I actually played that very game back in the day (1986-ish). Hacked* in from another University's mainframe.
Good times.
Also, the very last time I felt even the slightest desire to play a MMORPG.
* Meant something different once ;)
The source code for MUD1, a multi-user dungeon created at the University of Essex in 1978, and generally held to have been the world's first online multi-player game, has been recovered. The code has landed at Stanford University, which says it has secured permission to redistribute the game's blueprints from the authors …
going to school in London in the early 80s, we had a dial up to Essex. Previous Computer Science students had to write their code offfline, onto paper tape, then go into the terminal room, dial up (acoustic coupler anyone) load the program and run it.
Then we got an ITT 2020 ;)
We managed to load MUD once, and had no idea what to do .....
Oubliette is/was definitely a MUD, so were moria and Avatar, I never played DND, but believe it was a MUD also
Have a look at this link, has some screen captures as well
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/08/03/the-game-archaeologist-the-plato-mmos-part-1/
Or you can just go play it :}
http:www.cyber1.org/
Doing a computer science degree at Essex in the mid-80s I would do my assignments in the middle of night to use less 'RCUs' on the DEC 10 saving them up for a game of MUD. I got to wizard and along with a group of friends used the Muddle compiler to generate MIST which featured a Flu virus that you could catch from other players. I also remember FRAGGLE which was a MUD based around Fraggle Rock.
The title, I remember watching a newbie (a term not known then) playing...
you enter a woodland glade, a slender gazebo stands here.
> kill gazebo with broadsword
happy times
"The title, I remember watching a newbie (a term not known then) playing...
"you enter a woodland glade, a slender gazebo stands here.
"> kill gazebo with broadsword
"happy times"
Well, if it had said, "a slender bandstand stands here.", the user probably wouldn't have done it. Two nations divided by a common language and all that... (And let's face it, if you don't know what a gazebo is, you'd be forgiven for thinking, based on the sound of the word, that it is some kind of antelope or something.)
My first job post polyversity was working with Roy Trubshaw. I think it was on my first day he spoke to me about MUD. I hadn't got a clue what he was talking about. My spare time in education seemed to involve booze and general hilarity.
We worked on Powerbuilder and Sybase together.
Eeeeh. Them were days.
Nice guy.
I played MUD (& VALLEY, if any remember that) starting in 1980. It was available on Essex DEC-10 and then later I recall it appeared in Oslo for some reason I never knew. I made it to Wizard level in MUD by scripting a terminal client to solve the Crown in the Swamp puzzle gaining the maximum points each game reset.
So, if you had the source how would you run it today? Well, you will need a DEC-10 running TOPS-10 and IIRC an MDL compiler, although I might be confusing that with Dungeon, either way not particularly common today were it not for the SIMH project that can simulate a DEC-10 and recently has got TOPS-10 up an running. Not sure about MDL though.
When I started at The Reg there was a magazine on the desk with a picture of Joi Ito on the front, and I said "I know him, he was on MUD". I made wizard and then arch-wizard.
Initially I played a 110 dial up, then either 1200/75 (anyone can type faster that 75 bits per second) and then in increments at to 19.2k.
I tell my kids I gave up online gaming ten years before the mainstream started.
---* Thor
I spent a significant portion of my mid - teens pasty and exhausted making wizard on mud 1. I remember my parents quarterly phone bill hitting £600. God, I still remember the bollocking I got for that!.
I dialed in via an open UCL janet PAD, but I remember hearing that a lot of mud players were sharing someone's BT X25 PAD NUA for dialup.. word has it that the customer was billed for 250k before it was closed. Oops.
I was visiting Essex Uni at Colchester for an SF Convention. A friend who was doing some sort of IT course there at the time said he wanted to show me something they would be releasing soon. The terminal was linked in to MUD, with about a dozen players on line - all local, testing scenarios and stuff.
Of course my character died almost immediately, as did several more I tried.
Then, genius struck! I equiped my next character with a large bladed pike and named him DEATH.
When the screen said "DEATH enters the room", everybody else left as fast as they could type!
Unfortunately I only had half an hour, but I was having great fun.
I believe they put in some routines to try and stop people doing that again.
When I was playing games in uni, it was either on a half decent PC, or courtesy of a hacked-up Playstation with "TOOL" written across the side.
They did have a "Games Club" there, but it seemed to be mostly obsessed with CoD. I'd just bring Kerbal Space Program in on a USB pen and play with that.
Inbetween doing proper work, of course.