Apocalypse DikuMUD **IMPORTANT NOTICE** Please Read
Apoc mud account
Many times we have problems and have been forced to choose
a new site. However, not a more treacherous deed has been
done to us than by Torg (Fred Merkel). After finding out
that our code was being hacked by him for another mud beyond
other extremities, the implementors of Apocalypse (then
Renaissance) decided to delete out our mud and no longer
approve of running it at John Hopkins U. Torg, backstabbing
us the entire time, made copies of it and is now running
our mud (our mud which he has stole) and claims to call it
the same. We urge you the players to put a ban on the mud
and not give help to this monstrosity which has occured.
// The Implementors of Apocalypse DikuMud (m...@cs.olemiss.edu)
PS. The Expanded (which was luckily deleted off early enough)
version of Apocalypse is now running at .....
cy.cs.olemiss.edu (130.74.96.19) Port: 4000
Frederick C Merkel
of the readers of this group couldn't care less about these muds or this
fight. But I have been slandered and feel obliged to respond.
This spring I offered Destiny (Sara R Perry) and Pestilence, the use of my
machine for the Renaissance mud. After it was put up, I spent countless
hours helping hunt down a few major code bugs (I'm sure some of the players
remember these--like the AIX/POSIX bug that gave us a week of lag), and spent
more time logged into the game than anyone else. Backstabbing for sure.
Sometime between then and now, Destiny and I seemed to have developed a few
personality conflicts, which have apparently boiled over. A second group
has been DEVELOPING a new dikumud on the same machine. I promised that the
new mud would not run on the stimpy machine. I reiterated this promise
to Destiny as early as two weeks ago. Since then, I asked her directly
if Renaissance mud would be leaving my site. She denied it each time and
asked me why I thought that. Even this weekend, when she was betatesting
the new mud, she ignored my direct questions about the future of the mud.
Then, when I was away from school, in the middle of the night, they deleted
the mud from my machine, and replaced it with an abermuck with an
advertisement directing players to the new host. Isn't it common courtesy
to inform a sysadmin when you plan to remove a mud? From all the comments
in this newsgroup, it is apparent that implementors do not appreciate having
their accounts deleted, well, nor do sysadmins appreciate finding the mud
mysteriously gone and some other mud running in its place.
Of course I had a backup of the game. Backups were made every night--in
case of machine failure or similar tragedy. And I was tempted to just
put the mud back up. In fact, it was up for about five minutes (and all sites
were soon banned). I was thinking about deleting all of the gods and running
it as an anarchy--sort of as an experiment. But, on reflection, and after
speaking to some players, I decided it was not worth the grief and shut it down.
Then I found the rec.games.mud post, which I think is completely out-of-
bounds, slanderous, and admittedly, without basis. The simple fact is,
that I HAVE NOT stolen and WILL NOT steal any of Pestilence's precious code.
Destiny, herself, minutes ago admitted she had no evidence that I took any
code. In fact, Jedi is completely SequentI/Copper code, with my own additions.
Ren was derived from Bigboy. The data structures are quite different and it
would not be worth the trouble to convert the code anyway! I told Destiny
and Pestilence that I was willing to give my code and the code from Ren
to any neutral party, to examine it for signs of plagiarism. They declined.
Pure and simple, the code from Jedi has always been destined for anonymous
ftp. In a few weeks, when the kinks are worked out, the code will be
freely available. If you can pry the Renaissance code from Pestilence,
you can compare for yourself. My modifications to the SeqI/Copper base
are COMPLETELY original.
I have absolutely nothing to hide. I am infuriated (and shocked) by these
ridiculous baseless allegations.
Please, let's not make this a flame war. I am just trying to clear my name
some. None of the allegations in the Apoc post are true. And when Jedi goes
up in about a week, you can see for yourself--it is a wholly different
than Renaissance, Apocalypse, or any other mud.
Tim Munson
>approve of running it at John Hopkins U. Torg, backstabbing
Does this mean it will be up for ftp? :)
Tim
Jesse Taylor
For shame! Some people have no scruples... <grin>
JT
--
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
internet: bbs.oit.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
Lee P Miller
>advertisement directing players to the new host. Isn't it common courtesy
>to inform a sysadmin when you plan to remove a mud? From all the comments
Since when is it deemed necessary for users to contact their sysadmin when
deleting any files on their account? (Gee root I have this core dump in my
directory can I please have your permission to remove it?) If you are going to
give someone access to modify a file you also give them access to delete it.
>Of course I had a backup of the game. Backups were made every night--in
>case of machine failure or similar tragedy. And I was tempted to just
>put the mud back up. In fact, it was up for about five minutes (and all sites
>...
>bounds, slanderous, and admittedly, without basis. The simple fact is,
>that I HAVE NOT stolen and WILL NOT steal any of Pestilence's precious code.
Hmm you say you took their code and put it back up yet claim you did not steal
their code? How did the mud get back on your machine and back up again if you
didn't steal their code?
The point is Pestilence Disease and the others brought the code to jhu they
should also have had the right to take it away whenever they saw fit and they
saw fit to do it now. If you have this other original code then why do you
need the Ren code other than bragging rights? Perhaps more people would
believe you if you did not give off the image of a child throwing a tantrum
because someone took one of your toys away. Also, you claim not to want a
flame war only justice, why is it then you were on RenII the other day shouting
insults about the gods? Doesn't seem to me shouting that people are assholes
is the normal way of getting justice
-Lee/Diamon
P.S. That's Diamon with an i not Damon the ween that turned GooLand in :)
--
Heaven's just a rumour she'll dispell,
as she walks me through the nicest parts of hell.
-Trent Reznor
Tim Munson
>In article <tim.708752205@vulcan> t...@vulcan.anu.edu.au (Tim Munson) writes:
>>m...@cs.olemiss.edu (Apoc mud account) writes:
>>>approve of running it at John Hopkins U. Torg, backstabbing
>>>us the entire time, made copies of it...
>>
>>Does this mean it will be up for ftp? :)
>>
>>Tim
>For shame! Some people have no scruples... <grin>
>JT
No hide no Christmas bonus!
Still got a few replies (mostly users damning each other :)).
(one guy did say it would be up for ftp in a month or so)
Tim
Apoc mud account
the hourglass, and is the least significant of all the problems that
forced us to say farewell to stimpy@John Hopkins U.
Have a neutral person examine the code? Please be serious. As we all
know, even the holy grail can be made to look like a common wood worker's
goblet. As I said, the code doesn't matter - feel free Torg, to hack
all you want at 'your' copies of the mud; run it (without the Renaissance
name of course); do whatever you wish with it.
What ticks me off, is amateurs like you, with no regard to computer ethics,
giving the rest of us who are quality programmers, a derogatory name and
reputation.
I am man enough to bring an end to this so-called "flame war." Thus, these
are my last comments on it. If you are man enough Torg, you will do the
same. Of course, this includes your shouting of assanine remarks on our
mud, disparagement of our character, and everything else. (You know the
rest.)
--Pestilence
Implementor of Apocalypse II DikuMUD
Catherine
All this self sacrificial whining from you Apocalypse imps is
getting old. Pestilence, you're 'man enough'? Sheesh get real.
Get a life and quit acting like a bunch of wusses.
Cat
John B Walker
>
>
>
deletions
>Have a neutral person examine the code? Please be serious. As we all
>know, even the holy grail can be made to look like a common wood worker's
>goblet. As I said, the code doesn't matter - feel free Torg, to hack
>all you want at 'your' copies of the mud; run it (without the Renaissance
>name of course); do whatever you wish with it.
>
> --Pestilence
>
> Implementor of Apocalypse II DikuMUD
I find this rather interesting. You say you are man enough to bring this
flame war to an end. Hmmmm, as I recall, you were the one who lit the first
match. ;)
Yes, we ARE serious about having a neutral party examine the code in question.
Reason:
1) IF Fred (Torg) is as poor a programmer as you and your sidekick say he is,
Then how in the name of hades could he hope to so THOROUGHLY disguise it
as to fool a good coder? We are talking about ABADDON, implementor of
BigBoy, who has publicly posted that he would do this. (And if I may
remind you, Abaddon was the person from whom you initially GOT the code
that became Renaissance. ---> HE would know, better than anyone, where
to look for plagerized code.
2) On the other hand, if Fred is a good enough programmer that he CAN
change it so completely that it is unidentifiable from the code you have
claimed he has stolen, I SERIOUSLY doubt that NEED to in the first place.
(It has been my experience that it is always MUCH easier to write your own
code, rather than attempting to disguise someone elses.)
3) Therefore I challenge you to send any file of YOUR version of Renaissance
(not the new one) to Abbadon, that he requests. I will do the same for
Jedi. Further, I will regaurd his verdict as FINAL. IF he rules that
Torg has been copying Renaissance code, I will pull out of jedi, as I won't be associated with plagerizers. Further, I will offer a public apology
to you and Apoc II.
If, on the other hand, the verdict is : NOT COPIED CODE, as I expect it
will be, I would hope that you would be man enough to offer a public
apology to Torg.
--- Onivel
Implementor of the soon to be made public Jedi Mud
Totoro
observation: code is completely useless. all one needs to do
is look at the concepts and ideas that are on the mud and reprogram
it into their current system. so one can simulate the ideas from
apocalpyse with relative ease.
the ethics: according to the conversation here, it is simple.
after talking to the players, tim does not want to run the mud at all.
as for the original owners, they all cry foul.
my opinion: sys-admins should be kept informed. it's common courtesy.
what isn't common courtesy is the mud being yanked out and replaced with
something else one day. this infers a couple things: that you dislike
the person so much that you just want to leave, and burning your bridges
while leaving. and two, that there was no trust for the sys-admin by
the gods of this mud. this is what bugs me. a sys-admin trusts
someone to use the computer. the users could easily screw up the computers
on that telnet site with relative ease. it seems like the gods were
taking the site for granted. ok. that's it for my opinions...
Catherine
> observation: code is completely useless. all one needs to do
>is look at the concepts and ideas that are on the mud and reprogram
>it into their current system. so one can simulate the ideas from
>apocalpyse with relative ease.
> my opinion: sys-admins should be kept informed. it's common courtesy.
>what isn't common courtesy is the mud being yanked out and replaced with
>something else one day.
From what I've seen of the Whiners, common courtesy isn't in their
vocabulary.
Catherine Stanton
****************************************************************************
* C. Stanton ** Opinions are my own, not UGA's. *
* sta...@athena.cs.uga.edu** Conflicting opinions are welcome, I will *
* University of Georgia ** certainly respect your right to be wrong.:-) *
****************************************************************************
Chris
>vocabulary.
>
>Catherine Stanton
Oh come off it. Do you have any idea what it feels like to have (or suspect)
your code stolen? I do. We had Arctic running at a guys site. When he decided
that he wanted to hold the site over our heads and try to get his way, we
pulled off of the site. I later heard that he had made copies of our code and
was threatening to make them public. Not only did this include source code,
but a brand new world (6 months of creation). Had I seen the guy in person, I
think one or both of us would have lost a few teeth. *chuckle*
So unless you have some idea of how either side feels, *flame on* KEEP YOUR
GODDAM NOSE OUT OF IT *flame off*......There I feel better now.....
Chris@Adversary
Chris@Apocalypse II
Chris@Infinity
Balstaff@Arctic
Balstaff@Armageddon
"Ever wonder where all the know it alls come from? I do......" -Me
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher R. Boggs, InterNet at gt9...@prism.gatech.edu,
"If you can't baffle them with bull, dazzle them with dexterity"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catherine
>your code stolen? I do.
silent on the 'coding' aspect of this flame war from hell.
> So unless you have some idea of how either side feels, *flame on* KEEP YOUR
>GODDAM NOSE OUT OF IT *flame off*......There I feel better now.....
I will keep my goddam nose out of it when the people who are feeling
so unjustly wronged take their bitching, moaning, and complaining to
e-mail where it belongs, instead of wasting bandwidth on a newsgroup.
I read rec.games.mud for information, not for whining. I think it's
already pretty well established the Destiny, et al were rude to Torg.
If they didn't trust him as a sysadmin they should have moved their
precious MUD to another site earlier. Then we could have avoided all
this irritating whining.
It's a shame that people do feel compelled to steal code, but I don't
believe for a minute that Torg did anything wrong. I certainly don't
believe he did all the Destiny/Slurp/Sara is accusing him of. I also
certainly feel that this is the WRONG place for her to try to 'get
back' at him for anything, which is all she seems to be doing. If she
wants to play little revenge games, she may certainly do it elsewhere.
Catherine
John B Walker
>From what I've seen of the Whiners, common courtesy isn't in their
>vocabulary.
>
>Catherine Stanton
From what I have seen and after all that I and Fred have gone through in order
to be reasonable and mature in trying to resolve this little "tiff", including
offering code to be compared, I think I can safely call your little
"From what I've seen of the Whiners, common courtesy isn't in thier
vocabulary."
an understatement that doesn't go far enough. Diplomatic, but nonetheless,
an understatement. ;)
Personally, I wouldn't publically accuse someone of plagerism unless I had
LOTS of proof, as it could sometimes result in said acuser having their butt
hauled up in front of a court of law to explain and defend their accusations.
(ie... Can you say "slander" and "deformation of character" ???)
James Domenic Levino
-Onivel, Implementor of the soon to be public JediMud-
Marcus J. will do TCP/IP for food Ranum
>your code stolen? I do.
Yeah. I encourage people to use pretty much any code of mine that
they might find useful, for whatever purpose. Makes a father proud.
mjr.
Chris
Yeah, true. There is no use in being over-protective about code. BUT, I can
sympathize with coders who wish to use thier code and establish thier own mud
before they give it out. Silly, Sequent, and Copper are good examples. All are
distinctly different. And as far as I know, they were established Muds before
the code was made available.
I can't think of much worse than someone exploiting your hard work before you
yourself see it up and running. Besides.....There are too many "cloned" dikus
out there already. I can see using source from other Muds as a reference and
source of information....But who wants another clone of already established
Muds?
Arctic is a "sister-mud" with Armageddon. The two work in conjunction with
each other, sharing many Gods and Immorts. The Armageddon Online Editor is
already public and neither of our Muds are up yet. I also expect that code will
be made available.......In the future, after we get a chance to use it some.
If you have something new and unique, its not a crime to keep it that way.
I have an Immort on Apocalypse II........I, being involved in all this in a
round about way, have no grounds to make any judgements on. Other than the fact
that I am friends with Destiny and know her far better than many of the readers
do. So...If I have no grounds for judgement, what makes people who have read
nothing but posts here think they have any ground to stand on? Well?
-Chris
PS: This doesn't qualify as a "flame war" Catherine.....You missed the good old
"cross-gender" fiasco.....That was hot and heavy for a few weeks.....*laugh*
This is just a mild spat......Bruce and Scott aren't even bothering with it.
Alan Krantz
>>From what I've seen of the Whiners, common courtesy isn't in their
>>vocabulary.
>>
>>Catherine Stanton
>
> Oh come off it. Do you have any idea what it feels like to have (or suspect)
>your code stolen? I do. We had Arctic running at a guys site. When he decided
> .
> .
> So unless you have some idea of how either side feels, *flame on* KEEP YOUR
>GODDAM NOSE OUT OF IT *flame off*......There I feel better now.....
>
>Chris@Adversary
I have some idea how it feels and it (in most cases) really isn't that
big of a deal - at least when it comes to muds. I've seen people bicker
over the smallest additions (such as prompt code) and then forget that
the basic frame work of the diku was written for them. Yea it burns a
little to have the code 'stolen' but as to people actually obtaining the
code it's not (for me) that big of a deal - in this news group i found
most of the people problems to be their egos - and most of the good imps
don't mind giving away thier code (or making pieces of it available to
the pd). In fact my biggest hesitance in giving out any of the diku code
i've worked on is that i think it's rather sloppy - but I'm happy to
talk (tell) someone how to implement certain sections of code (providing
they are knowledgeable programmers). I mean addding classes, spells,
spec proc, auto saves, limted items, mob classes and so forth just isn't
that big of deal though it can be time consuming. I.e, the skill level
needed for this features isn't too high - just the raw time.
CNB...@tamvm1.tamu.edu
I am a totally unbiased observer. I am not a wiz. I am not a god.
I am not an admisitrator. I am a programmer in RL, and a player in VL.
>I will keep my goddam nose out of it when the people who are feeling
>so unjustly wronged take their bitching, moaning, and complaining to
>e-mail where it belongs, instead of wasting bandwidth on a newsgroup.
>I read rec.games.mud for information, not for whining.
>If they didn't trust him as a sysadmin they should have moved their
>precious MUD to another site earlier. Then we could have avoided all
>this irritating whining.
>****************************************************************************
>* C. Stanton ** Opinions are my own, not UGA's. *
>* sta...@athena.cs.uga.edu** Conflicting opinions are welcome, I will *
>* University of Georgia ** certainly respect your right to be wrong.:-) *
>****************************************************************************
----------------------------------------------
Chris Barnes |
cnb...@tamvm1.tamu.edu | "If guns are outlawed, only the
(409) 846-3273 (home) | government will have guns"
(409) 845-8454 (work) | (stolen quote)
Wendell G. Wren
>so unjustly wronged take their bitching, moaning, and complaining to
>e-mail where it belongs, instead of wasting bandwidth on a newsgroup.
>I read rec.games.mud for information, not for whining.
implementors should be warned that maybe some of us aren't kosher.
Were I one of the above, and someone stole code from me, and then I
was told "Oh yeah, he stole stiff from us last month" I'd be more
than a bit irate at the lack of warning.
>If they didn't trust him as a sysadmin they should have moved their
>precious MUD to another site earlier. Then we could have avoided all
>this irritating whining.
Mayhaps (and apparently) they had no reason NOT to trust the accused
before this got started.
Wendell G. Wren
Wen...@Maine.Maine.Edu
02:30:22 Thursday, 25 Jun 1992
Wendell G. Wren
> LOTS of proof, as it could sometimes result in said acuser having their butt
> hauled up in front of a court of law to explain and defend their accusations.
>
>(ie... Can you say "slander" and "deformation of character" ???)
that's "defamation" I believe ;-) though deformation might be the
reason all this started in the first place!
William I. Norton
skills. Could someone tell me where i can get this file or what i need
to put in it
thanks.
Santiago Zorzopulos
skills.h = spells.h (with lotsa mods. ;) )
Jhalavar@Armageddon
part-time criminal
>>I will keep my goddam nose out of it when the people who are feeling
>>so unjustly wronged take their bitching, moaning, and complaining to
>>e-mail where it belongs, instead of wasting bandwidth on a newsgroup.
>>I read rec.games.mud for information, not for whining.
> As has been said, this news BELONGS here... other adminstrators/
> implementors should be warned that maybe some of us aren't kosher.
> Were I one of the above, and someone stole code from me, and then I
> was told "Oh yeah, he stole stiff from us last month" I'd be more
> than a bit irate at the lack of warning.
Are people just suppose to believe anyones accusation? They may or may
not have stolen code. I for one would not be able to do anything with
this information. I run a Diku and this information is worthless. For all
I know both parties could be not telling the whole truth.
-- Dave ha...@seq.uncwil.edu
--
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