A Mansion Filled with Hidden Worlds: When the Internet Was Young
undark.org
undark.org
Many of the virtual environment ideas from LambdaMOO exist now in modern games. But one big idea was mostly lost, the idea that players of the game could also program the game. Not just decorate their own house but write code to give the objects in that house functionality. Roblox has this in it, as does Minecraft in a limited way, but mostly it is a lost idea.
LambdaMOO was the former: you were using existing objects to code new objects, by sending the existing objects messages on a live server. (A bit like writing bash scripts on a multitenant Unix server where everyone can drop things into /usr/local/bin, really.)
I feel like there’s a wide-open space in the market right now for a game like Minecraft or Mario Maker where everything is built out of “blocks” with behaviours—but where these block-type behaviours are scripted within the envrionment itself, so you can create and share new “block types” without the need for any meta-VR commands. Like a Steam Workshop service, but one that is intended for players, rather than for game developers. A game with an scientific invention economy.
Each prim can have event driven, procedural scripts attached to them. There is basic RPC functionality available in LSL and objects can communicate with each other via chat channels, email (if I remember rightly every prim has a UUID and email address) or via a XML HTTP request.
Prims can be programatically moved or altered, there is a system for drawing particles, rendering dynamic textures on surfaces and much later I believe surfaces became capable of rendering web documents on them.
There is scope for a ridiculous amount of stuff. One of my favourite little projects was the Stargates you found on the grid, they all have unique addresses and work accurately just like in the show, they're pretty neat for getting around.
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/4d2qid/anyone_remember...
http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/10/dont-cry-for-me-elanth...
I also started one of my own, which gave me my first brush with people doxxing me (not as serious back then - I was more worried that one of them would figure out how to hack my computer - I was not a terribly sophisticated user of the internet back then - probably still am not today. XD)
I learned a bit about algorithms from our head coder, and we put our heads together to make an herbalism system that he should still be quite proud of, I think. Listing each room as a terrain type, a list of herbs that could grow in that terrain, and a random chance that the herbs would grow in any given room.
Man, what a strange time and exciting time that was! :)
Lambda is interesting but poorly documented in a lot of places. I think bit rot and time means that a lot of the knowledge on how to actually code / use Lambda has gone away. I spent some time circa 2009 playing and hacking in Lambda, built a few things, but the on-line coding system is extremely frustrating. HellMOO built off LambdaCore and is the only truly successful Lambda-based MOO that I know of, excepting of course LambdaMOO itself.
Especially those who vaguely miss the spirit of the old internet might (re)discover a lot of it in these often tight knit, yet welcoming, communities.
Tip: Stay away from strongly RP focused communities until you're not preoccupied with just thinking about navigation and the various systems anymore. Although, a lot of what makes MUDs tick should resonate strongly with anyone who wrote a program before, so it shouldn't take long to adapt.
Are they really welcoming? Over the last few years I have occasionally revisited some 1990s-era communities (Usenet groups, forums on a dedicated website, mailing lists...) in search of a sense of tight-knit connectedness lost with modern huge networks like Facebook or Reddit. Yet I almost always found that those 1990s communities that had survived, had eroded down to a handful of posters who were mostly angry and cantankerous, or outright mentally ill. Thus, it was hard for any newcomer to feel comfortable among them. So, I am now very wary about going back to any kind of old-school community, and it would take a lot of evidence to convince me that it was worthwhile to even try.
If I can still remember how to quickly zip through the standard ROM MUD school after this many years... did I play too much when I was young?
Many of the MUDs I played on are sadly long gone, but a few are still around. I still connect every so often and chat with folks, maybe do a little light RP. Some of those same friends I've been playing with, on and off, for since the early to mid 90s. Even though we're scattered all over the world, it feels like we grew up together. I suppose, we kinda did.
The connected player base is just a fraction of what it once was. Which always struck me as odd, seeing as how there are massively more people using the Internet now than there were in the 90s. Even accounting for cultural changes and technology moving on, it always struck me as there should be enough new people interested in the old ways to keep the population level, but alas that doesn't seem to be the case.
I'll go walking around the old worlds, remembering the epic battles involving dozens of players and hundreds of NPCs. These days, most spaces are almost completely abandoned. If you've ever seen the music video for Sting's song Fields of Gold [0], it captures the mood of walking around the old rooms perfectly. It seems like just yesterday we were all having a grand time RPing, but everyone's gone now.
Towards the end of 2005, one of the MUDs I had played on quite a bit from the mid 90s on decided it was time to call it a game. I had been with the game through multiple server moves over the years, but the player base just wasn't there anymore.
So on the last night, a handful of us gathered one last time. I thought it was going to be a bit like a funeral, but it ended up being a whole lot of fun. We spent hours that night reminiscing about old plots, talking about old characters, remembering all the good times we had spent together, and swapping contact information. Some of us had been playing together for years; it almost felt like we were saying goodbye to a dear friend in the best way we knew how.
Most of us were there until the final minutes. We all raised our [virtual] glasses in a toast. Then, the lights went out, the server shut down and the game was no more. In retrospect, it reminded me of the final minutes of Babylon 5 [1].
I stopped playing a lot in the late 90s when I left for college. I would still connect occasionally, but I just didn't have the time to devote to it like I did when I was a teenager. In that time, Warcraft and Second Life sucked most of the people I played with away, and I could just never get into either. They're kind of overload for me, and, frankly, just not very interesting. For some reason, my brain just works best with the simple text that MUDs provided.
Games like these are by definition social constructs. They take on a life of their own. And like all things, the end will eventually come. But rather than mourn its passing, I prefer to remember all the good times and treasure all the friendships that I made (many of whom I still keep up with to this day). The game may be gone, but the memories will always be with us.
Walking around the old worlds is sad, true. Nostalgic. But also some happiness. I'm glad I got to be part of that era, and glad for the friendships I made.
http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-r%61pe-in-cyberspace... - content warning: rape, or rape-like things, it’s complicated
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MU*s were pretty important to me. I fell into them, I left them, I came back, I met the person who’s now my significant other and creative partner on a high-concept SF furry muck he ran. Some of my circles still hang out on them; I find I just can’t go back. I only have so much creative energy and I’d rather spend it on comics than on late-night role playing.