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91-408: Lars Pensjö had been an avid player of TinyMUD and AberMUD . He had wanted to create a world with the flexibility of TinyMUD and the style of AberMUD but did not want to have sole responsibility for creating and maintaining the game world. He once said, "I didn't think I would be able to design a good adventure. By allowing wizards coding rights, I thought others could help me with this." The result

182-735: A DEC PDP-10 computer, was the first widely played adventure game . The game was significantly expanded in 1976 by Don Woods . Also called Adventure , it contained many D&D features and references, including a computer controlled dungeon master . Numerous dungeon crawlers were created on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois and other American universities that used PLATO, beginning in 1975. Among them were " pedit5 ", "oubliette", " moria ", "avatar", "krozair", "dungeon", " dnd ", "crypt", and "drygulch". By 1978–79, these games were heavily in use on various PLATO systems, and exhibited

273-1046: A Local Area Network (LAN) version, 1991's Spectre for the Apple Macintosh, featured AppleTalk support for up to eight players. Spectre's popularity was partially attributed to the display of a player's name above their cybertank. There followed 1993's Doom , whose first network version allowed four simultaneous players. Play-by-email multiplayer games use email to communicate between computers. Other turn-based variations not requiring players to be online simultaneously are Play-by-post gaming and Play-by-Internet . Some online games are " massively multiplayer ", with many players participating simultaneously. Two massively multiplayer genres are MMORPG (such as World of Warcraft or EverQuest ) and MMORTS . First-person shooters have become popular multiplayer games; Battlefield 1942 and Counter-Strike have little (or no) single-player gameplay. Developer and gaming site OMGPOP 's library included multiplayer Flash games for

364-466: A wide area network (a common example being the Internet). Unlike local multiplayer, players playing online multiplayer are not restricted to the same local network. This allows players to interact with others from a much greater distance. Playing multiplayer online offers the benefits of distance, but it also comes with its own unique challenges. Gamers refer to latency using the term " ping ", after

455-478: A LAN. This involves multiple devices using one local network to play together. Networked multiplayer games on LAN eliminate common problems faced when playing online such as lag and anonymity. Games played on a LAN network are the focus of LAN parties . While local co-op and LAN parties still take place, there has been a decrease in both due to an increasing number of players and games utilizing online multiplayer gaming. Online multiplayer games connect players over

546-696: A MUD's technical infrastructure, a mudlib (concatenation of "MUD library") defines the rules of the in-game world. Examples of mudlibs include Ain Soph Mudlib , CDlib , Discworld Mudlib , Lima Mudlib , LPUniversity Mudlib , MorgenGrauen Mudlib , Nightmare Mudlib , and TMI Mudlib . MUDs that include object-oriented programming can add complex features, such as adding elements to the game world and giving users more ways to interact with it, that MUDs without it cannot. MUD history has been preserved primarily through community sites and blogs and not through mainstream sources with journalistic repute. As of

637-678: A cable. Their article includes a type-in , two-player Hangman , and describes the authors' more-sophisticated Flash Attack . SuperSet Software 's Snipes (1981) uses networking technology that would become Novell NetWare . Digital Equipment Corporation distributed another multi-user version of Star Trek , Decwar , without real-time screen updating; it was widely distributed to universities with DECsystem-10s. In 1981 Cliff Zimmerman wrote an homage to Star Trek in MACRO-10 for DECsystem-10s and -20s using VT100-series graphics. "VTtrek" pitted four Federation players against four Klingons in

728-407: A commercial MUD in 1988; and MirrorWorld , a tolkienesque MUD started by Pip Cordrey who gathered some people on a BBS he ran to create a MUD1 clone that would run on a home computer. Neil Newell, an avid MUD1 player, started programming his own MUD called SHADES during Christmas 1985, because MUD1 was closed down during the holidays. Starting out as a hobby, SHADES became accessible in

819-466: A derivative of MUD1 with similar gameplay, as the only remaining MUD running on the University of Essex network, becoming one of the first of its kind to attain broad popularity. MIST ran until the machine that hosted it, a PDP-10 , was superseded in early 1991. 1985 saw the origin of a number of projects inspired by the original MUD . These included Gods by Ben Laurie , a MUD1 clone that included online creation in its endgame, and which became

910-451: A drastically different way, with different mechanics, a different type of objective, or both. Examples of games with strong asymmetry include Dead by Daylight , Evolve , and Left 4 Dead . Asynchronous multiplayer is a form of multiplayer gameplay where players do not have to be playing at the same time. This form of multiplayer game has its origins in play-by-mail games , where players would send their moves through postal mail to

1001-590: A fellow student at the University of Essex, in 1980. The game revolved around gaining points till one achieved the Wizard rank, giving the character immortality and special powers over mortals. MUD , better known as Essex MUD and MUD1 in later years, ran on the University of Essex network, and became more widely accessible when a guest account was set up that allowed users on JANET (a British academic X.25 computer network) to connect on weekends and between

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1092-443: A few years this was a very popular form of MUD, hosted on a number of BBS systems, until widespread Internet access eliminated most BBSes. In 1984, Mark Jacobs created and deployed a commercial gaming site, Gamers World . The site featured two games coded and designed by Jacobs, a MUD called Aradath (which was later renamed, upgraded and ported to GEnie as Dragon's Gate ) and a 4X science-fiction game called Galaxy , which

1183-475: A full programming language named MUF (Multi-User Forth ), while MUSH greatly expanded the command interface. To distance itself from the combat-oriented traditional MUDs it was said that the "D" in TinyMUD stood for Multi-User "Domain" or "Dimension"; this, along with the eventual popularity of acronyms other than MUD (such as MUCK, MUSH, MUSE, and so on) for this kind of server, led to the eventual adoption of

1274-476: A game master, who then would compile and send out results for the next turn. Play-by-mail games transitioned to electronic form as play-by-email games. Similar games were developed for bulletin board systems , such as Trade Wars , where the turn structure may not be as rigorous and allow players to take actions at any time in a persistence space alongside all other players, a concept known as sporadic play. These types of asynchronous multiplayer games waned with

1365-535: A genre, such as a mixture of hack and slash with role-playing , quests as an element of advancement, and "guilds" as an alternative to character classes . LPMud was used as the basis for the first Internet talker , Cat Chat , which opened in 1990. The TMI Mudlib from The Mud Institute was an attempt to create a framework driven mudlib for the MudOS LPMud driver. It consisted of many contributors to MudOS as well as people who became influential in

1456-560: A hero's journey—a means of self-discovery". Multiplayer video game A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system ( couch co-op ), on different computing systems via a local area network , or via a wide area network , most commonly the Internet (e.g. World of Warcraft , Call of Duty , DayZ ). Multiplayer games usually require players to share

1547-416: A lot of features which appeared to be designed to allow Colossal Cave Adventure to work in it. Though there never were many network-accessible Monster servers, it inspired James Aspnes to create a stripped-down version of Monster which he called TinyMUD. TinyMUD, written in C and released in late 1989, spawned a number of descendants , including TinyMUCK and TinyMUSH . TinyMUCK version 2 contained

1638-517: A marked increase in sophistication in terms of 3D graphics, storytelling, user involvement, team play, and depth of objects and monsters in the dungeons. Inspired by Adventure , a group of students at MIT in the summer of 1977 wrote a game for the PDP-10 minicomputer; called Zork , it became quite popular on the ARPANET . Zork was ported , under the filename DUNGEN ("dungeon"), to FORTRAN by

1729-406: A monthly subscription fee. MUDs can be accessed via standard telnet clients, or specialized MUD clients, which are designed to improve the user experience. Numerous games are listed at various web portals, such as The Mud Connector . The history of modern massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like EverQuest and Ultima Online , and related virtual world genres such as

1820-554: A multi-user information system producing customised newspapers was built based on a modified TMI driver. In 1993, the TMI-2 mudlib was used to create PangaeaMud , an academic research project designed as an interactive geologic database tool. Notable MUDs based on TMI-derived mudlibs include The Two Towers set in Tolkien ’s universe and Threshold . MudOS is a major family of LPMud server software, implementing its own variant of

1911-415: A multiple-system, multiplayer mode. Turn-based games such as chess also lend themselves to single system single screen and even to a single controller. Multiple types of games allow players to use local multiplayer. The term "local co-op" or "couch co-op" refers to local multiplayer games played in a cooperative manner on the same system; these may use split-screen or some other display method. Another option

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2002-403: A number of console , and personal computer games too. Local multiplayer games played on a singular system sometimes use split screen , so each player has an individual view of the action (important in first-person shooters and in racing video games ) Nearly all multiplayer modes on beat 'em up games have a single-system option, but racing games have started to abandon split-screen in favor of

2093-557: A program running on each terminal (for each player), sharing a segment of shared memory (known as the "high segment" in the OS TOPS-10). The games became popular, and the university often banned them because of their RAM use . STAR was based on 1974's single-user, turn-oriented BASIC program STAR, written by Michael O'Shaughnessy at UNH. Wasserman and Stryker in 1980 described in BYTE how to network two Commodore PET computers with

2184-572: A programmer working at DEC in 1978. In 1978 Roy Trubshaw , a student at the University of Essex in the UK, started working on a multi-user adventure game in the MACRO-10 assembly language for a DEC PDP-10. He named the game MUD ( Multi-User Dungeon ), in tribute to the Dungeon variant of Zork , which Trubshaw had greatly enjoyed playing. Trubshaw converted MUD to BCPL (the predecessor of C ), before handing over development to Richard Bartle ,

2275-525: A prototype of GemStone to GEnie . After a short-lived instance of GemStone II , GemStone III was officially launched in February 1990. GemStone III became available on AOL in September 1995, followed by the release of DragonRealms in February 1996. By the end of 1997 GemStone III and DragonRealms had become the first and second most played games on AOL. The typical MUD will describe to

2366-427: A significantly different experience of the game. In games with light asymmetry, the players share some of the same basic mechanics (such as movement and death), yet have different roles in the game; this is a common feature of the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre such as League of Legends and Dota 2 , and in hero shooters such as Overwatch and Apex Legends . A first-person shooter that adopts

2457-557: A single computer were STAR (based on Star Trek ), OCEAN (a battle using ships, submarines and helicopters, with players divided between two combating cities) and 1975's CAVE (based on Dungeons & Dragons ), created by Christopher Caldwell (with artwork and suggestions by Roger Long and assembly coding by Robert Kenney) on the University of New Hampshire 's DECsystem-10 90. The university's computer system had hundreds of terminals, connected (via serial lines) through cluster PDP-11s for student, teacher, and staff access. The games had

2548-506: A single game system or use networking technology to play together over a greater distance; players may compete against one or more human contestants, work cooperatively with a human partner to achieve a common goal, or supervise other players' activity. Due to multiplayer games allowing players to interact with other individuals, they provide an element of social communication absent from single-player games. The history of multiplayer video games extends over several decades, tracing back to

2639-463: A six player game inspired by Dungeons & Dragons which used roguelike ASCII graphics. They founded the Kesmai company in 1982 and in 1985 an enhanced version of Dungeons of Kesmai , Island of Kesmai , was launched on CompuServe . Later, its 2-D graphical descendant Legends of Kesmai was launched on AOL in 1996. The games were retired commercially in 2000. The popularity of MUDs of

2730-561: A story by roleplaying , and advance the created character. Many MUDs were fashioned around the dice-rolling rules of the Dungeons & Dragons series of games. Such fantasy settings for MUDs are common, while many others have science fiction settings or are based on popular books, movies, animations, periods of history, worlds populated by anthropomorphic animals, and so on. Not all MUDs are games; some are designed for educational purposes, while others are purely chat environments , and

2821-513: A three-dimensional universe. Flight Simulator II , released in 1986 for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, allowed two players to connect via modem or serial cable and fly together in a shared environment. MIDI Maze , an early first-person shooter released in 1987 for the Atari ST , featured network multiplay through a MIDI interface before Ethernet and Internet play became common. It

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2912-675: A time, all while doing schoolwork. The students claimed that it was a way to "shut off" their own lives for a while and become part of another reality. Turkle claims that this could present a psychological problem of identity for today's youths. " A Story About A Tree " is a short essay written by Raph Koster regarding the death of a LegendMUD player named Karyn, raising the subject of inter-human relationships in virtual worlds. Observations of MUD-play show styles of play that can be roughly categorized. Achievers focus on concrete measurements of success such as experience points, levels , and wealth; Explorers investigate every nook and cranny of

3003-400: A utility which measures round-trip network communication delays (by the use of ICMP packets). A player on a DSL connection with a 50- ms ping can react faster than a modem user with a 350-ms average latency. Other problems include packet loss and choke, which can prevent a player from "registering" their actions with a server. In first-person shooters, this problem appears when bullets hit

3094-411: Is hot-seat games . Hot-seat games are typically turn-based games with only one controller or input set – such as a single keyboard/mouse on the system. Players rotate using the input device to perform their turn such that each is taking a turn on the "hot-seat". Not all local multiplayer games are played on the same console or personal computer. Some local multiplayer games are played over

3185-442: 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

3276-504: Is accomplished through hard coded restrictions and various forms of social intervention. MUDs without these restrictions are commonly known as PK MUDs . Taking this a step further are MUDs devoted solely to this sort of conflict, called pure PK MUDs, the first of which was Genocide in 1992. Genocide 's ideas were influential in the evolution of player versus player online gaming. Roleplaying MUDs , generally abbreviated as RP MUDs , encourage or enforce that players act out

3367-501: Is considered the first multiplayer 3D shooter on a mainstream system, and the first network multiplayer action-game (with support for up to 16 players). There followed ports to a number of platforms (including Game Boy and Super NES ) in 1991 under the title Faceball 2000 , making it one of the first handheld, multi-platform first-person shooters and an early console example of the genre. Networked multiplayer gaming modes are known as "netplay". The first popular video-game title with

3458-496: Is the best choice of running LPMUD lib now, as well as creating new ones. For more information, you can visit the main website at FluffOS Official Website at. Genocide was an important development testbed for MudOS from 1992 to 1994, but switched back to the main LPMud branch, citing speed concerns. TinyMUD A multi-user dungeon ( MUD , / m ʌ d / ), also known as a multi-user dimension or multi-user domain ,

3549-471: Is typically difficult to implement, resulting in most MUDs equipping characters mainly with close-combat weapons. This style of game was also historically referred to within the MUD genre as "adventure games", but video gaming as a whole has developed a meaning of " adventure game " that is greatly at odds with this usage. Most MUDs restrict player versus player combat, often abbreviated as PK (Player Killing). This

3640-598: The Guinness World Record for best selling MMO video game. This category of games requires multiple machines to connect via the Internet; before the Internet became popular, MUDs were played on time-sharing computer systems and games like Doom were played on a LAN. Beginning with the Sega NetLink in 1996, Game.com in 1997 and Dreamcast in 2000, game consoles support network gaming over LANs and

3731-466: The MMORPG genre, with EverQuest (created by avid DikuMUD player Brad McQuaid ) displaying such Diku-like gameplay that Verant developers were made to issue a sworn statement that no actual DikuMUD code was incorporated. In 1987, David Whatley, having previously played Scepter of Goth and Island of Kesmai , founded Simutronics with Tom and Susan Zelinski. In the same year they demonstrated

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3822-457: The TinyMUD family , or MU* , is traditionally used to implement social MUDs. A less-known MUD variant is the talker , a variety of online chat environment typically based on server software like ew-too or NUTS . Most of the early Internet talkers were LPMuds with the majority of the complex game machinery stripped away, leaving just the communication commands. The first Internet talker

3913-648: The flexible nature of many MUD servers leads to their occasional use in areas ranging from computer science research to geoinformatics to medical informatics to analytical chemistry . MUDs have attracted the interest of academic scholars from many fields, including communications , sociology , law , and economics . At one time, there was interest from the United States military in using them for teleconferencing. Most MUDs are run as hobbies and are free to play; some may accept donations or allow players to purchase virtual items , while others charge

4004-490: The "MUD" name entirely, and instead using MUX (Multi-User Experience) or MUSH (Multi-User Shared Hallucination). Social MUDs de-emphasize game elements in favor of an environment designed primarily for socializing. They are differentiated from talkers by retaining elements beyond online chat, typically online creation as a community activity and some element of role-playing . Often such MUDs have broadly defined contingents of socializers and roleplayers. Server software in

4095-528: The 1980s further popularized multiplayer gaming. Titles like Super Mario Bros. for the NES and Golden Axe for the Sega Genesis introduced cooperative and competitive gameplay. Additionally, LAN gaming emerged in the late 1980s, enabling players to connect multiple computers for multiplayer gameplay, popularized by titles like Doom and Warcraft: Orcs & Humans . Players can also play together in

4186-412: The Internet. Over time the number of people playing video games has increased. In 2020, the majority of households in the United States have an occupant that plays video games, and 65% of gamers play multiplayer games with others either online or in person. For some games, "multiplayer" implies that players are playing on the same gaming system or network. This applies to all arcade games , but also to

4277-496: The Internet. Many mobile phones and handheld consoles also offer wireless gaming with Bluetooth (or similar) technology. By the early 2010s online gaming had become a mainstay of console platforms such as Xbox and PlayStation . During the 2010s, as the number of Internet users increased, two new video game genres rapidly gained worldwide popularity – multiplayer online battle arena and battle royale game , both designed exclusively for multiplayer gameplay over

4368-576: The LPC (programming language). It first came into being on February 18, 1992. It pioneered important technical innovations in MUDs, including the network socket support that made InterMUD communications possible and LPC-to-C compilation. FluffOS started as a collection of patches of last unreleased version of MudOS, FluffOS has evolved into an independent and enhanced project, providing a powerful platform for crafting interactive and immersive virtual worlds, it

4459-455: The LPC code. By virtue of this design, Pensjö made it more difficult for common programming errors like infinite loops and infinite recursion made by content builders to harm the overall stability of the server. His choice of an OO approach made it easy for new programmers to concentrate on the task of "building a room" rather than programming logic. Pensjö created Genesis in April 1989 as

4550-523: The LPMud community. When TMI began work in 1992, a mudlib was generally packaged with both an LPMud driver and a complete world built on top of the mudlib. As a framework-driven mudlib, the goal of the TMI mudlib was to provide only examples for world objects and place the burden of building a working world on the game developers using TMI. TMI implemented the first InterMUD communications network, when MudOS added network socket support in 1992. In 1992, MIRE,

4641-404: The MUD community was "in decline" as of 2009. Sherry Turkle developed a theory that the constant use (and in many cases, overuse) of MUDs allows users to develop different personalities in their environments. She uses examples, dating back to the text-based MUDs of the mid-1990s, showing college students who simultaneously live different lives through characters in separate MUDs, up to three at

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4732-949: The PC and later Red Hat where, other than shifting to Ubuntu , it has remained ever since. An early version of Hourglass was also ported to the PC, named Vortex, by Ben Maizels in 1992. Although written specifically for Avalon: The Legend Lives , it went on to spawn a number of games, including Avalon: The First Age , which ran from 1999 to 2014. The now defunct 1996 Age of Thrones and notably Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands started life in Vortex prior to moving to its own Rapture engine. Hourglass continues to be developed as of 2016 and Avalon: The Legend Lives currently has 2,901,325 written words and 2,248,374 lines of game code (with 2,417,900 instructions). The original game came in at 1 KB in 1989, compared to 102 GB in January 2016. In 1989, LPMud

4823-474: The TMI Mudlib was never officially released, but was influential in the development of other libraries. A graphical MUD is a MUD that uses computer graphics to represent parts of the virtual world and its visitors. A prominent early graphical MUD was Habitat , written by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar for Lucasfilm in 1985. Some graphical MUDs require players to download a special client and

4914-463: The UK as a commercial MUD via British Telecom's Prestel and Micronet networks. A scandal on SHADES led to the closure of Micronet , as described in Indra Sinha 's net-memoir, The Cybergypsies . At the same time, Compunet started a project named Multi-User Galaxy Game as a science fiction alternative to MUD1 , a copy of which they were running on their system at the time. When one of

5005-401: The University of Essex tradition escalated in the United States during the late 1980s when affordable personal computers with 300 to 2400 bit/s modems enabled role-players to log into multi-line BBSs and online service providers such as CompuServe . During this time it was sometimes said that MUD stands for "Multi Undergraduate Destroyer" due to their popularity among college students and

5096-590: The amount of time devoted to them. Avalon: The Legend Lives was published by Yehuda Simmons in 1989. It was the first persistent game world of its kind without the traditional hourly resets and points-based puzzle solving progression systems. Avalon introduced equilibrium and balance (cooldowns), skill-based player vs player combat and concepts such as player-run governments and player housing. In 2004, significant usages of MUDs included "online gaming, education,...socializing", and religious rituals or other religious activities. The first popular MUD codebase

5187-640: The arcades. The games had broader consoles to allow for four sets of controls. Ken Wasserman and Tim Stryker identified three factors which make networked computer games appealing: John G. Kemeny wrote in 1972 that software running on the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS) had recently gained the ability to support multiple simultaneous users, and that games were the first use of the functionality. DTSS's popular American football game, he said, now supported head-to-head play by two humans. The first large-scale serial sessions using

5278-425: The asymmetrical multiplayer system is Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege . Giving players their own special operator changes every player's experience. This puts an emphasis on players improvising their own game plan given the abilities their character has. In games with stronger elements of asymmetry, one player/team may have one gameplay experience (or be in softly asymmetric roles) while the other player or team play in

5369-404: The casual player until it was shut down in 2013. Some networked multiplayer games, including MUDs and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) such as RuneScape , omit a single-player mode. The largest MMO in 2008 was World of Warcraft , with over 10 million registered players worldwide. World of Warcraft would hit its peak at 12 million players two years later in 2010, and in 2023 earned

5460-541: The emergence of electronic gaming in the mid-20th century. One of the earliest instances of multiplayer interaction was witnessed with the development of Spacewar! in 1962 for the DEC PDP-1 computer by Steve Russell and colleagues at the MIT . During the late 1970s and early 1980s, multiplayer gaming gained momentum within the arcade scene with classics like Pong and Tank . The transition to home gaming consoles in

5551-534: The enemy without damage. The player's connection is not the only factor; some servers are slower than others. A server that is geographically closer to the player's connection will often provide a lower ping. Data packets travel faster to a location that is closer to them. How far the device is from an internet connection ( router ) can also affect latency. Asymmetrical multiplayer is a type of gameplay in which players can have significantly different roles or abilities from each other – enough to provide

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5642-415: The first educational MUD. The MUD medium lends itself naturally to constructionist learning pedagogical approaches. The Mud Institute (TMI) was an LPMud opened in February 1992 as a gathering place for people interested in developing LPMud and teaching LPC after it became clear that Lars Pensjö had lost interest in the project. TMI focussed on both the LPMud driver and library, the driver evolving into MudOS,

5733-453: The first implementation of the LPC language, and therefore the first LPMud, in which the developer (commonly known as a wizard within the MUD) could code their own objects. Pensjö's work has been extended or reverse engineered in a number of projects: Though an LPMud server can be used to implement nearly any style of game, LPMuds are often thought of as having certain common characteristics as

5824-425: The game experience to give one player an advantage over others, such as using an " aimbot " – a program which automatically locks the player's crosshairs onto a target – in shooting games. This is also known as "hacking" or "glitching" ("glitching" refers to using a glitch , or a mistake in the code of a game, whereas "hacking" is manipulating the code of a game). Cheating in video games

5915-584: The game's artwork, while others provide a rich experience by being website-based. Graphical MUDs range from simply enhancing the user interface (e.g. Wolfery provides an option to set the room picture, but otherwise remains a text-based interaction) to simulating 3D worlds with visual spatial relationships and customized avatar appearances (e.g. Ultima Online provides a rich point-and-click experience). Games such as Meridian 59 , EverQuest , Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot were routinely called graphical MUDs in their earlier years. RuneScape

6006-417: The game, and evaluate different game mechanical options; Socializers devote most of their energy to interacting with other players; and then there are Killers who focus on interacting negatively with other players, if permitted, killing the other characters or otherwise thwarting their play. Few players play only one way; most exhibit a diverse style. According to Richard Bartle , "People go there as part of

6097-399: The hours of 2 AM and 8 AM on weekdays. It became the first Internet multiplayer online role-playing game in 1980 and started the online gaming industry as a whole when the university connected its internal network to ARPANet . The original MUD game was closed down in late 1987, reportedly under pressure from CompuServe , to whom Richard Bartle had licensed the game. This left MIST ,

6188-532: The late 1990s, a website called The Mud Connector has served as a central and curated repository for active MUDs. In 1995, The Independent reported that over 60,000 people regularly played about 600 MUDs, up from 170 MUDs three years prior. The Independent also noted distinct patterns of socialization within MUD communities. In 2004, MUDs were relatively popular in the United States and mostly text-based. Seraphina Brennan of Massively wrote that

6279-581: The latter was an early first-person shooter . Other early video games included turn-based multiplayer modes, popular in tabletop arcade machines . In such games, play is alternated at some point (often after the loss of a life ). All players' scores are often displayed onscreen so players can see their relative standing. Danielle Bunten Berry created some of the first multiplayer video games, such as her debut, Wheeler Dealers (1978) and her most notable work, M.U.L.E. (1983). Gauntlet (1985) and Quartet (1986) introduced co-operative 4-player gaming to

6370-450: The most common approach to game design in MUDs is to loosely emulate the structure of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign focused more on fighting and advancement than role-playing. When these MUDs restrict player-killing in favor of player versus environment conflict and questing , they are labeled hack and slash MUDs . This may be considered particularly appropriate since, due to the room-based nature of traditional MUDs, ranged combat

6461-671: The most notable of which were TinyMUD , LPMud , and DikuMUD . Monster was a multi-user adventure game created by Richard Skrenta for the VAX and written in VMS Pascal. It was publicly released in November 1988. Monster was disk-based and modifications to the game were immediate. Monster pioneered the approach of allowing players to build the game world , setting new puzzles or creating dungeons for other players to explore. Monster, which comprised about 60,000 lines of code, had

6552-651: The musical Brigadoon . The first version of Hourglass was written by Yehuda Simmons and later Daniel James for Avalon: The Legend Lives which debuted in 1989 at the last of the London MUD mega Meets aptly named Adventure '89 and initially hosted on the IOWA system. Initially written in ARM assembly language on the Acorn Archimedes 440, in 1994 it made the leap from the venerable Archimedes to Debian Linux on

6643-458: The player the room or area they are standing in, listing the objects, players and non-player characters (NPCs) in the area, as well as all of the exits. To carry out a task the player would enter a text command such as take apple or attack dragon . Movement around the game environment is generally accomplished by entering the direction (or an abbreviation of it) in which the player wishes to move, for example typing north or just n would cause

6734-566: The player to exit the current area via the path to the north. MUD clients are computer applications that make the MUD telnet interface more accessible to users, with features such as syntax highlighting , keyboard macros , and connection assistance. Prominent clients include TinyTalk, TinyFugue, TinTin++, and zMUD. While there have been many variations in overall focus, gameplay and features in MUDs, some distinct sub-groups have formed that can be used to help categorize different game mechanics , game genres and non-game uses. Perhaps

6825-414: The release of DikuMUD, which was inspired by AberMUD, led to a virtual explosion of hack and slash MUDs based upon its code. DikuMUD inspired numerous derivative codebases , including CircleMUD , Merc , ROM , SMAUG , and GodWars . The original Diku team comprised Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Staerfeldt. DikuMUD had a key influence on the early evolution of

6916-421: The role of their playing characters at all times. Some RP MUDs provide an immersive gaming environment, while others only provide a virtual world with no game elements. MUDs where roleplay is enforced and the game world is heavily computer-modeled are sometimes known as roleplay intensive MUDs , or RPIMUDs . In many cases, role-playing MUDs attempt to differentiate themselves from hack and slash types, by dropping

7007-483: The same room using splitscreen . Some of the earliest video games were two-player games, including early sports games (such as 1958's Tennis For Two and 1972's Pong ), early shooter games such as Spacewar! (1962) and early racing video games such as Astro Race (1973). The first examples of multiplayer real-time games were developed on the PLATO system about 1973. Multi-user games developed on this system included 1973's Empire and 1974's Spasim ;

7098-537: The same time Roy Trubshaw wrote MUD , Alan E. Klietz wrote a game called Scepter (Scepter of Goth), and later called Milieu using Multi- Pascal on a CDC Cyber 6600 series mainframe which was operated by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium . Klietz ported Milieu to an IBM XT in 1983, naming the new port Scepter of Goth . Scepter supported 10 to 16 simultaneous users, typically connecting in by modem. It

7189-515: The social virtual worlds exemplified by Second Life , can be traced directly back to the MUD genre. Indeed, before the invention of the term MMORPG, games of this style were simply called graphical MUDs . A number of influential MMORPG designers began as MUD developers and/or players (such as Raph Koster , Brad McQuaid , Matt Firor, and Brian Green ) or were involved with early MUDs (like Mark Jacobs and J. Todd Coleman ). Colossal Cave Adventure , created in 1975 by Will Crowther on

7280-474: The term MU* to refer to the TinyMUD family . UberMUD, UnterMUD, and MOO were inspired by TinyMUD but are not direct descendants. TinyMUD is also used to refer to the first database run under the TinyMUD codebase, which is also known as TinyMUD Classic; it ran from August 1989 to April 1990, and still comes back up every August during a holiday called Brigadoon Day, a reference to the Scottish village in

7371-447: The two programmers left CompuNet, the remaining programmer, Alan Lenton, decided to rewrite the game from scratch and named it Federation II (at the time no Federation I existed). The MUD was officially launched in 1989. Federation II was later picked up by AOL, where it became known simply as Federation: Adult Space Fantasy . Federation later left AOL to run on its own after AOL began offering unlimited service. In 1978, around

7462-692: The widespread availability of the Internet which allowed players to play against each other simultaneously, but remains an option in many strategy-related games, such as the Civilization series . Coordination of turns are subsequently managed by one computer or a centralized server. Further, many mobile games are based on sporadic play and use social interactions with other players , lacking direct player versus player game modes but allowing players to influence other players' games, coordinated through central game servers, another facet of asynchronous play. Online cheating (in gaming) usually refers to modifying

7553-453: The world by typing commands that resemble a natural language , as well as using a character typically called an avatar . Traditional MUDs implement a role-playing video game set in a fantasy world populated by fictional races and monsters , with players choosing classes in order to gain specific skills or powers. The objective of this sort of game is to slay monsters , explore a fantasy world, complete quests, go on adventures, create

7644-421: Was Cat Chat in 1990. Taking advantage of the flexibility of MUD server software, some MUDs are designed for educational purposes rather than gaming or chat. MicroMUSE is considered by some to have been the first educational MUD, but it can be argued that its evolution into this role was not complete until 1994, which would make the first of many educational MOOs , Diversity University in 1993, also

7735-466: Was AberMUD, written in 1987 by Alan Cox , named after the University of Wales, Aberystwyth . Alan Cox had played the original University of Essex MUD, and the gameplay was heavily influenced by it. AberMUD was initially written in B for a Honeywell L66 mainframe under GCOS3/TSS. In late 1988 it was ported to C , which enabled it to spread rapidly to many Unix platforms upon its release in 1989. AberMUD's popularity resulted in several inspired works,

7826-432: Was actually originally intended to be a text-based MUD, but graphics were added very early in development. However, with the increase in computing power and Internet connectivity during the late 1990s, and the shift of online gaming to the mass market, the term "graphical MUD" fell out of favor, being replaced by MMORPG ( massively multiplayer online role-playing game ) a term coined by Richard Garriott in 1997. Within

7917-420: Was also ported to GEnie . At its peak, the site had about 100 monthly subscribers to both Aradath and Galaxy . GEnie was shut down in the late 1990s, although Dragon's Gate was later brought to AOL before it was finally released on its own. Dragon's Gate was closed on February 10, 2007. In the summer of 1980, University of Virginia classmates John Taylor and Kelton Flinn wrote Dungeons of Kesmai ,

8008-454: Was carried on by others such as Jörn "Amylaar" Rennecke , Felix "Dworkin" Croes , Tim "Beek" Hollebeek and Lars Düning. During the early 1990s, LPMud was one of the most popular MUD codebases. Descendants of the original LPMud include MudOS , DGD , SWLPC , FluffOS , and the Pike programming language, the latter the work of long-time LPMud developer Fredrik "Profezzorn" Hübinette. In 1990,

8099-620: Was developed by Lars Pensjö (hence the LP in LPMud). Pensjö had been an avid player of TinyMUD and AberMUD and wanted to create a world with the flexibility of TinyMUD and the gameplay of AberMUD. In order to accomplish this he wrote what is nowadays known as a virtual machine , which he called the LPMud driver, that ran the C-like LPC programming language used to create the game world. Pensjö's interest in LPMud eventually waned and development

8190-460: Was the creation of a new, C -based, object-oriented programming language, LPC, that made it simple for people with minimal programming skills to add elements like rooms, weapons, and monsters to a virtual world. To accomplish his goal, Lennart Augustsson convinced Pensjö to write what today would be called a virtual machine, the LPMud driver. The driver managed the interpretation of LPC code as well as providing basic operating system services to

8281-542: Was the first commercial MUD; franchises were sold to a number of locations. Scepter was first owned and run by GamBit (of Minneapolis, Minnesota ), founded by Bob Alberti. GamBit's assets were later sold to Interplay Productions . In 1984, Mark Peterson wrote The Realm of Angmar , beginning as a clone of Scepter of Goth . In 1994, Peterson rewrote The Realm of Angmar , adapting it to MS-DOS (the basis for many dial-in BBS systems), and renamed it Swords of Chaos . For

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