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LambdaMOO takes a new direction (1992)

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Re: LambdaMOO takes a new direction (1992)

#21

Post by doop »

isamuel wrote: post #17

I spent an enormous amount of time on "Snow Crash", a MOO that I think was similar and was popular around the same time. This was in the middle or late 90s. The world was incredibly rich---everything in it was an object that was programmable if you had the right ownership permissions. I don't remember the language it used, or if it even was a standard one, but looking back it was unbelievably robust. I was able to ma…

I remember the Snow Crash MOO! I spent a while there around 1996-1997: it was (despite the name) sort of William Gibson themed - I vaguely remember it being distributed across multiple hosts, and being impressed at the time that it was running on an SGI box. I think the language was standard MOO.

Re: LambdaMOO takes a new direction (1992)

#22

Post by isamuel »

o-__-o wrote: post #18
isamuel wrote: post #17

I spent an enormous amount of time on "Snow Crash", a MOO that I think was similar and was popular around the same time. This was in the middle or late 90s. The world was incredibly rich---everything in it was an object that was programmable if you had the right ownership permissions. I don't remember the language it used, or if it even was a standard one, but looking back it was unbelievably robust. I was able to ma…

Sounds very much like LambdaMOO. Back in the day there were mirror sites you could use if your ping was absurdly high its possible that sapporo host was just a mirror. Snow Crash sounds familiar, but it reminds me of an area inside LambdaMOO. That world was huge, I remember several times ending up in brand new areas that I would spend hours exploring because I never knew how to get back -- I jumped out of a helicopte…

This sounds entirely right. Because I also have a recollection of that party room in the clouds. Actually, it's further refreshing my recollection---I think the main area was called "the Sprawl" or something like that? Maybe it WAS just a mirror, and the reason I haven't ever been able to find anyone else talk about it is that I was under a teenage misimpression about the name.

EDIT: AHA. Sensemedia apparently had a virtual community consisting of MANY themed MOOs, termed "The Sprawl," of which Snow was one; ChibaMOO was I guess the famous one, and was based on Neuromancer. This is more progress than I have made on this in years, so thanks!

Re: LambdaMOO takes a new direction (1992)

#23

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

stormcode wrote: post #11
clouddrover wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LambdaMOO is a fully programmable text-based virtual reality. Here's the LambdaMOO programmer's manual: https://hayseed.net/MOO/manuals/ProgrammersManual.html Webpage: https://www.moo.mud.org/ Other resources: https://github.com/johndoe771/lambda-moo-programming And for LambdaMOO itself telnet to lambda.moo.mud.org 8888.

More resources for those interested, probably the most comprehensive and up to date site: https://lisdude.com/moo/

Very cool! Last I looked Lambda Moo and related topics seemed to lead to a maze of defunct ftp sites and occasionally a web site. Glad these aren’t completely lost to time.

Re: LambdaMOO takes a new direction (1992)

#25

Post by cmrdporcupine »

I lived through all of this, was part of the community at the time this was happening. Very interesting times. I was a teenager at the time, so I look back at some of it with a bit of cringe. But I made some good friends there that I still have to this day.

These announcements led to some interesting political experiments.

Re: LambdaMOO takes a new direction (1992)

#27

Post by cmrdporcupine »

mherdeg wrote: post #6

Still don't think I have ever connected to LambdaMOO, although I spent some time on ifMUD which is in the same neighborhood. Reading these docs now, if I understand right, in between LTAND and LTAND2 was the Mr Bungle/Dr. Jest incident ( https://www.villagevoice.com/2005/10/18/a-rape-in-cyberspace... ), which maybe fills in some of the unspoken context around "We Are Reintroducing Wizardly Fiat" and "The wizards will…

Yes, if my rusty memory is correct the Mr Bungle incident was part of the cause for the LTAND2.

But yeah, trolls weren't a huge problem apart from Mr Bungle. There were a few people there who were perma-banned, but not many. Most idiots or trolls connected as Guest characters, so if I recall Guests had a few priviledges removed?

Was such a central part of my life but I don't remember so many details now. I log in every couple years just to do a @who and keep my character alive.

Re: LambdaMOO takes a new direction (1992)

#28

Post by castillar76 »

I spent an inordinate amount of time on Lambda in college, thanks to some friends that introduced me to it freshman year. It became the formative experience for a lot of my online time. I still log on there and a couple others, although these days it's really just to talk with one or two people that I don't have another connection to—the population on Lambda is a pale fraction of what it was at the peak in the nineties.

Some friends and I do still run our own MOO that we've been running since college on one person's computer or another. Through the years, it's outlasted ICQ, AOL, and every other form of instant-messaging doodad out there. It's simple, straightforward, and requires only an SSH client to connect to it from any device (since I run it on a Unix box, I just SSH to that and resume my session using tmux). Remarkably persistent, and a really nice way to continue talking with my friends every day.

Re: LambdaMOO takes a new direction (1992)

#29

Post by o-__-o »

isamuel wrote: post #22
o-__-o wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds very much like LambdaMOO. Back in the day there were mirror sites you could use if your ping was absurdly high its possible that sapporo host was just a mirror. Snow Crash sounds familiar, but it reminds me of an area inside LambdaMOO. That world was huge, I remember several times ending up in brand new areas that I would spend hours exploring because I never knew how to get back -- I jumped out of a helicopte…

This sounds entirely right. Because I also have a recollection of that party room in the clouds. Actually, it's further refreshing my recollection---I think the main area was called "the Sprawl" or something like that? Maybe it WAS just a mirror, and the reason I haven't ever been able to find anyone else talk about it is that I was under a teenage misimpression about the name. EDIT: AHA. Sensemedia apparently had a…

:D

What blows my mind is that all of this existed almost 30 years ago and nothing quite like it exists today (maybe second life... maybe).

I remember snow crash but I don’t remember much about it. I spent virtually my entire dialup childhood on lambdamoo. Lambda was a giant mansion and you would start in a closet. One of the bottom floors of the mansion had a mirror which replayed things that recently happened in the room. The mansion was huge but I would constantly leave and explore the street. That’s how you ended up in crazy places like a helicopter or random ass island. Still don’t remember how I ended up in someone’s self built house. All I remember is they were having a party and it was freaking awesome reading through everything at 4am hoping my parents wouldn’t barge in and yell at me lol. Good memories :)

If anyone with the handle “dags” sees this, hello from your helicopter buddy

Re: LambdaMOO takes a new direction (1992)

#30

Post by lowbloodsugar »

LambdaMOO was awesome, and an incredibly practical introduction to OOP and security! Quc's cage for example. Who has permissions to call your characters move() method? What about who called them? Lets iterate the call stack or we'll either be stuck here forever, or we can never type "go north" again!

You have a Star Trek ship parent object, and these ships can fire at each other? Ok. Script to: Make this object into a star trek ship; Move me into it; Lock onto the other ship at this location; Fire all six photon torpedoes; Move me out of it; chparent back to $thing. Emit appropriate text to users in the room "Klingon warbird decloaks..." Bonus, do it again, get all six photon torpedoes back, because init() method called when chparenting.

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