DikuMUD
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- "Diku" redirects here. You may be looking for DIKU.
| Developer(s) | Sebastian Hammer, Michael Seifert, Hans Henrik Staerfeldt, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe |
|---|---|
| Initial release | March 1, 1991 |
| Stable release | alfa / September 8, 1991 |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Unix-like |
| Size | 333 KB |
| Available in | English |
| Development status | Unmaintained |
| Type | MUD server |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | http://www.dikumud.com |
DikuMUD is a multiplayer text-based adventure game (a type of MUD) written in 1990 and 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Staerfeldt at DIKU (Datalogisk Institut Københavns Universitet), the department of computer science at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Commonly referred to as simply "Diku", it was greatly inspired by AberMUD,[1] but Diku was one of the first multi-user games to become popular as a freely-available program for its relatively addictive gameplay and similarity to Dungeons & Dragons.
Diku's source code was released in 1991 and became the "source" of one of the largest trees of derived code from a MUD-like source code package. It has been the basis of a vast number of MUDs, including AlexMUD, BurningMUD, Slothmud, TorilMUD, Eris, GrimneMUD, MUME, Sequent, Imperial DikuMUD and Arctic, as well as a number of offspring MUD engines such as CircleMUD, Merc, SillyMUD, and SMAUG.
In his book Designing Virtual Worlds,[2] Richard Bartle (co-creator of the original MUD) cited DikuMUD as one of the five "major codebases used for (textual) virtual worlds". Bartle further described how DikuMUD went in the opposite direction to TinyMUD and LPMud, by providing a very well organised hard-coded game that ran "out of the box".
It has been proposed by Raph Koster (lead designer of Ultima Online and chief creative officer of EverQuest II) that Diku has resulted in the greatest proliferation of gameworlds due to being the easiest to set up and use.[3][4] He has further pointed out that the Diku gameplay provided inspiration for numerous MMORPGs, including EverQuest, World of Warcraft and Ultima Online.[5]
Contents |
[edit] History
The making of DikuMUD was first announced on Usenet by Hans Henrik Staerfeldt March 27, 1990. At the time Tom Madsen, Sebastian Hammer, and Staerfeldt were the only developers. He stated that their intention was to create a MUD that was less messy than AberMUD, less buggy than LPMud, and more D&D like.[6]
The first DikuMUD was in working development as early as October 1990 and officially opened publicly running at freja.diku.dk port 4000 on February 3, 1991.[7]
A second DikuMUD appeared in January 1991, running at hayes.ims.alaska.edu.[8] In March 1991, the first public version of DikuMUD, known as Diku Gamma, became available at beowulf.acc.stolaf.edu. Afterwards the DikuMUD at freja.diku.dk was shut down and the game and development moved to alfa.me.chalmers.se.[9]
Other Diku Gamma MUDs appeared in March 1991 running at eris.berkeley.edu. By early April 1991, there were DikuMUDs running at spam.ua.oz.au, goldman.gnu.ai.mit.edu, bigboy.cis.temple.edu, elof.iit.edu.
The last official release of DikuMUD was Diku Alfa in July 1991.
[edit] Everquest controversy
There was a minor controversy in late 1999 and early 2000 regarding whether the commercial MMORPG Everquest, developed by Verant Interactive, had derived its code from DikuMUD. It began at the Re:Game gaming conference in 1999, where the Director of Product Development for EverQuest, Bernard Yee, allegedly stated that EverQuest was "like Diku". He did not specify whether he meant the code itself was derived from DikuMUD, or if it just had a similar feeling. Some attendees had understood it to mean the former and reported to that effect on Usenet.[10] After the Diku group requested clarification, Verant issued a sworn statement on March 17, 2000 that EverQuest was not based on DikuMUD source code, and was built from the ground up.[11] In response, the DikuMUD team publicly stated that they find no reason whatsoever to believe any of the rumors that EverQuest was derived from DikuMUD code.[12]
[edit] DikuMUD license
The DikuMUD license is generous, but does not permit all possible uses. The source code for DikuMUD is publicly available at no charge, anyone can run an unmodified or modified DikuMUD without paying any royalties, and modified derivatives of the DikuMUD code can be publicly distributed. However, the DikuMUD license includes the following requirement: "You may under no circumstances make profit on *ANY* part of DikuMud in any possible way. You may under no circumstances charge money for distributing any part of dikumud - this includes the usual $5 charge for 'sending the disk' or 'just for the disk' etc." Thus, DikuMUD is not open source software as defined by the Open Source Definition (OSD), because the OSD's clause 6 requires "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor", that is, commercial users cannot be excluded. For the same reason, DikuMUD is not Free Software as per the Free Software Definition; it fails to meet the requirement that the program gives "The freedom to run the program for any purpose" (it forbids commercial purposes). However, DikuMUD and its derivatives are developed in the same manner as these similar software production practices.
[edit] Diku Gameplay
Often used but never defined clearly, Diku gameplay has been described best as hack and slash.
[edit] References
- ^ "A Classification of MUDs, by Martin Keegan". http://www.brandeis.edu/pubs/jove/HTML/v2/keegan.html.
- ^ Designing Virtual Worlds, 2003, New Riders Pub. ISBN 0-13-101816-7
- ^ "MMO long tails, by Raph Koster". http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/05/29/mmo-long-tails/.
- ^ "LP Muds versus Diku-derived muds, by Raph Koster". http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/lpvdiku.shtml.
- ^ "From the mailbag: fan mail, UO, ideas". http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/16/from-the-mailbag-fan-mail-uo-ideas/.
- ^ Hans Henrik Staerfeldt (1990). "New mud comming up..". http://groups.google.com/group/alt.mud/msg/a42c8dbda0e80f9a. "We have started to program a mud, that we hope will be finished some time in the end of the summer. This mud will be better (we hope) than other muds as we have learned from their mistakes."
- ^ Sebastian Hammer (1991). "New Mud". http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.mud/msg/2e1623c460e78e2b. "We consider playing in groups to be one of the more important (entertaining, that is) aspects of mudding, and hence the game includes various features, especially designed to make group-adventuring more fun and rewarding: Four different classes of players, with various abilities; a system which allows members of a group to share the score made at a kill; and lots of other stuff."
- ^ Bruce Sterling Woodcock (1991). "Mud List: January 31, 1991". http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.mud/msg/a2e9c0a8166ebf1c.
- ^ Joseph Wisdom (1990). "Arki's MUDLIST... promotional posting.". http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.mud/msg/0f37748a12d02866. "beowulf.acc.stolaf.edu /pub/pub/mud tinymud, tinymuck, login style abermud, lpmud, ubermud, myth, ftp daemon patch for lpmuds, vast array of clients, gb, bt, dikumud."
- ^ "rec.games.mud.diku thread "Sony's EverQuest admits to using Diku as a base" (misleading title)". http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.mud.diku/browse_thread/thread/7496cf1b1f7f2658/527aaec6e4b04ac9#527aaec6e4b04ac9. Retrieved on 2007-02-03.
- ^ "Sworn statement from Verant". http://www.dikumud.com/Everquest/Sworn.aspx. Retrieved on 2007-02-03.
- ^ "DikuMUD's statement on Everquest". http://www.dikumud.com/everquest.aspx. Retrieved on 2007-02-03.
[edit] External links
- Official DikuMud site
- CircleMUD's copy of the DikuMud license
- The MUD Connector: 700+ Dikumud MUD Listings Available
- Mud Magic: 1,200+ Diku Based Code & Snippet Downloads
- MudBytes DikuMUD code and derivative downloads
- rec.games.mud.diku FAQ from 1997
- ftpgame.org DikuMUD code hierarchy
- MUDseek MUD games search engine
- Raph Koster: "What is a Diku?"
