multi-user dungeon
A multi-user dungeon (MUD, also defined as muti-user dimension or domain) is a virtual environment where multiple users interact using a command line interface. MUDs are often role-playing games, so may be described as similar to interactive fiction, tabletop role-playing games, and online chat rooms.
MUDs are a predecessor to massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs).
History
Prehistory
- 1975ce, Colossal Cave Adventure by Will Crowther
- introduced text-interface virtual environment
- Don Woods brought in interactive fiction
- Zork
- ARPANET
Origins
- late 1978ce, Roy Trubshaw, student at University of Essex
- began writing a software literally called MUD
- on a DEC PDP-10 using MACRO-10
- rewrote in in BCPL, precursor to C programming language
- named MUD for Dungeon a FORTRAN fork of Zork
- thus, not a genre name, but literally just, multi-user Dungeon
- In 1979, MUD1 was rewritten in MUDDL, MUD Definition Language, by Trubshaw and Bartle
- in 1980, Trubshaw graduated and handed project to Richard Bartle
- notable, 1980 is when Essex connected to ARPANET
- 1983: 2am to 7am, British Telecom's Packet Switch Stream allowed access to the PDP-10
- By 1984, MUD1 was hosted on the PDP-20 at Dundee College of Technology
- also in 84, CompuNet licensed MUD1 for it's Commodore 64 network, where it ran until 1987
- 1987, CompuServe relicensed under the name British Legends, and pressured Bartle to shut down the Essex instance of MUD1, which was done in October 1987
- 1989ce, Lars Pensjö C, developed by Lars Pensjö, University of Gothenburg
- object-oriented programming language for building LPMUD
- introduced MUD engine and MUD library bifurcation.
- 1990-03-27, Hans Henrik Stærfeldt announced DikuMUD (DIKU = Datalogisk Institut Kobenhavns Universitet (University of Copenhagen))
- 1991-02-03, first public DikuMUD instance