Flame – BBS and MUD
ucc.asn.au
ucc.asn.au
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadel_(software)
Funny this is maintained by folks at UW. The PNW had quite a robust BBS scene back in the 80s. Not exactly surprising that tech flourished with such inclement weather.
In the 90's I thought it would make for a wild scene in a (cyberpunk?) story where the protagonist agrees to meet up with a possible informant in a MUD bar. The two apparently idly chatting possibly state secrets while fights between fighters and magic users break out around them.
> help command_listThis is a MUD, which stands for "multiple user dungeon"; what's more useful is that it's based on a form of game called a "text adventure". Once upon a time back in the eighties these were some of the biggest sellers of the game industry! They would present a small world to explore, often a mostly-abandoned one because that's easier to do. You'd wander around, map the world (usually on paper, by hand! [1]), and discover creatures, characters, and items sitting around it, waiting for you to interact with them.
A lot of them were in the form of exploring some kind of dungeon; D&D was popular among nerds, and "what if the computer did all the record-keeping" was a popular thing to explore. Which explains why this is a "multiple-user dungeon" even if nothing in it is described as dank, underground rooms full of monsters and treasures.
Directions are given as compass directions because that's the very first text adventure did ("Colossal Caves"), and nobody ever found anything better - a few games tried forwards/left/right/back but it was very confusing to keep track of which way you were pointing.
In practice a lot of muds really ended up more like chat servers with a sense of place; instead of being in a "channel" with other people, you're in a "room", which might have a "bulletin board" on it for less-ephemeral discussions than the general chatter among players. There might be monsters to fight and puzzles to solve somewhere off in the map but nobody engaged with them. Instead they just hang out and chat, and roleplay.
1: something like this: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52c9d908e4b0e8... - except probably with a lot more erasures and corrections.
I am curious about your “biggest sellers” comment. What was sold, and by whom?
And yeah, text adventures* were some of the biggest sellers, not mus. While there were* a few pay mu*s most of them were hobby projects.
It was an entertaining way to learn C as a kid, and programming new weird spells made one feel like an actual wizard.
I think there's still some space for MUDs in the world. You could build a programming/literacy class around just teaching kids how to navigate and interact within that world, how to be a god/mod/admin within the world using its tools, and how to modify it and compile it with their desired changes.