Re: MUDs and MOOs

[Steve Wax <stevewx -at- ESKIMO -dot- COM>]

GOTW writes:
>The MUD is a Multiple Use Document, such as Reference Manual and
>Training Coursebook, and Online Help file.

>The MOO is uncertain. I suspect OO is Object Oriented and M might
>stand for Multimedia. This gives the video and audio objects
>equal treatment with other information objects.

Your ruminations on MOO, ROTFL, newbies, and the state of your window are a
hoot. What was it Mencken once said about making the thing charming being
infinitely more important than making it true? Not a golden precept for tech
writing, but it sure livens up the list. Your fully grizzled art is
downright inspirational. Really. (Meant to express my admiration directly,
but for some reason my posts to you bounce.) Off-Broadway's loss is the
list's gain!

You'll find these senses of MUD and MOO if you spend much time on the Net
(from The Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing, http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/):

>Multi-User Dimension

><games> (MUD) (Or Multi-User Domain, originally "Multi-User Dungeon")
A class of multi-player interactive game, accessible via the Internet or a
modem. A MUD is like a real-time chat forum with structure; it has multiple
"locations" like an adventure game and may include combat, traps,
puzzles, magic and a simple economic system. A MUD where characters can
build more structure onto the database that represents the existing world is
sometimes known as a "MUSH". Most MUDs allow you to log in as a guest to
look around before you create your own character.

>Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names of MU- form)
derive from a hack by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw on the University of
Essex's DEC-10 in 1979. It was a game similar to the classic Colossal Cave
adventure, except that it allowed multiple people to play at the same time
and interact with each other. Descendants of that game still exist today
and are sometimes generically called BartleMUDs. There is a widespread myth
that the name MUD was trademarked to the commercial MUD run by Bartle on
British Telecom (the motto: "You haven't *lived* 'til you've *died* on
MUD!"); however,
this is false - Richard Bartle explicitly placed "MUD" in the PD in 1985. BT
was upset at this, as they had already printed trademark claims on some maps
and posters, which were released and created the myth.

>Students on the European academic networks quickly improved on the MUD
concept, spawning several new MUDs (VAXMUD, AberMUD, LPMUD). Many of these
had associated bulletin-board systems for social interaction. Because these
had an image as "research" they often survived administrative hostility to
BBSs in general. This, together with the fact that Usenet feeds have been
spotty and difficult to get in the UK, made the MUDs major foci of hackish
social interaction there.

>AberMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988 and quickly
gained popularity in the US; they became nuclei for large hacker communities
with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom (some observers see parallels
with the growth of Usenet in the early 1980s). The second wave of MUDs
(TinyMUD and variants) tended to emphasise social interaction, puzzles, and
cooperative world-building as opposed to combat and competition. In 1991,
over 50% of MUD sites are of a third major variety, LPMUD, which synthesises
the combat/puzzle aspects of AberMUD and older systems with the
extensibility of TinyMud. The trend toward greater programmability and
flexibility will doubtless continue.

The state of the art in MUD design is still moving very rapidly, with new
simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month.
There is now a move afoot to deprecate the term MUD itself, as newer designs
exhibit an exploding variety of names corresponding to the different
simulation styles being explored.

>MOO
>MUD object oriented.

We now return you to your local (list) or global (web) multi-user document.
No more MUD slinging now...

steve wax                                stevewx -at- eskimo -dot- com
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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.