Medievia

Last updated
Medievia
Engine Merc
Platform(s) Platform independent
Release1992
Genre(s) Fantasy MUD
Mode(s) Multiplayer
Part of a series on
Role-playing video games
Role-playing video game icon.svg
Subgenres
Topics
Lists

Medievia, is a MUD created in 1992. Medievia was popular in the mid-1990s, having over 100 players at off-peak hours. Some controversy exists regarding Medievia's relationship to DikuMUD, and whether it is bound by the DikuMUD license as a derivative work. Authors of DikuMUD, as well as former staff of Medievia and independent programmers, have said that it is and thus violates the license agreement.

Contents

Game characteristics

Medievia was acknowledged to be popular in the mid-1990s, [1] being noted as having over 100 players online at off-peak hours. [2]

Medievia is set in a typical medieval fantasy world. [3] The game contains large randomized catacombs, [1] and also has dragons that provide transportation throughout the world. [2]

Controversy over licensing

The relationship between the Merc MUD codebase and Medievia's code is the subject of controversy. [4] [5]

Medievia was, at the time of its creation, based on the Merc MUD codebase [6] (which in turn was based on DikuMUD). Former staff of Medievia, as well as authors of DikuMUD and other programmers, have said that Medievia is still a derivative work of DikuMUD, and is still bound by the DikuMUD license, including Hans Henrik Staerfeldt, Michael Siefert, and Richard Woolcock. [7] Sections of code purportedly from Medievia IV, dated February 1996, as well as two sections of code taken in August 2000, were compared with the original Merc 1.0 code, and show a high degree of similarity, to the extent of apparently retaining comments from the original Merc developers. [7] [8] Michael Siefert, an author of DikuMUD, has stated, "I have been shown the Medthievia code - version 4 I believe it was (approx. in 1997). Only a very brief examination was required in order for me, as an author of DikuMUD, to recognize my old code. There is no doubt that it is Diku based." [7]

If Medievia were a derivative of DikuMUD, it would be legally obligated to meet the terms of the DikuMUD license, including a prohibition of making profit from the DikuMUD code, a requirement to retain copyright notices, and credits given to the authors of DikuMUD within the title sequence of the game. [7]

Hans Henrik Staerfeldt, one of the Diku codebase authors, has stated that his belief that Medievia had violated the Diku license was among the reasons that he no longer contributes to the open source MUD community. Some Medievia administrators, including "Thranz" and "Omawarisan," have resigned because they disapprove of code theft and view it as "unethical". [9]

Related Research Articles

A MUD is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based. 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, non-player characters, and actions performed in the virtual world. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language.

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 intercourse 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.

AberMUD was the first popular open source MUD. It was named after the town Aberystwyth, in which it was written. The first version was written in B by Alan Cox, Richard Acott, Jim Finnis, and Leon Thrane based at University of Wales, Aberystwyth for an old Honeywell mainframe and opened in 1987.

The UCPH Department of Computer Science is a department under the Faculty of Science at University of Copenhagen (UCPH). DIKU offers both undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. programs. Students with a diploma equivalent of a Danish secondary school diploma are accepted for the undergraduate program, from where they can proceed with graduate studies and eventually Ph.D. studies.

DikuMUD is a multiplayer text-based role-playing game, which is a type of 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.

Online creation software feature in MUDs that allows editing the world while interacting with it

Online creation, also referred to as OLC, online coding, online building, and online editing, is a software feature of MUDs that allows users to edit a virtual world from within the game itself. In the absence of online creation, content is created in a text editor or level editor, and the program generally requires a restart in order to implement the changes.

The MUD trees below depict hierarchies of derivation among MUD codebases. Solid lines between boxes indicate code relationships, while dotted lines indicate conceptual relationships. Dotted boxes indicate that the codebase is outside the family depicted.

LPMud, abbreviated LP, is a family of 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 LPC programming language.

Raph Koster American video game designer and entrepreneur

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.

TinyMUD is the name of a MUD server codebase, and the first MUD running that codebase. The MUD itself has subsequently come to be known as "TinyMUD Classic" or simply "Classic", or occasionally "DaisyMUD". To distance itself from the combat oriented traditional MUDs it was said that the "D" in TinyMUD stood for Multi-User "Domain" or "Dimension", which led to the eventual adoption of the term MU* to refer to TinyMUD and its many derivatives.

Realms of Despair (RoD) is a MUD hosted in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada using the SMAUG MUD codebase. It is operated by Derek "Thoric" Snider.

Sequent was a DikuMUD derivative codebase developed by Raja Kushalnagar. It was a text-based online role-playing game that was an accessible DikuMUD based MUD. It added several new playing areas with shorter text descriptions that was designed to be accessible to users with sensory disabilities. It also supported more players online at the same time by being hosted on a Sequent multi-processor machine at the University of California, Berkeley, and was first started in March 1991.

<i>TorilMUD</i> 1996 video game

TorilMUD is a MUD, a text-based online role-playing game, and is one of the oldest and largest of its kind.

<i>GodWars</i>

GodWars is a family of MUD engines derived from Merc, created in 1995 by Richard Woolcock, also known as "KaVir". GodWars' setting is influenced by White Wolf's World of Darkness.

The Mud Connector

The Mud Connector, abbreviated TMC, is a computer gaming website that provides articles, discussions, reviews, resource links and game listings about MUDs. The site lets MUD owners, administrators and enthusiasts submit information and reviews about specific MUDs. The site contains over 1000 MUD listings and designates a subset of virtual communities suitable for children. Mud Companion magazine praised the site.

<i>LegendMUD</i> 1994 video game

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.

Wizard is commonly used in MUDs, particularly LPMuds, AberMUDs and MU*, as a term for the MUD's developers and administrators. The usage originates with Richard Bartle's original MUD1 and MUD2. It is frequently abbreviated "wiz", which is sometimes used as a verb; to wiz is to become a wizard. The plural of "wiz" is "wizzes".

An immortal, in MUDs and particularly DikuMUDs, is an administrator and/or developer of the game, often a player who has achieved "immortal" status by achievements within the game world. It is frequently abbreviated "imm" or "immort". Some MUDs have an option for players who have become immortals to "remort", returning to mortal status with advantages.

<i>AVATAR</i> (MUD) 1991 video game

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.

Michael Seifert (programmer) Danish computer programmer and entrepreneur

For other people named Michael Seifert, see Michael Seifert.

References

  1. 1 2 Hahn, Harley (1996). The Internet Complete Reference (2nd ed.). Osborne McGraw-Hill. pp.  727. ISBN   0-07-882138-X. Looking for a highly-populated mud? [...] Medievia allows for multi-classing [...] On Medievia you will encounter clan wars and a variety of environments such as [...] the catacombs with their thousands of randomized rooms.
  2. 1 2 Towers, J. Tarin; Badertscher, Ken; Cunningham, Wayne; Buskirk, Laura (1996). Yahoo! Wild Web Rides. IDG Books Worldwide Inc. p. 151. ISBN   0-7645-7003-X. Even during the most terrible morning hours when we should all be asleep, like around 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., Medievia has over 100 sickos awake and typing away. [...] Medievia also has dragons that you can fly around on, making those long trips to your favorite areas go by really quickly.
  3. ↑ Carton, Sean (1995). Internet Virtual Worlds Quick Tour. Ventana Press. p. 151. ISBN   1-56604-222-4. MEDIEVIA Cyberspace's theme fits your typical adventure/fantasy categories.
  4. ↑ "The Impacts of Medievia and Medthievia" (PDF). Retrieved January 25, 2013.
  5. ↑ Heron, Michael James (24 August 2016). "Ethical and Professional Complications in the Construction of Multi-Developer Hobbyist Games". The Computer Games Journal. 5 (3–4): 115–129. doi:10.1007/s40869-016-0025-0.
  6. ↑ Medievia's statement regarding its origins
  7. 1 2 3 4 Richard Woolcock's comparison of Merc 1.0 and Medievia IV
  8. ↑ A signed fax attributed to Michael Krause, Medievia owner, asserting the authenticity of the code. Archived 2011-07-23 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ Omawarisan's spew - A former administrator's view on the code authorship controversy
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.