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of programmers in to help keep the thing maintained and expanded. In 1991, I sent a copy of AberMUD to Vijay
Subramaniam and Bill Wisner (our only two American MIST wizards) and as far as MUDs being generally available to the world, the rest is history which oddly isn't true for the credits in AberMUD since a huge amount of the original authors were removed somewhere.
563:
By 1987, Lorry had taken over the Essex
Systems (MUD itself, and the thing he was to become best known for, MIST) and ran them, and just about every other publicly available 'leisure' system on UK academic networks until 1992. Politically, this did me a lot of good, personally, it didn't. Bill Wisner
541:
I had also taken over a new game called AberMUD that two of my wizards, Anarchy (Alan Cox) and Moog (Richard Acott) had originally written at
Aberyswyth University and Alan was now converting to Unix at Southampton University. Alan ended up taking a year out so I took on AberMUD and roped in a couple
396:
Because few academic institutions in the U.K. were as liberal with their computer resources as Essex
University, those MUDs that were written at such places tended to achieve only local success. The exception was AberMUD, so called because it was written at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. Its
497:
A year later, it was ported to C. This was a turning point in virtual world history. The game wasn't particularly advanced either technologically or in terms of content (it was very combat-oriented), but it was great fun. More importantly, in C it was positioned to make a huge advance: It could run
433:
The
Software, both source code, design and scenario are copyright Alan Cox, Richard Acott, Jim Finnis, And Leon Thrane, save for the Blizzard pass section of the scenario which is (C)1988 Alan Cox, save for versions of the scenario on the ZX Spectrum 128K microcomputer. (C) 1987/88 All rights
649:
AberMUD spread across university computer science departments like a virus. Identical copies (or incarnations) appeared on thousands of Unix machines. It went through four versions in rapid succession, spawning several imitators. The three most important of these were TinyMUD, LPMUD and
564:
and myself will argue who it actually was who exported MUDs to the rest of the world, I certainly mailed him the first US AberMud distribution, but I reckon that his originally distributing the AberMuds, Diku's and LPMuds makes him far more responsible for this crime against humanity.
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He did this on
Southampton University's Maths machines thanks to a chap called Pete Bentley who ran a bulletin board called SBBS there, and in late 1988, there was a fairly playable game called AberMUD2 up and
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The files doc/CHANGELOG-aber-IV and doc/Manual.ms contain changes and info for the old original code, they are obsolescent and are included for historical reasons only.
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programmer, Alan Cox, wrote it in B (another fore-runner of C) for a
Honeywell L66 mainframe under GCOS3/TSS in 1987.
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The code was made generally available, and was enhanced and added to by several people, most notably Salz.
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Cox was a player of MUD1 who wrote AberMUD while a student at the
University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
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and a third at the IBM PC User Group in London, run by Ian Smith. In
January 1989
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in
February 1989 after he cleaned up the source code and ported it to UNIX.
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was improved by Alf Salte and Gjermund "Nicknack" Sørseth to create
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672:: the introduction contains a lot of history about who wrote what.
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is used by most of the remaining AberMUD games on the internet.
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277:, which was also used, with graphical extensions, in the
156:, where it was written. The first version was written in
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164:, Richard Acott, Jim Finnis, and Leon Thrane based at
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to Vijay Subramaniam and Bill Wisner, both American
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A mostly complete history of the AberMUD V packages
608:"Information and Installation Guide for DIRT 3.1.2"
131:
119:
99:
89:
79:
67:
53:
45:
26:
226:running in the UK, the Southampton one, one at
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316:AberMUD's legacy lives on in the three major
222:In early 1989, there were three instances of
8:
21:
1091:Video games developed in the United Kingdom
1071:History of computing in the United Kingdom
1035:
703:
689:
681:
20:
244:players. Bill Wisner subsequently spread
676:Source for version 2 & 3 of AberMUD
367:
215:Maths machines. This version was named
178:The gameplay was heavily influenced by
7:
515:"Parallels in MUD and IRC History"
309:. Their May 1993 final release of
14:
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1044:
1034:
578:"5. Reviews – Rest of the World"
448:"5. Reviews – Rest of the World"
166:University of Wales, Aberystwyth
115:
1096:Science and technology in Wales
813:Bartle taxonomy of player types
606:Salte, Alf; Sørseth, Gjermund.
207:by Alan Cox so it could run on
152:. It was named after the town
1:
293:was later released under the
196:, which Alan Cox had played.
384:. New Riders. pp. 8–9.
1112:
559:"A brief history of Lorry"
1032:
989:Iron Realms Entertainment
888:Player versus environment
637:. New Riders. p. 9.
537:"Escape from the Dungeon"
485:. New Riders. p. 9.
16:Multi user dungeon server
951:Designing Virtual Worlds
634:Designing Virtual Worlds
482:Designing Virtual Worlds
381:Designing Virtual Worlds
265:In 1991, Alan Cox wrote
234:sent a licensed copy of
213:Southampton University's
1086:Aberystwyth University
614:on 24 September 2008.
145:was the first popular
1014:Mythic Entertainment
958:A Rape in Cyberspace
893:Player versus player
868:Non-player character
753:codebases, libraries
670:Manual for AberMUD V
285:, a trading name of
175:and opened in 1987.
803:Alternate character
712:Multi-user dungeons
342:AberMUD family tree
194:University of Essex
23:
352:Chronology of MUDs
248:around the world.
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1019:Plaintext Players
1009:The Mud Connector
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1038:
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883:Player character
878:Persistent world
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610:. Archived from
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584:on 23 April 2010
580:. Archived from
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454:on 23 April 2010
450:. Archived from
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228:Leeds University
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69:Operating system
24:
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895:, Playerkilling
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751:Minor branches,
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715:
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661:
656:
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629:Bartle, Richard
627:
626:
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587:
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576:Carroll, Eddy.
575:
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555:Lawrie, Michael
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533:Lawrie, Michael
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511:Lawrie, Michael
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477:Bartle, Richard
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410:Lawrie, Michael
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376:Bartle, Richard
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46:Initial release
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924:Video game bot
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873:Online wedding
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838:Hack and slash
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720:Major branches
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659:External links
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446:Eddy Carroll.
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287:Adventure Soft
269:(unrelated to
232:Michael Lawrie
203:was ported to
199:In late 1988,
190:Richard Bartle
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37:Richard Acott,
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977:organizations
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853:Kill stealing
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644:0-13-101816-7
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422:rec.games.mud
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391:0-13-101816-7
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963:
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943:Publications
863:Mob, Monster
726:
648:
632:
623:
615:
612:the original
601:
593:
586:. Retrieved
582:the original
571:
562:
549:
540:
527:
518:
505:
496:
480:
471:
463:
456:. Retrieved
452:the original
441:
432:
404:
395:
379:
370:
357:Wizard (MUD)
315:
310:
304:
300:
299:
290:
282:
278:
274:
270:
266:
264:
255:
254:was renamed
251:
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245:
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235:
223:
221:
216:
200:
198:
186:Roy Trubshaw
179:
177:
111:
110:
49:January 1989
28:Developer(s)
18:
1081:MUD servers
1024:Simutronics
796:terminology
498:under Unix.
414:"AberMUD-4"
283:Horror Soft
273:) and then
168:for an old
154:Aberystwyth
147:open source
105:Open Source
41:Leon Thrane
39:Jim Finnis,
1065:Categories
975:Companies,
965:Terra Nova
934:Zone, Area
363:References
311:Dirt 3.1.2
267:AberMUD IV
256:AberMUD II
241:Essex MIST
95:MUD server
54:Written in
1076:MUD games
794:Concepts,
434:reserved.
418:Newsgroup
318:codebases
291:AberMUD V
275:AberMUD V
271:AberMUD 4
260:Rich Salz
173:mainframe
170:Honeywell
74:Unix-like
1051:Category
914:Twinking
904:Spawning
848:Immortal
833:Grinding
818:Cybersex
785:TinyMUCK
650:DikuMUD.
631:(2003).
557:(1997).
535:(2003).
520:running.
513:(2002).
479:(2003).
412:(1990).
378:(2003).
336:See also
301:AberMUD4
281:game by
252:AberMUD3
236:AberMUD3
217:AberMUD2
162:Alan Cox
33:Alan Cox
999:Lysator
828:Griefer
765:GodWars
732:DikuMUD
727:AberMUD
588:11 July
458:11 July
426:Usenet:
420::
330:DikuMUD
322:TinyMUD
295:GNU GPL
246:AberMUD
224:AberMUD
201:AberMUD
192:at the
112:AberMUD
101:Licence
22:AberMUD
1004:Kesmai
929:Wizard
843:Healer
808:Avatar
780:Talker
714:(MUDs)
641:
489:
428:
388:
279:Elvira
85:224 KB
994:Jagex
984:Areae
899:Quest
737:LPMud
326:LPMud
1041:List
909:Tank
858:Loot
775:MUSH
639:ISBN
590:2008
487:ISBN
460:2008
386:ISBN
328:and
306:Dirt
209:Unix
188:and
181:MUD1
91:Type
81:Size
823:God
770:MOO
760:DGD
742:MU*
347:MUD
258:by
211:at
160:by
150:MUD
1067::
647:.
592:.
561:.
539:.
517:.
495:.
462:.
431:.
424:.
416:.
394:.
332:.
324:,
297:.
289:.
219:.
129:ər
60:,
960:"
956:"
704:e
697:t
690:v
205:C
158:B
141:/
138:d
135:ʌ
132:m
126:b
123:æ
120:ˈ
117:/
62:C
58:B
35:,
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