[MUD-Dev] Re: Introduction

[Jon A. Lambert]

> From: S001GMU at nova.wright.edu
> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 08:44:19 +0000 (PST8PDT)
> From: Jamie Norrish <jamie at sans.vuw.ac.nz>
> >              I'm also a long-time devotee of Interactive Fiction
> >(games such as Zork and Colossal Cave) - I see MUDs as almost being a
> >cross between RPGs and IF, but of course a medium in its own right.
> 
> Actually, the Interactive Fiction games that you mentioned were spinoffs of the
> original MUD1 from Essex.  Having never played MUD1 or very much of Zork I
> don't know how similar they are, but my understanding is that most of the
> original MUDS were only multiplayer in that multiple ppl could be logged in at
> once, but each one played a seperate adventure...  kind of a Zork server or 
> something.  If anyone played MUD1 (or still plays? I hear Essex U. leaves a 
> copy of the code up for posterity's sake) please feel free to enlighten those 
> of us who didn't/don't.

Colossal Caves is much older.  I have a mainframe version (circa mid-70s).
I suspect the programs are much older than this perhaps late 60's(?)

If anyone is interested in looking at the source, I can it Email it to you. 
Its a collection of 4 programs, about 300k uncompressed.  The primary module 
is in PL/1 with a Fortran random number generator and 2 System370 assembler 
interfaces to I/O and something called Wylbur which predates my mainframe
experience.   ;-)