February 1999
- client images Chris Gray
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Ben Greear
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Adam Wiggins
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Chris Gray
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Chris Gray
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. T. Alexander Popiel
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Richard Woolcock
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers in general. Marc Hernandez
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers i Chris Gray
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers i Jon A. Lambert
- Question on c++ switch optimization, and parsers i Chris Gray
- optimizing code diablo@best.com
- optimizing code Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- optimizing code Chris Gray
- code profiling Chris Gray
- World-file parsing and RTTI? The Arrow
- World-file parsing and RTTI? Mark Gritter
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Marc Bowden
- pet peeves Richard Woolcock
- pet peeves Koster, Raph
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Kristen Koster
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Adam Wiggins
- pet peeves Wes Connell
- pet peeves J C Lawrence
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves Ling
- pet peeves Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves David Bennett
- pet peeves Robert Woods
- pet peeves Wes Connell
- pet peeves Travis S. Casey
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves Neerenberg, AaronX
- pet peeves greg
- pet peeves Richard Woolcock
- pet peeves J C Lawrence
- pet peeves Martin Keegan
- pet peeves Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- pet peeves J C Lawrence
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Brandon A Downey
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Darren Henderson
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Darren Henderson
- pet peeves Steve Houchard
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Darren Henderson
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Steve Houchard
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Richard Woolcock
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Richard Woolcock
- pet peeves Apocalypse
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Adam Wiggins
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Adam Wiggins
- pet peeves diablo@best.com
- pet peeves Mik Clarke
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Travis S. Casey
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Benjamin D. Wiechel
- pet peeves Marc Bowden
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves Mik Clarke
- pet peeves Benjamin D. Wiechel
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- pet peeves Marc Bowden
- pet peeves Matthew Mihaly
- pet peeves David Bennett
- pet peeves David Bennett
- pet peeves Petri Virkkula
- pet peeves J C Lawrence
- Horror Themed Muds [was CthulhuMud Driver 6] Christopher Allen
- Horror Themed Muds [was CthulhuMud Driver 6] Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Horror Themed Muds [was CthulhuMud Driver 6] Mik Clarke
- CthulhuMud Driver 6 Mik Clarke
- CthulhuMud Driver 6 J C Lawrence
- Mathengine Ling
- Mathengine Apocalypse
- Website update Koster, Raph
- Influential muds Koster, Raph
- Influential muds Dan Shiovitz
- Influential muds Adam Wiggins
- Influential muds Sunny Gulati
- Influential muds diablo@best.com
- Influential muds Juha Lindfors
- Influential muds Brandon J. Rickman
- Influential muds Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Influential muds Andy Cink
- Influential muds J C Lawrence
- Influential muds Dr. Cat
Raph Koster wrote:
> So my question is something that sort of overlaps material that is in the
> FAQ, but not really. What do you think are the most important and/or
> influential muds, and why? What contributions did they make to the state of
> the art, or what significant muds owe a lot to them?
Well, where serious MUD players and developers might look at a lot of
details as being significant and influential, I think the rest of the
world would look and just say "Well, which was the first MUD, the first
MUD with graphics, the first MUD with voice-chat?" Noticing the BIG
technological changes, not smaller changes like skill trees and such.
Personally, I think the biggest piece of history that most people
overlook (and probably always will, when I've mentioned it before on this
list nobody even responded to it, so I doubt many people care) is what
were the first multi-user dungeon games. I believe that these were
probably games like Moria and Oubliette on the Plato computer network in
the mid 1970s. They certainly qualify as the first graphic muds, having
simple line-drawings of the dungeon corridors displayed on 512*512 plasma
screen terminals, with their distinctive orange pixels.
I think Habitat certainly belongs on anybody's list of important MUDs.
It also is more qualified as "influential" - at least in the form of
Morningstar and Farmer's essays, which have been read by many MUD
developers, even though most of them probably never got to play it
themselves. (For the curious, I see there's a free trial of the latest
incarnation at http://www.worldsaway.com)
I think the first MUD with voice-chat was the demo world put up by
OnLive Chat, in an unsuccessful attempt to get people to license
their spiffy technology. But their company doesn't seem to have
been very successful, either financially or in getting a lot of
attention. So for a "most influential" list maybe they will be
like Moria and Oubliette - historically significant, but didn't
influence a lot of people because they just faded into obscurity.
(One of the later Plato dungeon games, Avatar, did serve as the
model that Wizardry was based on, although without the multiplayer
aspect.)
Amongst the text-only muds that only us MUD developers would notice the
innovations in, like I said before, I would list two. LambdaMOO, for
getting far more mainstream press coverage than any other MUD. And also
for getting far more non-programmers to make programs than ever before,
back when Object Oriented was such a hyped thing that anything containing
it was automatically good. And you could tell a non-programmer "It's
easy now, all you have to do is inherit everything from some other object
and change one thing, and voila, you made something new!" Which led to
their other innovation, whereby novice builders didn't realize they were
taking something that inherited 37 levels deep already, adding three
feeps, and passing it along to the next guy who wouldn't realize it was
inheriting stuff 38 levels deep... Leading to the innovation of "more
lag than you could shake a stick at".
Well I kid them, but the media coverage and the big well-known corporate
sponsor and having a lot of people from outside the normal mudding and
gaming communities made it significant and influential.
The other text mud I'd list is TinyMUD. Which seems to be the main
brancing point at which MUDs sorta forked from being "just combat muds"
to "combat muds and social muds". Most of the social ones trace their
ancestry back to TinyMUD. We've since sorta branched into three main
families, combat, social, and roleplaying. The roleplaying category
consisting mainly of MUSHes. But the roleplaying category is sort of a
"subcategory" of social, and definitely forked off from that side and the
whole TinyMUD family.
Ultima Online will probably turn out to be very influential, but better
to let the years go by and let history be the judge. :X)
*-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------*
Dr. Cat / Dragon's Eye Productions || Free alpha test:
*-------------------------------------------** http://www.bga.com/furcadia
Furcadia - a new graphic mud for PCs! || Let your imagination soar!
*-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------* - Influential muds Jay Carlson
- Influential muds Mik Clarke
- Influential muds Richard Woolcock
- Influential muds Koster, Raph
- Influential muds Mik Clarke
- Influential muds Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Influential muds Dan Root
- Influential muds Benjamin D. Wiechel
- State of the art? Andy Cink
- State of the art? diablo@best.com
- State of the art? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- State of the art? ##Make Nylander
- State of the art? diablo@best.com
- State of the art? Martin Keegan
- State of the art? David Bennett
- State of the art? Martin Keegan
- State of the art? Andy Cink
- State of the art? J C Lawrence
- State of the art? David Bennett
- State of the art? Matthew Mihaly
- State of the art? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- State of the art? Matthew Mihaly
- State of the art? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- State of the art? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- State of the art? J C Lawrence
- State of the art? Matthew Mihaly
- State of the art? Mik Clarke
- State of the art? J C Lawrence
- The Terrorist Class Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- The Terrorist Class Mik Clarke
- Welcome To "MUD-Dev"! mud-dev-admin@kanga.nu
- IMPORTANT ADMIN: New list setup requires your attention J C Lawrence
- ADMIN: URL change J C Lawrence
- PermaDeath (was pet peeves) Marc Hernandez
- ScryMUD 1.8.7 released. Ben Greear
- PermaDeath Sayeed
- PermaDeath Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- PermaDeath Sayeed
- roleplaying and immersion (was: PermaDeath) Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Roleplaying and Immersion (was: PermaDeath) Sayeed
- Roleplaying and Immersion (was: PermaDeath) Adam Wiggins
- Roleplaying and Immersion (was: PermaDeath) J C Lawrence
- Roleplaying and Immersion (was: PermaDeath) Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- WEB: VR-stuff Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- WEB: VR-stuff J C Lawrence
- WEB: VR-stuff Mik Clarke
- WEB: VR-stuff Marian Griffith
- WEB: VR-stuff J C Lawrence
- ADMIN: The list archives are now online and fully searchable J C Lawrence
- Theories was pet peeves Wes Connell