LPMUD TIMELINE

It is, however, nothing more than a collection of information fed to me by the many people involved in making LPMuds of all sorts. If you have any comments or data which is missing from this timeline, no matter how trivial it might at first seem, please mail borg@imaginary.com with that information. This timeline is available on the web at http://www.imaginary.com/LPMud/timeline.html, and via ftp at ftp://ftp.imaginary.com/pub/mud/LPmud/FAQ/lpmud_timeline.

Influenced by _Advent_ and _Wizard_, Alan Klietz writes _Empire_, a multi-user variant of _Advent_. Players could work together or fight against one another. This MUD was developed independently from the Trubshaw and Bartle _MUD_. _Empire_ later comes to be known as _The Scepter of Goth_, run on a Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium Control Data machine. The game was written in BASIC with special assembler routines for certain tasks.

Moving away the concept of questing and killing, Jim Aspnes begins work on TinyMUD. TinyMUD centers around communication and world creation.

Having fun playing Tinymud and Abermud, Lars Pensjö decides to write a server to combine the extensibility of Tinymud with the adventures of Abermud. Out of this inspiration, he designed LPC as a special mud language to make extending the game simple. Lars says, "...I didn't think I would be able to design a good adventure. By allowing wizards coding rights, I thought others could help me with this." The first running code was developed in a week on Unix System V using IPC, not BSD sockets. Early object-oriented features only existed accidentally by way of the nature of muds manipulating objects. As Lars learned C++, he gradually extended those features. The result is that the whole LPMud was developed from a small prototype, gradually extended with features.

_Nanvaent_ opens as an LPMud at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland with Anjou, Aragorn, Bill, and Edacom at the helm. Nanvaent later converts to MudOS and is still going strong today.

Akane and Sarek set up a test mud, nuking levels, to build what will be War Hammer.

After not having gotten much further than level 8 on _Genesis_, Mats decides to skip ahead and start _NannyMUD_ in Sweden. The game was first run on a machine called Majestix, then moved to Brutalix, changing names from MajMUD to BrutalMUD and only accessible from inside the CS department at Linköping University while Mats is logged in. On April 20th, the mud opens publically from the Academic Computer Association at Lysator on a Sequent Balance 2000 named Nanny. The last name finally stuck. Many of the original areas are still open, and the MUD has never undergone a major mudlib change.

Many _NannyMUD_ followers split off and open _TubMUD_, one of the first German LPMuds.

Shattered Worlds opens as the first, and today the oldest, LPMud in Australia. This MUD is the source of a private distribution LPMud server used by a handful of spinoff MUDs in the United States.

War Hammer 1 closes and work is begun on War Hammer 2, which never ends up opening.

Buddha takes over the War Hammer project, eventually dropping it in favour of what becomes TMI.

_Orlith_ LPMud opens at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Run by Jens, Snooze, Forlock, Nightshade, and Saurian, _Orlith_ is eventually torn apart by internal politics.

_VikingMUD_ officially opens to the public, though it was being played much before that.

Immediately after the demise of _Orlith_, Shadowwolf attempts to resurrect its player-base by opening _Orlith II_. This time, Shadowwolf, Jens, and Whitehawk find themselves unable to work together, splitting up into _Nightmare_ and _Phoenix_.

 June 17, 1991

_StickMUD_ opens. They may have been the first to allow unlimited play, or maybe it was _War Hammer 1_? Unlimited play means you never reach the end of the game as a player.

July 1991

December 1991

_Discworld_, based on the Terry Pratchett novels, opens.

Late 1991

After the retirement of Lars from _Genesis_, the _Genesis_ admins move to create the first LPMud-derived server, CD. CD stands for Chalmers Datenforung, Swedish for Chalmers Computing Club, where _Genesis_ and _Igor_ existed. In spite of his retirement from _Genesis_, Lars continued to develop LPMud.

January 1992

_Genocide_ starts as the first MUD dedicated totally to inter-player conflict, which is a fancy way of saying that its theme is creatively player-killing.

January 1992

_Valhalla_ becomes a self-supporting through charging players to play. Though the MUD was given permission to charge players by Lars, this move was still controversial among the LPMud community who belived that Lars no longer had the right to give such permission given the amount of code which had been  donated to LPMud from various sources.

February 1992

_TMI, The MUD Institute_ opens to the public as a MUD for the development of a new LPMud server and mudlib. In addition to this development goal, _TMI_ also puts forth a charter to teach LPC. Though the server portion of this project eventually disassociated itself with _TMI_, it eventually became MudOS. The mudlib portion of the project was never officially released, but it became the basis for the Nightmare and TMI-2 Mudlibs.

February 1992

_Ancient Anguish_ opens to the public.

February 18, 1992

The LPMud 3.1.2-A project is renamed MudOS.

March 1992

_Phoenix_ and _Nightmare_ both enter into rebuilding processes with _Phoenix_ at the height of its popularity and interest in _Nightmare_ almost non-existent. Balack gradually begins gaining more control of things on _Phoenix_.

April 23, 1992

LPC sockets are added to the MudOS driver. This allows _TMI_ to create a very rough TCP intermud network. This protocol is later replaced first by the CDlib UDP protocols, and later by Intermud 3.

June 1992

After having taken over as admin of Genocide in April, Blackthorn decides to move Genocide over to the new MudOS driver. At this time, the driver was filled with new features, but equally filled with bugs. Genocide spent most of the summer as a testbed for MudOS development, with MudOS developers Truilka, Jacques, and Wayfarer working along on the driver over on Portals.

July 1992

Leaving _IgorMUD_, Descartes takes over the development of _Nightmare_ from the mudlib point of view. He chooses to use the new MudOS server, throwing out _Nightmare_'s outdated LPMud 2.4.5 mudlib and  driver. Flamme and Forlock join to help administrate the new _Nightmare_.

August 1992

_TMI_ closes down.

August 1992

_TMI-2_ opens to the public. With a narrower purpose than _TMI_, _TMI-2_ drops its teaching goal.

October 31, 1992

_Nightmare LPMud_ opens to the public. Its mudlib is eventually released as the Nightmare Mudlib.

December 1992

The Nightmare Mudlib is released. It becomes the first publically available mudlib for MudOS, which at this point is still considered a newcomer among drivers.

February 1993

_Nightmare_ leaves Bates College due to disk space restrictions for a site provided by a new internet service provider in Seattle, Washington.

March 1993

The Discworld Mudlib for MudOS is released. The choice of mudlibs for MudOS helps add to the driver's growing popularity. At this time, the Discworld Mudlib contains the most advanced command parser and user  interface available in a mudlib.

April 1993

The TMI-2 Mudlib is released, giving MudOS three widely available mudlibs.

April 1993

_LPC Basics_, the first complete textbook covering all implementations of the LPC language, is released.

August 12, 1993

A single-user alpha release of the first LPC server not derived from LPMud, DGD 1.0.a3 (Dworkin's Game Driver, later renamed Dworkin's Generic Driver), is released for testing. DGD isolated essential LPC functionality, leaving all, if any, game functionality completely up to the mudlib.

September 16, 1993

DGD is released in multi-player form as DGD 1.0.a4. This version introduces support for compiling LPC code to C, then linking C objects in with the driver. This makes DGD the first driver to support such functionality.

October 31, 1993

_Nightmare_ celebrates its one year anniversary with a new machine bought entirely through player donations.

November 1993

With MudOS dying due to the speed of LPMud and elegance of DGD and simple lack of progress on the part of MudOS, Beek builds BeekOS. BeekOS is basically a MudOS core with dynamic compilation of LPC->C, linking the compiled machine code to the running server dynamically. These enhancements are later merged into MudOS once Beeks takes over MudOS development.

November 1993

_Intermediate LPC_ is released. This textbook goes beyond the basic information covered in _LPC Basics_.

December 1993

PaderMUD re-opens after having converted from CD to DGD, making PaderMUD the first production MUD using DGD.

Early 1994

Genocides converts over to LPMud in order to get the unusual speed demands made of it by its theme and its old machine. As a result, Blackthorn stops with the trickle of bug-fixes which had been the whole of MudOS development at the time. Eventually, Genocide manages to get a much faster SGI Challenge with 640 MB RAM.

June 26, 1994

Beek, Robocoder, and Symmetry take over MudOS development. This marks a revival in interest in the MudOS server after nearly nine months of non-development.

July 1994

In the course of moving from Maine to Minnesota, Descartes decides to move the _Nightmare_ machine from its internet service provider in Seattle to a more stable one in Minnesota. A month long battle between Descartes and the Seattle company follows, during which _Nightmare_ is closed.

August 1994

_Nightmare_ finally opens again in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. One week later, its former provider in Seattle files for Chapter 11 protection. In Minnesota, Descartes starts the imaginary.com domain for the promotion and support of MUD technologies.

October 1, 1994

_The Idea Exchange_ is started at imaginary.com by Beek, Descartes, and Rust in an attempt to create a more open and free environment than was possible under the political climate of _TMI-2_. Many of the same goals apply to _The Idea Exchange_, except with more resources available to teaching.

March 1995

_Discworld_ joins _Nightmare_ on an enhanced player-bought machine at imaginary.com.

April 1995

_Valhalla_ moves to a system of player donations instead of charging for access.

May 15, 1995

The Foundation II LPC Library is released. Foundation II is the first LPC library for MudOS designed for non-game uses. In addition, Foundation II becomes the first mudlib for MudOS which people may license for commerical use.

June 1995

Though remaining at their current locations, Zork, Lima Bean, and TMI-2's machines all join the imaginary.com domain.

June 15, 1995

The Nightmare IV LPC Library is released. Nightmare IV marks a complete rewrite of the Nightmare Mudlib, getting rid of a lot of legacy code dating back as far as LPMud 2.4.5.

July 21, 1995

The LIMA Mudlib goes into pre-alpha release. LIMA marks the most advanced command parsing seen in LPMuds, with command parsing based on the old Infocom games (Zork).

August 1995

PaderMUD changes its name to Xyllomer.

Copyright © 1995 George Reese

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