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Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

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Re: Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

#61
post #24
post #3

It is a pity the article dismisses the whole eco system around LPMuds that much by basically only including them in that screenshot from Bartle's book. They were an interesting middle ground between the Diku-likes (think: precursors to Diablo) and the MOOs, being online programmable in an object-oriented C dialect called LPC which today lives on in e.g. the Pike programming language.

lpc/pike is a runtime compiled language much closer to python and java than to c. it is as much of a c dialect as javascript is a java dialect. other than c-style syntax they don't have much in common. the best part of lpc/pike is that it compiles code in units of classes. that is, each file is a class, the filename being the classname. the compiled class would then be used to instantiate objects, and here comes the…

You are right of course, just tried to be concise with the description - it's basically how we always explained it to the players back then. A Java or Python comparison was not possible at that time - both did not even exist at the time while I was programming on an LPMud driver.

It is a pity LPC4/µlpc/Pike did not gain more mainstream acceptance after its early success with Roxen, even installing it was a pain last I tried.

Re: Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

#62
post #6

MUDs are what got me into programming. I was obsessed with them as a kid, although they were associated with DnD which was considered satanic so I had to hide them from my parents and teachers, who both forbid me from associating with DnD or MUDs. Besides playing them, I actually spent more time as a "builder" than a "coder", which was an intermediate step in the hierarchy. As a builder, I would write hundreds of roo…

I first started programming on a MUD back in the late 90s. I still code for a MUD to relax. There's something nice about adding features to a simple codebase you've developed on for 20 years. Also, when I learn a new programming language the first project I tackle is coding a MUD. They touch a lot of things: files, databases, networking, text manipulation, and scripting.

Re: Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

#63
Roboblox could not be farther from MUDs and only people who played MUDs can appreciate the difference.

Lets start with the obvious - MUDs use text and "text is the highest bandwidth medium for our imagination" (quote by Bartle, co-creator of first MUD).

I recommend everyone watching this video to understand why is text so superior to any other medium:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zctp972y_Eg

Incidentally the lockdown inspired me to spend the last five months rebuilding and relaunching the MUD I built in 90s. It is properly hard and properly text and if you want to check it out: telnet playlom.com 4000 (and if you are less hardcore http://playlom.com:4001/ )

Re: Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

#64
post #11

Surprised to not see the Iron Realms MUDs mentioned in the article. I've seen the CEO around here in the past, but can't remember his username or if he still posts.

As a former coder for Achaea, I was surprised as well. You mean Matt Mihály.

I basically only learned how to touch type by playing Achaea. Gotta type fast if you haven't figured out how to make single-character aliases for 'sip health' and 'jab goblin'!

Re: Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

#65

Roblox is more like LambdaMOO than a MUD. LambdaMOO and its succesors were 100% programmed in a prototype based object-oriented programming language with only minimal world-support in the C portion of the server itself. The entire world was composed using the programming language and most users ended up being at least builders if not programmers in it. The focus was authoring, not RPG. Some people (including myself)…

How is that different from LPMUDs? LPC sounds exactly like that language.

Re: Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

#66
post #59

Roblox is more like LambdaMOO than a MUD. LambdaMOO and its succesors were 100% programmed in a prototype based object-oriented programming language with only minimal world-support in the C portion of the server itself. The entire world was composed using the programming language and most users ended up being at least builders if not programmers in it. The focus was authoring, not RPG. Some people (including myself)…

I've played a LambdaMOO based MUD off and on for about 10 years now. Players would inevitably quit or transition to working on the game core, such an awesome community to be a part of.

I was young but it was heady days back then in the early 90s playing with that stuff. The most disappointing thing for me at the time was how the Internet went the direction of the web browser / HTTP instead of the direction we were trying to go with stuff like LambdaMOO. The web in those days was all about a non-persistent connection and a fairly non-interactive experience. It wasn't until the mid-2000s that "web 2.0" took off and the web got some of the interactivity and dynamic programmability we had in mind with what we were playing with in the early 90s -- but it got it in this awful bolted-on way.

That idea of a massive shared authoring environment, I still think that's the future of computing. But for me it isn't about the 3d VR-ish immersion stuff, I actually fear the isolating box that that puts people in. Which is why I haven't played with Roblox or let my kids use it either. I don't want them in another world. I want these kinds of tools to enrich the world we already have, instead.

Re: Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

#67

Roblox is more like LambdaMOO than a MUD. LambdaMOO and its succesors were 100% programmed in a prototype based object-oriented programming language with only minimal world-support in the C portion of the server itself. The entire world was composed using the programming language and most users ended up being at least builders if not programmers in it. The focus was authoring, not RPG. Some people (including myself)…

How is that different from LPMUDs? LPC sounds exactly like that language.

As I recall there are some important differences between LPC and LambdaMOO. More philosophical differences showing the background of the people who worked on them. Original LambdaMOO inspiration from the TinyM* world (if I vaguely recall Stephen White aka ghond the original MOO author came out of that community) plus was worked on by some Lisp and Smalltalk/Self inspired people (Pavel Curtis the maintainer worked at Xerox PARC and one of the key authors/wizard yduJ/Judy had some Lisp background if I recall) -- while the background with LPMUD was more RPG/gaming oriented.

LPMUD/LPC worked on editing class files and compiling them, while in LambdaMOO you edited your objects and verbs right in the environment. LambdaMOO had an object database and code was part of the database, while in LPMUD the code itself was in a separate filesystem. As an analogy: LambdaMOO was more like Smalltalk (live editing objects inside an image/object database) while LPMUD was more like editing a filesystem you dynamically recompiled. Now I believe LPMUD had an editor etc. right in the environment but you were editing a filesystem, not the objects themselves.

LambdaMOO was prototype oriented not class-based, so encouraged a lot more one-off authoring without messing up class hierarchies and the like. You could just dynamically throw together a new thing by parenting from an old thing and adding methods and props right on it and then later you could formalize that into something other people could use. Or not.

If I recall LPC didn't have the same kind of granular permissions system that MOO did and so there was more restrictions on who was allowed to program and who not. There was little risk in giving a MOO user a "programmer bit" on LambdaMOO as the environment was very sandboxed and capable of handling lots of amateurish programmers without stepping on each other. "Wizards" had the ability to modify shared common prototypes, but people who were "just" programmers could run off and create their own things and other people could borrow from them, etc. I suspect most LambdaMOO users ended up as programmers.

I think the LPMUD model makes more sense for building a game and iterating on it. LambdaMOO was about a shared authoring environment where people built things all day long (and chatted) rather than played a game.

Finally, LPC (or dialects of it...) I believe executed quite a bit faster than LambdaMOO. So much so that I believe at one point some people I knew of actually wrote a LambdaMOO compiler/environment in LPC -- maybe the DGD driver? -- and it outperformed LambdaMOO itself.

Re: Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

#68
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lpc/pike is a runtime compiled language much closer to python and java than to c. it is as much of a c dialect as javascript is a java dialect. other than c-style syntax they don't have much in common. the best part of lpc/pike is that it compiles code in units of classes. that is, each file is a class, the filename being the classname. the compiled class would then be used to instantiate objects, and here comes the…

You are right of course, just tried to be concise with the description - it's basically how we always explained it to the players back then. A Java or Python comparison was not possible at that time - both did not even exist at the time while I was programming on an LPMud driver. It is a pity LPC4/µlpc/Pike did not gain more mainstream acceptance after its early success with Roxen, even installing it was a pain last…

A Java or Python comparison was not possible at that time - both did not even exist at the time

hah, good point.

yeah, roxen the company missed a window of opportunity there to promote pike when they hired the wrong type of management and fired hubbe, pikes creator. but i don't want to get into politics.

what's your trouble with installing pike? i have pike running on most of my machines and don't remember any serious issues. i do install from source usually though.

i am not using roxen but a different platform also written in pike called sTeam or open-steam, which incidently is a web development and object storage platform designed like a MUD.

Re: Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

#69

Any current or former Gemstone players out there? It used to be on AOL but switched to the regular internet at some point. I still drop in from time to time, brings me back to my childhood.

DragonRealms on AOL was a huge part of my life for a couple of years in the 90s. I believe it was a direct successor to GS3.

Re: Roblox is a MUD: The history of MUDs, virtual worlds and MMORPGs

#70
post #47

Is it easy to create Roblox games? I know my kids love it but not sure if its possible to try to do somthing yourself.

I wouldn't call it easy, but it is possible. The tools are not very polished, but they exist and are free... (start with Roblox Studio)
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