAR too much time as "Quadgop" rather than doing what I should have been doing (i.e. looking after the X.25 switches).
Matt
Re: (Score:2)
I played GemstoneII in the eighties via Compuserve (for free with a CIS sysop account)
Had to write my own frontend to beat the fast typists.
Thirty years... (Score:4, Funny)
Thirty years, and the graphics still suck.
MajorMUD (Score:2)
MajorMUD ran on WorldGroup BBS systems. It was great until MetroBBS bought it and started screwing it up. I've played a lot of MUDs and I found it was by far the best and was quite polished compared to many others.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Creeping Death! All the way! (Score:2, Interesting)
Creeping Death was a very fast paced MUD. I remember getting up at 4am to play, just so I could avoid the higher-level player killers. Not even the 'safe room' was safe (through a means of dragging someone out of the room once they're asleep). Aarilax was his name. Finally one of my friends beat him at his own game. That was like a gazelle ramming its hoof down a lion's throat while simultaneously kicking him in the groin. *Ahhh* Those were the days...
But, more on topic: Thanks to playing MUDS, my typing sk
Re: (Score:2)
My slashdot username came from my days playing AstroMUD. Ohh the good ole days.
I'll own up to.. (Score:2)
ArcticMUD! (Score:2)
Yea, I tried playing again recently ... it's better as a memory.
Re: (Score:2)
Wooo! Best mud ever.
http://mud.arctic.org/ [arctic.org] port 2700
Abermud explained it all for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in 1990 I had absolutely no idea what "multitasking" and "multi-user" meant when it came to a single machine; I was raised on C64s, Apple ][s, etc., which were basically single-tasking. A friend at college showed me MUDs (specifically AberMUD) and all of a sudden it was like playing Zork and Adventure all over again, but in real time! With real people! All over the world!
As if my mind weren't already completely blown by the idea of a real-time Zork-like game, I realized that all of this was happening on a single machine, somewhere in Sweden. I asked how this was possible, and therein lies the beginning of my discovery of how computers worked in general, culminating in being a developer today.
It seemed absolutely magic to me then, and in reality, is still magic now. Man...I can still see it all now, sitting in front of that VT102 on the tiled, raised floor, thinking I had been let in on the hidden secret of the world, which was the early 1990s-era Internet.
Good times, good times.
MIST and Cheeseplant's House (Score:2)
Naah - I started with MIST [wikipedia.org], telnetting in from Lancaster University to Essex University. In fact there was quite a Lancaster contingent on MIST, and I am not joking that I know people who failed their degrees due to their addiction.
MIST was only available at certain times, so we started hanging out at Cheeseplant's House [wikipedia.org]. I had previously considered this to be the first talker in the world, though wikipedia states it's the second.
ATS (Score:2)
Yes, it's a Star Trek themed game, but it's been going since 95. Hell, I just hit my decade+1 mark on there last May.
carrionfields.com (Score:3)
www.carrionfields.com 9999
Unlike other popular members of the genre, Carrion Fields does not allow players to purchase in-game advantages with OOC currency. In other words, it's a level playing field.
Re: (Score:2)
Muddog and Silly Muds.... (Score:2)
I first started out on GatorMUD, which was a mush (I believe) at the University of Florida. I played and developed on that for a while (built all of 13th Ave!) then went on to KoBra mud for a while.
Eventually got sick of just playing and decided I wanted to develop, so I got with the math department and started up Muddog Mud. Worked on that mud for a number of years before it was eventually wiped out.
During that time I also did quite a bit of playtesting on Silly Mud, a Diku style mud at UF (anyone remember
Shades the Game welcomes you (Score:2)
I played Shades far too much, and when the 200 quid telephone bill arrived, I was promptly banned from using the modem (and paying back that much on a typical 15 year old's odd job money took a long long time). I evaded the ban by playing only once or twice a week, for just half an hour at a time such that the cost of the phone calls would be lost in the general noise of the telephone bill. That was probably in 1987 or so.
The worst bit was when the edge connector from the VTX5000 modem to the Spectrum wobbl
MOO! (Score:2)
Not to start a holy war, but I always thought MOOs were cooler.
Aliens vs Predator: The MUD (Score:2)
avpmud.com 4000
11 1/2 years old
Rich textual information missing on gui MMORPGS (Score:2)
www.darkmists.org (Score:2)
Dark Mists [darkmists.org] officially celebrates its 12th year on the Internet.
Moosehead SLED and Daedal Macabre (Score:2)
MUME - Multi Users in Middle Earth (Score:2)
MUME was - and surprisingly still is! - one of the best. I still fondly recall my deadly battles with the crafty orcs, trolls, and black numenoreans or standing watch at guard towers or tracking footprints so I could inform my fellow elves, humans, dwarves, hobbits about the movements of a raiding party.(I played a legendary Elven scout named Vosh many years ago)
The non-PvP parts were great, too; the world was so huge since so many people around the earth have contributed to it(Tolkien has been translated i
I once hosted ... (Score:2)
muds (Score:2)
Medievia, Toril/Sojourn, Duris, and Waterdeep, among many others
Retromud ftw (Score:2)
The best part of Retromud is the diversity of races and guilds (aka classes). There are dozens of races and a system of guilds where you advance through one guild as you level, until you reach the maximum guild level, and join a
Holy Mission (Score:3, Interesting)
MUDs were a good challenge too, I used to know huge parts of the map by heart and I still can recall some places of it. Newbies had large hand-drawn maps and pieces of papers lying around with directions to specific places
I have a log of that first MUD session (Score:4, Funny)
I have a text log of that first MUD session by the two guys who set it up:
# Welcome to MUD1 at Essex University!
#
# Time: 18:57:32
# There are 1 users on currently, including you.
#
# You are in a room with one door on the north wall.
#
> n
# You go north.
> look
# You see one door to the south.
> s
# You go south.
> look
# You are in a room with one door on the north wall.
> search
# What?
> examine
# I don't know how to do that, Dave.
> find
# What?
>
# TimTheEnchanger logged in.
#
# Time: 19:02:12
# There are 2 users on currently, including you.
#
>
*** TimTheEnchanter attacks YOU ***
*** You are hit for 26721 damage! ***
*** You DIE! ***
> n
# You can't do that, you are dead.
> nnnn
# What?
> nn
# I don't know how to do that, Dave.
> nnnnnnnnnnnn
# What?
>
TimTheEnchanter shouts, "hahaha dumbass!"
> q
# I don't know how to do that, Dave.
> quit
# What?
> exit
# Goodbye, and thanks for playing! Come back soon!
# Elapsed time: 0 hours 6 minutes 33 seconds.
^(*@#CONNECTION LOST
And we've never looked back!
Re:What MUDs "did" I play? (Score:4, Funny)
D'oh, I thought you said "Tetris" and I was like "Tetris is a MUD?" and tried to imagine a Tetris based MUD.
Weird.
-l
Parent
Re:What MUDs "did" I play? (Score:5, Funny)
There is a shape made up of four squares arranged 3 on one side and one sticking out to the left at the bottom. The next shape after this is four squares arranged in a two by two square.
Which direction do you wish to move the current peice?
(left, right, down)
100hp 56ma 13456exp > d
You have made 2 complete lines. Gained 148 experience.
The pieces are moving faster now.
There is a shape made up of four squares arranged in a two by two square. The next shape after this is four squares arranged with two on the bottom left and two on the top right.
Which direction do you wish to move the current peice?
(left, right, down)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They should have a mod: -1 WTF
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I never got into MUDs for gaming. For me, it was partly the social aspect but mostly for the construction and coding. I played TinyMUDs, then later TinyMUCKs. I learned Forth by learning MUF.
I think I was the first person to code an elevator that wasn't just a set of numbered exits. Instead, choosing a floor number swapped out an invisible object with a new exit attached leading to the floor you chose. It would also swap the object on that floor to indicate that the elevator was there waiting for you to ent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
www.bat.org
BatMUD was my first foray into the world of online gaming as well. The amazing thing is that it's nearly two decades old itself, and still going moderately strong (although it doesn't get the 300+ peak simultaneous users it had back in the '90s).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Diku forever - apocmud.usurped.org:4000
Re: (Score:2)
avatar.outland.org:3000
Re: (Score:2)
he wrote in sexually transmitted diseases. Seemed like within a week, half the mud was scratching and oozing everytime they entered a room.
ROFL that's excellent :)
On the last MUD I was into they had drugs as well as alcohol, and players could grow their own strain of bud if they bought a house..