Mastodawn

This one might be interesting to anyone interested in computer gaming history.

I spent the last couple of weeks finally finishing a project I started for Bletchley Park about 20 years ago. Recreating the original MUD and MIST on a mirror of the original Essex University system that finally closed in 1991.

Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle wrote the first online multi-user game (MUD) on Essex University's DECSystem-10 in 1978 and it ran till I closed it in 1991. I diligently backed everything up so I could potentially recover it one day, but as far as I can see, all the DECSystem-10's went to the great scrapyard in the sky, my backups were mostly stolen when my first museum was stolen, and I had huge issues recovering the Essex BCPL compiler to compile what I had left when I finally got a decent TOPS-10 emulator running on a VAX for Bletchley Park.

One good thing about being an unemployable whistleblower is free time, so I finally hunkered down to some 90 hour weeks and built a software replica of the Essex system I think reflects it well. It's running on a KS10 not a KL10 but I had to let some things slip.

I put the latest known versions of MUD and MIST on it, and miraculously found ROCK too.

So, to meander to the point, if you want to see and relive exactly what online multi user gaming was like from 1978 to 1991, you can go to https://dec10.uknet.net and login as guest, then follow the terse instructions from there.

In those days, you were generally faced with a "." prompt and left mostly alone, so for authenticity, I will leave it at that.

I should note that although they were, in their day, wildly popular games with a relatively huge community, this is a museum peice in snapshot-form at the moment. But I will leave them up and running to see what happens and as a useful reference. I wasn't going to, but Richard seemed happy to have MUD running, and former MIST players wanted it back, so...

Pop this a share if you know folks who might be interested.

#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering

(don't try this on a phone!)

Moos-a-dee 🫎17h ago

Moved my Mudlet profile to my Ubuntu-Chromebook, working on my custom GUI stuff.

#Mudlet #Achaea #MUD #Lua

Moos-a-dee 🫎1d ago

Made it to the year 1000 AF in #Achaea #MUD

Yes I use #emacs to run shell and telnet from when playing on my phone. 😂

Moos-a-dee 🫎1d ago

Me, playing a MUD (entirely text-based MMORPG), encountering a particularly wordy book or news post in the game: OH MY GOD THERE ARE TOO MANY WORDS, I'M NOT READING ALL THIS!!!

#MUD

Jackie 1d ago

Great day for a mud hike, Bruno’s happy!
#oregonhiking 🥾

#mud #hiking #oregon #dogsofpixelfed #spring #nature #outdoors #pnw

J. R. DePriest

:EA DATA. SF:2d ago

I just found out my wife raw dogged IRC in college. No wrapper or macros, no mIRC once that was a thing. She had a notebook with the commands written down.

Respect.

She got a fist bump for that.

I mostly did MUD for chat and I used TinTin.

Still, after nearly thirty years I'm still learning new things about the woman I love.

Neither of us got to use BBSes.

#IRC #MUD #GoodOldDays

aaron 2d ago

Mudpie v0.7.0 is out!
The headline feature: Lua scripting. Enable "Advanced Mode" on any world to write Lua 5.3 scripts that automate your MUD experience.
The mud.* API gives you full control — send commands, gag/substitute/highlight lines, echo client-side messages, play sounds, speak via TTS, fire notifications, and set persistent variables that survive app restarts.

React to game events with pattern-matched handlers: mud.onLine, mud.onPrompt, mud.onConnect, mud.onDisconnect, and mud.onInput. Set up timers for delayed or repeating tasks. Variables set by Lua can even be referenced in trigger actions using $var{name} syntax.
Multiple scripts per world, loaded in sort order. Global scripts run for every world. Scripts hot-reload — edit a script while connected and changes take effect immediately, no reconnect needed.

The code editor has Lua syntax highlighting (keywords, strings, comments, numbers, builtins, mud.* calls), live validation with error/warning display, and AI generation via Claude — describe what you want in plain English and get working scripts back.

For power users: the "Allow unsafe scripts" toggle (behind biometric auth) unlocks luajava for full Android API access, including runtime permission requests from scripts.

Full keyboard mode support for script management: browse, create, edit, delete, and toggle scripts from the Edit menu. Ctrl+I cycles through validation issues with TTS.

Also new in v0.7.0:

Delayed command trigger action: sends a command after a configurable delay

Variable expansion in triggers: $var{name} resolves to the current Lua variable value at trigger time

Sound settings screen: manage sounds from Settings without creating a trigger first, with a new Global sounds folder shared across all worlds

8 bug fixes for TalkBack, TTS, and UI
Download: https://github.com/aaron-gh/mudpie-releases/releases/tag/v0.7.0
#MUD #accessibility #Android #a11y #Lua #gameDev

World of Welstar 2d ago

#RetroMUD is kicking off Spring with major rules updates, a free reincarnation starting March 15, and a PE drive throughout March. Follow Witch Hazel's first journey through our realms--It's the perfect time for new players to join us at http://www.retromud.org #IndieGame #MUD #TextRPG #WebComic

aaron 2d ago

Mudpie v0.6.0 is out, and this one I'm really proud of.

The headline feature: Connection Proxy (Pro). Mobile MUD has always had one awful problem. Your phone drops the TCP connection the moment you lose signal or switch networks. The proxy wraps your connection in a WebSocket relay that keeps your MUD session alive for up to 30 minutes when your device loses connectivity. Walk through a dead zone, ride a buss, hop between WiFi and mobile. Come back and your session is right where you left it, buffered output and all. It even survives app kills. Automatic reconnection, keepalives, the works.

Also new:

Device font picker: use any font installed on your device for game output, input, or UI. No more settling for generic Monospace.

Color customization: terminal background, terminal text, UI background, UI text. Named preset palettes, RGB sliders, hex input. High contrast mode for when you just want white on black. Every color picker is fully accessible — TalkBack announces "Navy" and "Coral", not "#1A1A2E".

Privacy policy: in-app, plain language, covers everything. The proxy and AI workers process data in memory only. Nothing is logged or stored server-side.

Plus bug fixes: shake-to-interrupt TTS is reliable again, Cosmic Rage CDN sounds play without delay, and several crashes fixed

Download: https://github.com/aaron-gh/mudpie-releases/releases/latest

#MUD #GameDev #Accessibility #A11y #Android #TTRPG #InteractiveFiction #TextGames #MudPie

Release Mudpie 0.6.0 · aaron-gh/mudpie-releases

Features Connection proxy (Pro): Route MUD connections through a WebSocket-to-TCP relay for more stable mobile connections. Mobile networks frequently drop idle TCP sockets; the proxy wraps your c...

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