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A multi-user dungeon, also known as a multi-user dimension or multi-user domain, is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based or storyboarded. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, and non-player characters, and perform actions in the virtual world that are typically also described. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language, as well as using a character typically called an avatar.
In multiplayer online games, a MUSH is a text-based online social medium to which multiple users are connected at the same time. MUSHes are often used for online social interaction and role-playing games, although the first forms of MUSH do not appear to be coded specifically to implement gaming activity. MUSH software was originally derived from MUDs; today's two major MUSH variants are descended from TinyMUD, which was fundamentally a social game. MUSH has forked over the years and there are now different varieties with different features, although most have strong similarities and one who is fluent in coding one variety can switch to coding for the other with only a little effort. The source code for most widely used MUSH servers is open source and available from its current maintainers.
BatMUD is a medieval fantasy MUD, established in 1990. BatMUD is Finland-based and operated and owned by a non-profit organization, Balanced Alternative Techniques ry, officially registered 1994 in Helsinki, Finland.
DikuMUD is a multiplayer text-based role-playing game, which is a type of multi-user domain (MUD). It was written in 1990 and 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Stærfeldt at DIKU —the department of computer science at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ancient Anguish, abbreviated AA, is a fantasy-themed MUD, a text-based online role-playing game. Founded in 1991 by Balz "Zor" Meierhans and Olivier "Drake" Maquelin, it opened to the public on February 2, 1992. It is free-to-play, but has been supported by player donations since 1994.
Player versus player (PvP) is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between human players. This is often compared to player versus environment (PvE), in which the game itself controls its players' opponents. The terms are most often used in games where both activities exist, particularly MMORPGs, MUDs, and other role-playing video games, to distinguish between gamemodes. PvP can be broadly used to describe any game, or aspect of a game, where players compete against each other. PvP is often controversial when used in role-playing games. In most cases, there are vast differences in abilities between players. PvP can even encourage experienced players to immediately attack and kill inexperienced players. PvP is often referred to as player killing in the cases of games which contain, but do not focus on, such interaction.
LPMud, abbreviated LP, is a family of multi-user dungeon (MUD) server software. Its first instance, the original LPMud game driver, was developed in 1989 by Lars Pensjö. LPMud was innovative in its separation of the MUD infrastructure into a virtual machine and a development framework written in the programming language LPC.
A persistent world or persistent state world (PSW) is a virtual world which, by the definition by Richard Bartle, "continues to exist and develop internally even when there are no people interacting with it". The first virtual worlds were text-based and often called MUDs, but the term is frequently used in relation to massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and pervasive games. Examples of persistent worlds that exist in video games include Battle Dawn, EVE Online, and Realms of Trinity.
Raphael "Raph" Koster is an American entrepreneur, game designer, and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Koster is widely recognized for his work as the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies. From 2006 until 2013 he worked as the founder and president of Metaplace producing a Facebook game platform.
An online text-based role playing game is a role-playing game played online using a solely text-based interface. Online text-based role playing games date to 1978, with the creation of MUD1, which began the MUD heritage that culminates in today's MMORPGs. Some online-text based role playing games are video games, but some are organized and played entirely by humans through text-based communication. Over the years, games have used TELNET, internet forums, IRC, email and social networking websites as their media.
Richard Allan Bartle is a British writer, professor and game researcher in the massively multiplayer online game industry. He co-created MUD1 in 1978, and is the author of the 2003 book Designing Virtual Worlds.
A mob, short for mobile or mobile object, is a computer-controlled non-player character (NPC) in a video game such as an MMORPG or MUD. Depending on context, every and any such character in a game may be considered to be a "mob", or usage of the term may be limited to hostile NPCs and/or NPCs vulnerable to attack.
MU* is an abbreviation which refers collectively to a family of text-based multi-user virtual world servers comprising:
Multi-User Dungeon, or MUD, is the first MUD.
The history of massively multiplayer online games spans over thirty years and hundreds of massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) titles. The origin and influence on MMO games stems from MUDs, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and earlier social games.
TinyMUCK or, more broadly, a MUCK, is a type of user-extendable online text-based role-playing game, designed for role playing and social interaction. Backronyms like "Multi-User Chat/Created/Computer/Character/Carnal Kingdom" and "Multi-User Construction Kit" are sometimes cited, but are not the actual origin of the term; "muck" is simply a play on the term MUD.
LegendMUD is a text-only MUD game founded by a group of friends including virtual world designer Raph Koster. It features historically significant story elements and award-winning gameplay. It opened publicly on February 14, 1994. It has received critical praise for its research and attention to detail in reconstructing past cultures within the game context.
Michael Lawrie is a British computer security and social networking expert known for many things ranging from running MUDs to accidentally being the world's first Cybersquatter. He lives in Cambridge, England where he created the Cambridge Freecycle group, one of the largest in Europe.
A.V.A.T.A.R. MUD is a free, online, massively multiplayer, fantasy, text-based role-playing game, set in a real-time virtual environment. It combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash style computer games, adventure games and social gaming.
References
- ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. pp. 8–9. ISBN 0-13-101816-7.
Because few academic institutions in the U.K. were as liberal with their computer resources as Essex University, those MUDs that were written at such places tended to achieve only local success. The exception was AberMUD, so called because it was written at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. Its programmer, Alan Cox, wrote it in B (another fore-runner of C) for a Honeywell L66 mainframe under GCOS3/TSS in 1987.
- ↑ Lawrie, Michael (1990). "AberMUD-4". Newsgroup: rec.games.mud. Usenet: 990@tharr.UUCP.
The Software, both source code, design and scenario are copyright Alan Cox, Richard Acott, Jim Finnis, And Leon Thrane, save for the Blizzard pass section of the scenario which is (C)1988 Alan Cox, save for versions of the scenario on the ZX Spectrum 128K microcomputer. (C) 1987/88 All rights reserved.
- ↑ Eddy Carroll. "5. Reviews – Rest of the World". Archived from the original on 23 April 2010. Retrieved 11 July 2008.
Cox was a player of MUD1 who wrote AberMUD while a student at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
- ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. p. 9. ISBN 0-13-101816-7.
A year later, it was ported to C. This was a turning point in virtual world history. The game wasn't particularly advanced either technologically or in terms of content (it was very combat-oriented), but it was great fun. More importantly, in C it was positioned to make a huge advance: It could run under Unix.
- ↑ Lawrie, Michael (2002). "Parallels in MUD and IRC History".
He did this on Southampton University's Maths machines thanks to a chap called Pete Bentley who ran a bulletin board called SBBS there, and in late 1988, there was a fairly playable game called AberMUD2 up and running.
- ↑ Lawrie, Michael (2003). "Escape from the Dungeon".
I had also taken over a new game called AberMUD that two of my wizards, Anarchy (Alan Cox) and Moog (Richard Acott) had originally written at Aberyswyth University and Alan was now converting to Unix at Southampton University. Alan ended up taking a year out so I took on AberMUD and roped in a couple of programmers in to help keep the thing maintained and expanded. [...] In 1991, I sent a copy of AberMUD to Vijay Subramaniam and Bill Wisner (our only two American MIST wizards) and as far as MUDs being generally available to the world, the rest is history which oddly isn't true for the credits in AberMUD since a huge amount of the original authors were removed somewhere.
- ↑ Lawrie, Michael (1997). "A brief history of Lorry".
By 1987, Lorry had taken over the Essex Systems (MUD itself, and the thing he was to become best known for, MIST) and ran them, and just about every other publicly available 'leisure' system on UK academic networks until 1992. Politically, this did me a lot of good, personally, it didn't. Bill Wisner and myself will argue who it actually was who exported MUDs to the rest of the world, I certainly mailed him the first US AberMud distribution, but I reckon that his originally distributing the AberMuds, Diku's and LPMuds makes him far more responsible for this crime against humanity.
- ↑ Carroll, Eddy. "5. Reviews – Rest of the World". Archived from the original on 23 April 2010. Retrieved 11 July 2008.
The code was made generally available, and was enhanced and added to by several people, most notably Salz.
- ↑ Salte, Alf; Sørseth, Gjermund. "Information and Installation Guide for DIRT 3.1.2". Archived from the original on 24 September 2008.
The files doc/CHANGELOG-aber-IV and doc/Manual.ms contain changes and info for the old original code, they are obsolescent and are included for historical reasons only.
- ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. p. 9. ISBN 0-13-101816-7.
AberMUD spread across university computer science departments like a virus. Identical copies (or incarnations) appeared on thousands of Unix machines. It went through four versions in rapid succession, spawning several imitators. The three most important of these were TinyMUD, LPMUD and DikuMUD.
