More on AberMUD
Alejandro Liu
Return-Path: <@VM.usc.edu:whi...@TARDIS.CS.ED.AC.UK>
Date: Sun Sep 17 00:21:15 GMT 1989
From: white%TARDIS.CS...@VM.usc.edu
Subject: Abermud
To: ac...@SKAT.usc.edu
Reply-To : white%TARDIS.CS...@VM.usc.edu
Organisation: The Timelord's Horticultural Society
From: wh...@uk.ac.ed.cs.tardis <Jim Finnis>
Living-In: Aberystwyth
X-Mailer: Ream
Hello from Aberystwyth (hehehe)
I've just read the mail from Alec which you posted, and thought I'd add
some comments of my own. I'm not posting them, because I'm not sure if I
can safely from this site yet (not being at Aber Uni anymore, I have to
use this machine at Edinburgh). I am, as you may have already gathered,
one of the authors of Abermud, and I'm interested in all the attention
the game is getting of late; we never thought it would go this far!
I thought, after reading Alec's stuff, that someone might be interested
in the evolution of Abermud, because it has had a very long and eventful
life. In case you aren't interested, just skip it...
START HISTORY(
The history of Abermud:
Long long ago in the dim and distant past (so long ago it was damn
nearly in the year One) Alan Cox and I wrote a bulletin board system for
our battered old Honeywell Level 66, in B, not suprisingly called
'Honeyboard'. Alan then added a talker to this, using the now-infamous
file-based communications (honeywells have _no_ IPC), based on an earlier
beastie called'Honeytalk' which had gone down like a lead balloon some
time earlier.
This talker had multiple channels and facilities for board
administrators to throw people off. The methods for throwing people off
began to increase. At first we could just '.x' (exorcise) people from
the board. Then Alan added '.*' commands; such as '.*l' (limbo), '.*b'
(Banana of Death), '.*r' (Camtec Etherpad of Death), and so on; all of
which could only be performed by administrators in Wizard Mode ('.*#').
Then other things got added: .*s to summon a person to a talker channel,
.*i to make a person invisible
and so on...
Then a turning point: we gave each talker channel a brief description,
which would be stored in a file; read whenever someone did '.l' (look).
At this point, we realised that the Talker would be a MUD if we added
directional movement,scoring, and objects. This, however, remained an
idle thought at the back of our minds until one fateful night when Rob
Ash, the Honeywell's manager, said it was impossible to build a
multiuser game on a Honeywell. Alan then sat down and turned the talker
into Abermud I. First came the parser. Next was the movement, by the simple
method of putting the room's movement data into the description along with
extra control stuff (such as #DEATH :-); this explains why the movement
data is in such a funny place and why all the rooms are files! Then came the
objects, and finally the scoring. This all took about one day, with
yours truly involved in little except the parser, the login code, and
the scenario; which developed over the next six months.
Abermud I ran for ages, and eventually got to a scenario size of 600+
rooms, most of them quite silly. Examples are:
Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (in the heart of Milton Keynes)
The Other Hall of the Other Mountain King
The Tractor Feed Banana
The Blue Moon Detective Agency
Doiley Woods
The Ghostbuster's Offices
Ubik
and so on..
We decided it was too big; parts of it no-one even saw - they were just
too hard to get to (such as Dans Le Parc Du Chateau Noir). We then
started Abermud II, which is the scenario you know and love, with
Blizzard Pass, and all those cuddly dwarves.
It was then rewritten for UN*X, and shipped around.. so there you have it.
)HISTORY END
An idea..
How about all the people with Abermud sending me where there version is
running, what version it is, what it runs on, what local changes have
been made and how popular it is; and whether they want to distribute
this version.
There are two reasons for this: [1] so that I can see what's happened to
my our baby(!!!) and [2] so that anybody who wants (for example) a good
version of Abermud for 4.3BSD which uses sockets can mail me here and I
can put them in touch with the appropriate person.
PS I'm now working on Alexa, a mud language, which I'll put on the
public domain if I ever finish it :-)
PPS Aberyswyth is hard to spell because it's Welsh. Just be happy I don't
live at:
Machynlleth, Pen-tre-tafarn-y-fedw, Tre'r-ddol, Rhydargaeau, Pontrhydygroes,
Felinfoel (where they brew wonderful beer), Ysbyty Ystwyth, Llanbadarn Fawr,
Llanrhystud...! hehehe.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Finnis | "I do not like being paranoid."
<wh...@uk.ac.ed.cs.tardis> | -- Pink Floyd
Coleg Addysg Bellach Ceredigion,|
Campws Felinfach, | The opinions expressed herein are not
Felinfach, | necessarily those of the Ceredigion College
Dyfed, | of Further Education, because they haven't
U.K. | paid me yet.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alejandro Liu
acliu%sk...@usc.edu ac...@skat.usc.edu
(Simple .signature, $CHEAP$)