Atari MUD's?

[Tempest]

While researching stuff to start setting up an Atari BBS (yes I'm still planning on doing that), I got to wondering if it would be possible to run some kind of MUD on an Atari system? The only problem that I could see is that AFAIK only one person can be logged into the system at once (kinda defeats the Multi part doesn't it?). Anyone know if something like this was ever attempted?

 

Tempest

[svenski]

Not heard of it, would be cool though.

 

I'm a MUSH man myself

[Curt Vendel]

Hi Matt,

 

Hmmmmm, sick minds think alike... I've actually been researching this idea for sometime. Castle Telenguard which became Telengard on the old Compuserve system was a MUD and a damned good one too!

 

Now the only minor snag is Compuserver was using topshelf DEC systems at the time, the TOPS-10 and it will not run on standard VMS OS from DEC.... I think there is a version that was ported to VMS and if so, I have a VAX 4000-200 which I have have config'd with TCP/IP services and I would like to put Telengard on it and allow people to play it through the AHS Atari Museum...

 

I'm also looking at Conquest which was a superb Star Trek motif game. I'll keep you posted, right now Karl and I are finishing up work on the 2nd Atari Museum webserver which is going to reside on the archives.atarimuseum.com domain and will contain all of the collective PDF's, hi-res JPGs, AVI/MPG and other high bandwidth items, I just finished installing a 40gb HD into it and it would be great to one day so it filled with Atari History and Information.

 

Now if you want to run an actual MUD on an Atari system itself, that may be tough (oh, for those not familiar, MUD's are Multi-Player Dungeons) You're going to have to go with some kind of network like the CSS Multiplexer or some Corvus Constellation Hardware and hook up a few 800's (or XL/XE systems) to it and do some file read/write/semaphores and update 3-4 status/location files... You could conceivably do this direct system to system, I thought about this 10-12 years ago:

 

You modify some 16K memory cards and wire them together with some phone wire so that 2-4 Atari 800's would read/write to all the memory cards with some code into several locations and those codes would be read by each system and would stand for status/location. This would be a high speed solution and allow the systems to talk with one another.

 

 

 

 

 

Curt

[scitari]

Any update on this thread after 15 years?

[jmccorm]

I've got the source code to Rivers of MUD, written in C.

 

It should depend on a system with a TCP/IP stack, and multithreading to launch a new instance of itself for each simultaneous player. I don't _think_ synchronization and semaphores were handled with OS-based semaphores IPC (inter-process communication) calls? The data structures are not too big (by modern-day standards), but still quite large when summed together, and so many rules and exceptions embedded in code. It looks like it has compiler definitions for a large number of platforms (MSDOS, Macintosh, generic UNIX, Sun, Ultrix, HPUX, Linux, Sequent, Apollo, NeXT).

 

Although it was coded in ordinary C (not C++), it is unlikely to be paired down to something that'd run on an Atari 8-bit, but I'd offer it as an example for someone who wants to try. (Atari ST, on the other hand, might have more of a chance.) One should appreciate that years of work went in to evolving the different MUD implementations. Recreating (from scratch) something that approaches this level of depth and quality would otherwise be an incredible mountain to climb.

Unfortunately, the MUD scene is just as dead as the 8-bit scene. Making a new one would be a neat labor of love, but few to appreciate. It is hard enough to motivate people to create graphical games, which seems far easier? And the few remaining MUD players wouldn't be too likely to enjoy an implementation that isn't nostalgic or feature-rich.

 

EDIT to add: I'll go ahead and attach the Rom24b6.tar.gz source code, docs, and areas (ranging from 2k to 130k). There will be carriage return/linefeed issues when viewing on a PC (unless you use a UNIX2DOS conversion tool). I believe that the area format file was common and shared among similarly derived MUDs, and you may still find more of them online in some small corner of the web (or in archived copies of old MUD sites). Config files and data files were flat ASCII, making them byte-inefficient, but super-easy to read.

 

I was once a MUD player on a system with over 100 simultaneous users. It was quite the early online social event! I later had my own thoughts of bringing back a MUD on a UNIX or Linux platform, so I've kept a copy of the 1998 source code for all these years. Enjoy!

 

Rivers of MUD Archive (typically for a UNIX environment, C Language, tar archive, gz compression):

Rom24b6.tar.gz

Edited January 21, 2018 by jmccorm

[_The Doctor__]

um, MUD for the dragon cart, or even the telnet tunnels, and ape solutions.. was that you who was up to that?

[ricortes]

Way back, in the Portal days Chris Chiesa used to run a AD&D game. I sat in on a couple of his sessions and as much as I can remember, it still needed a DM but automated things like dice roll. Before Windows, before www, when you could still get a slip account. Chris may still be around and was an Atari user. It would be interesting if he could comment as I always saw him as something of a pioneer in online RPG games. I seem to recall this was even before MUDs became popular.

 

There is also Compucat, one of my favorite BBSs back in the day. They didn't have an MUD, much more online adventure that eventually became an online graphical adventure for the ST. Another pioneer was the ST graphical terminal program that allowed this to run. Not sure what happened to Compucat as they did make it to the www but their domain is now up for sale.

[_The Doctor__]

While researching stuff to start setting up an Atari BBS (yes I'm still planning on doing that), I got to wondering if it would be possible to run some kind of MUD on an Atari system? The only problem that I could see is that AFAIK only one person can be logged into the system at once (kinda defeats the Multi part doesn't it?). Anyone know if something like this was ever attempted?

 

Tempest

I think the multi part is doable, multiplexer slaves, so each caller is on different Atari slave the master handles the files. then all get an update. so long as it's turn based, the css multiplexor pipes allow everyone to chat... but moves and such are turn based so you can all yell at bzork the adventurer for holding up the party!

Edited November 25, 2018 by _The Doctor__

[Alfred]

I've always thought the answer is an intelligent slave device. That Nitelite BBS with it's Spyder gave me the idea thirty years ago. Use some ancient PC as an multiport TCP box and just control it over RS232, or with a real Lantronix. So you could say read socket 200 or write socket 50. I think a 130XE would probably be the minimum to run something like that in order to keep track of the multiple users. The only other solution that might even work would take a Rapidus/Antonia with a BlackBox and someone porting a TCP/IP stack over to the Atari but I don't see that happening at this point.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

Why not use the MultiLink/GameLinkII interface? Or MIDI? MIDI Maze uses MIDI and you can send messages (to all) during the game. Although the chance of you being shot does increase "slightly" while typing something.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[ricortes]

It would take some off loading of processing but I always thought it would be easy to implement some packet assembling. Just something easy like a packet would be assembled web page or slave/clone. Something like four byte packet for four players with the byte tokenised. i.e. [0, 1, 1,4] for players 1-4 where 0=> pass/took to long, 1 => attack, 4 cast spell.

[Kyle22]

Hello guys

 

Why not use the MultiLink/GameLinkII interface? Or MIDI? MIDI Maze uses MIDI and you can send messages (to all) during the game. Although the chance of you being shot does increase "slightly" while typing something.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

Just remember you can not use MIDI if you have a SIO MODEM connection.

[scitari]

Someone needs to do this. What a brilliant idea. AtariMUD. AtariMUSH. Love it. I was a regular on ApexMUSH back in the early 1990s. I spent a bit of time on BioMOO as well.

Edited November 26, 2018 by scitari