Ragnarök (MUD)

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Ragnarök
Ragnarok MUD logo.gif
Developer(s) Project community
Engine LPMud
Platform(s) Platform independent
Release 1992
Genre(s) Fantasy MUD
Mode(s) Multiplayer

Ragnarök, often abbreviated Rag, is a MUD, a text-based online role-playing game founded in 1992.

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.

Role-playing game Game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting

A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.

Contents

Influences

A screenshot from an introductory area of Ragnarok Ragnarok screenshot.png
A screenshot from an introductory area of Ragnarök

Ragnarök was intended to be set in a world and time similar to Medieval Europe, but contains many deviations from that base. A core inspiration for the MUD was The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp. One of the short stories in that book, The Roaring Trumpet, tells of the adventures of Harold Shea, who lands unexpectedly in the middle of the time of Ragnarök in old Norse mythology. One of the MUD implementors found the idea of Norse myth to be a fascinating fantasy game setting, and saw a striking parallel between the characters in the story using mathematics and symbolic logic to transport themselves from our modern-day world to these parallel realities, and modern MUD players utilizing computer technology to "transport" themselves to the alternate fictional reality of the game.

Europe Continent in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere

Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. It comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia.

<i>The Compleat Enchanter</i> book by Lyon Sprague de Camp

The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea is an omnibus collection of three fantasy stories by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, gathering material previously published in two volumes as The Incomplete Enchanter (1941) and The Castle of Iron (1950), the first two books in their Harold Shea series, with the essay "Fletcher and I", de Camp's paean to his deceased collaborator. The collection was first published in hardcover by Nelson Doubleday in 1975 as an offering for its Science Fiction Book Club, and was reissued in paperback by Del Rey Books in 1976. Minus the essay, it has more recently been combined with Wall of Serpents (1960), the third book of the series in the omnibus edition The Complete Compleat Enchanter (1989). This book had been left out of The Compleat Enchanter due to "considerations of space and …contractual considerations". The stories in the collection were originally published in the magazine Unknown in the issues for May and August 1940 and April 1941.

L. Sprague de Camp American writer of science fiction and fantasy, non-fiction and biography

Lyon Sprague de Camp, better known as L. Sprague de Camp, was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and works of non-fiction, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.

History

Origins

Ragnarök was created by four friends, known in the game as Klive, Rodolf, Skeezics, and Fizban. Klive had the original idea and put things in motion by borrowing the basic mudlib files from an older, then-defunct MUD hosted at Sequent, named SquintMUD. Even in 1992, that codebase was obsolete and required the LPMud driver to run in backwards-compatibility mode. This would prove to cause more problems than beginning with a more modern system would have.

Sequent Computer Systems

Sequent Computer Systems was a computer company that designed and manufactured multiprocessing computer systems. They were among the pioneers in high-performance symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) open systems, innovating in both hardware and software.

In software development, a codebase refers to a whole collection of source code that is used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code files; thus, a codebase usually does not include source code files generated by tools or binary library files, as they can be built from the human-written source code. However, it generally does include configuration and property files, as they are the data necessary for the build.

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.

This basic framework included a church (the entry point in the game and where the ghosts of dead characters can go for resurrection) and a little town. The church was recast as the House of Bonder Sverre, and the town's fixtures were renamed and made to align with Ragnarök's theme. The first two players, Galadriel and Wulfblat, helped to review the world before the doors opened to the public. They each contributed realms of their own, as have the four founders and numerous wizards since. Eventually all of the original founders left active participation in the game, except for Fizban. Galadriel remained and co-owns the MUD with Fizban; the real people behind these characters are now married.

Resurrection concept of a living being coming back to life after death

Resurrection or anastasis is the concept of coming back to life after death. In a number of ancient religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and resurrects.

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".

The game has expanded significantly from its humble beginnings, to include over 75 realms contributed by various wizards, with over 45 quests.

Hiatus from 2007 to 2009

Ragnarok's server mounted into a rack of other systems (current as of 2008) Ragnarok MUD server in rack.jpg
Ragnarök's server mounted into a rack of other systems (current as of 2008)

The MUD underwent a series of technical changes over the years of its operation. It began life running on a Sun SPARCServer 470 (Solaris). When that hosting situation became unavailable, Fizban took the game code and set up an Intel i386-based IBM PC running FreeBSD. A local ISP, Teleport, provided colocation services to host the system. Eventually it moved from there to a series of Intel Pentium and Pentium 4 PCs, and moved from FreeBSD to Ubuntu Linux.

Sun Microsystems defunct computer hardware and software company which was based in Santa Clara

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was an American company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the Network File System (NFS), and SPARC. Sun contributed significantly to the evolution of several key computing technologies, among them Unix, RISC processors, thin client computing, and virtualized computing. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982. At its height, the Sun headquarters were in Santa Clara, California, on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center.

Solaris (operating system) Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems

Solaris is a Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. It superseded their earlier SunOS in 1993. In 2010, after the Sun acquisition by Oracle, it was renamed Oracle Solaris.

Intel American semiconductor company

Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in the Silicon Valley. It is the world's second largest and second highest valued semiconductor chip manufacturer based on revenue after being overtaken by Samsung, and is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most personal computers (PCs). Intel ranked No. 46 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.

As a result of these upgrades, the very old game driver, which by now had been very thoroughly customized and hacked, was so old and non-standards-compliant that it simply would no longer compile and run successfully on a modern OS. Eventually, by mid-2007, it broke fatally. Caught between the choice to run on an outdated OS (with potentially serious security bugs) or working to upgrade the game, the latter route was taken. This kept Ragnarök offline for a considerable time, with the game eventually returning to operation in November 2009.

Game characteristics

Basic gameplay

Gameplay is mostly achieved via basic and often intuitive commands. For example, typing n would cause a player character to go north, s would cause the player to go south, and so on. Weapons, armor, and objects are also typically very easy to use, and when their use is not obvious, a player need only examine the object to gain insight into its use. The basic objective of the game is to kill monsters and complete quests to advance in levels, until level 20. Death carries a penalty of the loss of one level, unless a player is already at level 1, in which case, the player retains his or her current level.

At level 20, the player has technically won the game. It is at this point the player is known as an initiate, and must make a decision regarding his or her future. If the player decides to continue on the current path, he or she becomes a hero, and a new adventure begins (the player is automatically advanced to level 21 and achieves full hero status). If the player decides to become a wizard, he or she will participate in development of new areas, objects, and so on. The new wizard must develop an area, which must be approved by a sponsoring wizard in order for the new wizard to be promoted to full wizardship.

Introductory area

The introductory area of Ragnarök, the environment to which a new player is first exposed, begins with the House of Bonder Sverre. Proceeding from there, one is provided with directions to a post office, adventurer's guild, shop, pub, lockers, the Bank of Alphasia, and a store called Two Goats Antiques. [1]

Quests

In addition to simply killing monsters, there are a number of quests that a player must complete in order to advance in level. The first quest, Newbie School, seeks to teach new players the fundamentals of play. Other quests test players' critical thinking skills and gameplay acuity. Each level has its own quest point requirements.

Distinctive features

Emphasis on friendly atmosphere.Rag is intended to be a meeting place for friends, with an atmosphere of silliness and frivolity, and has developed a somewhat close-knit player community. Aggression between players ("player killing"), or other harassment of other players, is not allowed in this game. [2]

Room descriptions are, by administrative mandate, required to be full and meet a certain standard of quality. The four founders were particularly against walking into a room and seeing, "You are in a room. There is a rock here.", with examining the rock yielding, "It's a rock." A style of prose reminiscent of the old Infocom games is the ideal.

The "magic map" provides a graphical map of all the realms a player has explored to date. The realm authors compose this map (it's not automatically generated), and can vary from simple schematic room diagrams up to detailed floor plans with illustrations. [2]

Guilds in Ragnarök embody in one entity a rough combination of the concepts of "race", "class" and "clan" as other games might call them. Players all begin in the Adventurer's Guild but can choose freely to join other guilds. Some have special requirements for joining, some have penalties for leaving, but each give a particular added flavor to the way a character is played. Examples include Faeries, Elementalists, and Ninja.

Reception

NetGuide magazine said the following about Ragnarök: ""If you've been itchin' to kill evil Smurfs who hurl Monty Python-style witticisms, or explore a world filled with similarly bizarre creatures, then [...] Ragnarok [...] is for you." [3]

References

  1. ↑ Shefski, William J. (1995). Interactive Internet: The Insider's Guide to MUDs, MOOs, and IRC. Prima Publishing. pp. 92–94. ISBN   1-55958-748-2.
  2. 1 2 "About Ragnarök". Ragnarök MUD. Retrieved 2010-11-29.
  3. ↑ NetGuide. CMP Media. December 1994.Missing or empty |title= (help)
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