#muds — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #muds, aggregated by home.social.
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I'm starting to figure something out. i'm starting to lose my will to RP, and it really sucks. For years, RP was something I loved doing, weather it was RPing romantic relationships with all the fun stuff that comes with it or simply RPing in parties, but I had friends who I'd RP with and its true what they say, having chemistry with people you RP with makes it so much better. Well, 1 story ended abruptly for reasons I'd rather not get into, and the other one ended years later, actually last year for other reasons I'd rather not get into but since then, and I don't know what it is, my energy for RP is slightly lesser than it used to be and I just feel like I've lost a big chunk of my RP spirit, because the second loss also meant the loss of a character i worked so hard on building. i know what they say and I do try very hard to do this, separate yourself from your character. I can and will and I do make sure to do this, but still, even when separating myself from my character, it doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt, especially when you had something really nice and good going and it comes to an end. I just thought about this and felt like I needed to express this, because while I like RP, i just don't feel it as much as I used to, and I don't like the feeling. I want my RP spirit back, but I don't know how to restore it. #Roleplaying, #RP, #ERP, #Muds, #Mudding
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I'm starting to figure something out. i'm starting to lose my will to RP, and it really sucks. For years, RP was something I loved doing, weather it was RPing romantic relationships with all the fun stuff that comes with it or simply RPing in parties, but I had friends who I'd RP with and its true what they say, having chemistry with people you RP with makes it so much better. Well, 1 story ended abruptly for reasons I'd rather not get into, and the other one ended years later, actually last year for other reasons I'd rather not get into but since then, and I don't know what it is, my energy for RP is slightly lesser than it used to be and I just feel like I've lost a big chunk of my RP spirit, because the second loss also meant the loss of a character i worked so hard on building. i know what they say and I do try very hard to do this, separate yourself from your character. I can and will and I do make sure to do this, but still, even when separating myself from my character, it doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt, especially when you had something really nice and good going and it comes to an end. I just thought about this and felt like I needed to express this, because while I like RP, i just don't feel it as much as I used to, and I don't like the feeling. I want my RP spirit back, but I don't know how to restore it. #Roleplaying, #RP, #ERP, #Muds, #Mudding
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I'm starting to figure something out. i'm starting to lose my will to RP, and it really sucks. For years, RP was something I loved doing, weather it was RPing romantic relationships with all the fun stuff that comes with it or simply RPing in parties, but I had friends who I'd RP with and its true what they say, having chemistry with people you RP with makes it so much better. Well, 1 story ended abruptly for reasons I'd rather not get into, and the other one ended years later, actually last year for other reasons I'd rather not get into but since then, and I don't know what it is, my energy for RP is slightly lesser than it used to be and I just feel like I've lost a big chunk of my RP spirit, because the second loss also meant the loss of a character i worked so hard on building. i know what they say and I do try very hard to do this, separate yourself from your character. I can and will and I do make sure to do this, but still, even when separating myself from my character, it doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt, especially when you had something really nice and good going and it comes to an end. I just thought about this and felt like I needed to express this, because while I like RP, i just don't feel it as much as I used to, and I don't like the feeling. I want my RP spirit back, but I don't know how to restore it. #Roleplaying, #RP, #ERP, #Muds, #Mudding
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I'm starting to figure something out. i'm starting to lose my will to RP, and it really sucks. For years, RP was something I loved doing, weather it was RPing romantic relationships with all the fun stuff that comes with it or simply RPing in parties, but I had friends who I'd RP with and its true what they say, having chemistry with people you RP with makes it so much better. Well, 1 story ended abruptly for reasons I'd rather not get into, and the other one ended years later, actually last year for other reasons I'd rather not get into but since then, and I don't know what it is, my energy for RP is slightly lesser than it used to be and I just feel like I've lost a big chunk of my RP spirit, because the second loss also meant the loss of a character i worked so hard on building. i know what they say and I do try very hard to do this, separate yourself from your character. I can and will and I do make sure to do this, but still, even when separating myself from my character, it doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt, especially when you had something really nice and good going and it comes to an end. I just thought about this and felt like I needed to express this, because while I like RP, i just don't feel it as much as I used to, and I don't like the feeling. I want my RP spirit back, but I don't know how to restore it. #Roleplaying, #RP, #ERP, #Muds, #Mudding
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I am happy with this DECSystem-10 MUD system for now; it's been a 35-year task.
If anyone is bored enough to be curious!
31 January 1991: Essex University's DECSystem-10 closes, meaning that MIST and ROCK, and the dodgy version of MUD we had on there, had to close. I had a mostly working VMS system that would run it with some extra programming, but I'd already sent out AberMUD to Vijay, and he'd sent it out to the world, and TinyMUDs were becoming common. MIST was losing its captive audience, and it needed that level of addiction and co-dependence to run, so I decided to let it die in its prime, rather than become a sad old relic that nobody played.
2003 and the next 20 years: I decided to build a TOPS-10 system on a VMS machine and install MIST/MUD and ROCK. Got quite a long way, and then discovered there was no BCPL compiler existing anywhere in the known world. A few years later, Richard Bartle told me that Paul Allen (I think) had found one. So this became possible, and Quentin (dot-co-dot-uk) took a great stab at it with some really old code, and Viktor Toth had BL running, so I figured that was enough. Sometime in this period, Bletchley Park got something that looked like a PDP-10, and they suggested that I go and put MUD onto it for the museum. It wasn't a PDP-10, but I did look into putting it onto a VAX for a while, but the management of Bletchley, as it turned into The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), was getting more corporate and boring, so I gave up bothering.
19th Feb to 22nd Feb, 2026: I decided to build a PRIMOS machine on a Simh emulator for no apparent reason. It went fairly smoothly, so I wondered again about a DEC-10. I was missing TOPS-10 anyway, so why not? Proof of concept, setting up some test systems, seeing where TOPS-10 emulators were at these days and seeing how far Quentin had really got and how much extra work was needed. Realised I am going to have to start from scratch, mostly, using a prebuilt Steuben distro of TOPS-10 7.03 as the base.
Took a couple of weeks off to ponder whether the rest was worth it, but decided my $200 a month ChatGPT Pro subscription may as well pay for itself with background research, so I decided to go ahead.
9th March 9 to 18th March, 2026: A long sprint, and I mostly got it all working. 92 hours of concentrated swearing and about 15 hours of destroying the planet with GPT Deep Research mode later (*), after at least 2 false starts and complete wipes. I got a system I am relatively happy with. Somewhere in there is about 4 hours of relearning TECO and fighting with getting ROCK working on code it was never meant to work on. There's still more to do, but that's just maintenance now.
BUT I FOUND ROCK! I thought it was lost forever. Somehow, that's my major victory in all this. Building the setup was hard, tedious, and very frustrating work. It probably did need somebody who knew a lot about both DEC and Unix systems management, and the MUD engine, to guide it, but it was still mostly a matter of putting together things that already existed and forcing them to work together. ROCK, though, I genuinely thought was 100% lost.
It's taken a hundred plus concentrated hours, two new dedicated hosts, a small town's water supply, and probably a few megawatts of power in the background. But this is the final re-creation of the systems I closed at the start of the 1990s.
MIST (and MUD and ROCK) will still probably end up as relics that nobody properly plays, but this project is not pretending to be anything other than an interesting throwback and museum piece now, which, 35 years after I closed it down, seems a fitting end. It also means I can resurrect Duncan Rogerson's arch-wizard, and that seems right, somehow. I will leave it up and running now.
(*) Since someone whined about my use of GPT - I could not have mentioned it, but I did because, for some tasks like this one, it saved me hundreds of hours and a lot of Googling. If I have to pick (which I do!) I'd rather use GPT than Google still. One of the useful things you can do with Deep Research is to give it a topic you want to aggregate information on (like ACCESS.USR usage) and send it away to make a summary PDF of the key points of what's useful, but triple-checked and sourced. I have read the Original TOPS-10 manuals that are wonderfully hosted on @bitsavers many times, I could knock up a perfect ACCESS.USR in a drunken stupor, whilst half asleep once, but these days I barely remember the 3-part octal protections, so I am happy to have a reference I don't need to read 10 parts of 3 different manuals to make. That's why I use AI, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. Since I work in AI Ethics and actually put into practice what I preach, I am comfortable with my use of AI, and I always disclose it :P
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security #TNMOC #blog #ADHD #Autism
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I am happy with this DECSystem-10 MUD system for now; it's been a 35-year task.
If anyone is bored enough to be curious!
31 January 1991: Essex University's DECSystem-10 closes, meaning that MIST and ROCK, and the dodgy version of MUD we had on there, had to close. I had a mostly working VMS system that would run it with some extra programming, but I'd already sent out AberMUD to Vijay, and he'd sent it out to the world, and TinyMUDs were becoming common. MIST was losing its captive audience, and it needed that level of addiction and co-dependence to run, so I decided to let it die in its prime, rather than become a sad old relic that nobody played.
2003 and the next 20 years: I decided to build a TOPS-10 system on a VMS machine and install MIST/MUD and ROCK. Got quite a long way, and then discovered there was no BCPL compiler existing anywhere in the known world. A few years later, Richard Bartle told me that Paul Allen (I think) had found one. So this became possible, and Quentin (dot-co-dot-uk) took a great stab at it with some really old code, and Viktor Toth had BL running, so I figured that was enough. Sometime in this period, Bletchley Park got something that looked like a PDP-10, and they suggested that I go and put MUD onto it for the museum. It wasn't a PDP-10, but I did look into putting it onto a VAX for a while, but the management of Bletchley, as it turned into The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), was getting more corporate and boring, so I gave up bothering.
19th Feb to 22nd Feb, 2026: I decided to build a PRIMOS machine on a Simh emulator for no apparent reason. It went fairly smoothly, so I wondered again about a DEC-10. I was missing TOPS-10 anyway, so why not? Proof of concept, setting up some test systems, seeing where TOPS-10 emulators were at these days and seeing how far Quentin had really got and how much extra work was needed. Realised I am going to have to start from scratch, mostly, using a prebuilt Steuben distro of TOPS-10 7.03 as the base.
Took a couple of weeks off to ponder whether the rest was worth it, but decided my $200 a month ChatGPT Pro subscription may as well pay for itself with background research, so I decided to go ahead.
9th March 9 to 18th March, 2026: A long sprint, and I mostly got it all working. 92 hours of concentrated swearing and about 15 hours of destroying the planet with GPT Deep Research mode later (*), after at least 2 false starts and complete wipes. I got a system I am relatively happy with. Somewhere in there is about 4 hours of relearning TECO and fighting with getting ROCK working on code it was never meant to work on. There's still more to do, but that's just maintenance now.
BUT I FOUND ROCK! I thought it was lost forever. Somehow, that's my major victory in all this. Building the setup was hard, tedious, and very frustrating work. It probably did need somebody who knew a lot about both DEC and Unix systems management, and the MUD engine, to guide it, but it was still mostly a matter of putting together things that already existed and forcing them to work together. ROCK, though, I genuinely thought was 100% lost.
It's taken a hundred plus concentrated hours, two new dedicated hosts, a small town's water supply, and probably a few megawatts of power in the background. But this is the final re-creation of the systems I closed at the start of the 1990s.
MIST (and MUD and ROCK) will still probably end up as relics that nobody properly plays, but this project is not pretending to be anything other than an interesting throwback and museum piece now, which, 35 years after I closed it down, seems a fitting end. It also means I can resurrect Duncan Rogerson's arch-wizard, and that seems right, somehow. I will leave it up and running now.
(*) Since someone whined about my use of GPT - I could not have mentioned it, but I did because, for some tasks like this one, it saved me hundreds of hours and a lot of Googling. If I have to pick (which I do!) I'd rather use GPT than Google still. One of the useful things you can do with Deep Research is to give it a topic you want to aggregate information on (like ACCESS.USR usage) and send it away to make a summary PDF of the key points of what's useful, but triple-checked and sourced. I have read the Original TOPS-10 manuals that are wonderfully hosted on @bitsavers many times, I could knock up a perfect ACCESS.USR in a drunken stupor, whilst half asleep once, but these days I barely remember the 3-part octal protections, so I am happy to have a reference I don't need to read 10 parts of 3 different manuals to make. That's why I use AI, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. Since I work in AI Ethics and actually put into practice what I preach, I am comfortable with my use of AI, and I always disclose it :P
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security #TNMOC #blog #ADHD #Autism
-
I am happy with this DECSystem-10 MUD system for now; it's been a 35-year task.
If anyone is bored enough to be curious!
31 January 1991: Essex University's DECSystem-10 closes, meaning that MIST and ROCK, and the dodgy version of MUD we had on there, had to close. I had a mostly working VMS system that would run it with some extra programming, but I'd already sent out AberMUD to Vijay, and he'd sent it out to the world, and TinyMUDs were becoming common. MIST was losing its captive audience, and it needed that level of addiction and co-dependence to run, so I decided to let it die in its prime, rather than become a sad old relic that nobody played.
2003 and the next 20 years: I decided to build a TOPS-10 system on a VMS machine and install MIST/MUD and ROCK. Got quite a long way, and then discovered there was no BCPL compiler existing anywhere in the known world. A few years later, Richard Bartle told me that Paul Allen (I think) had found one. So this became possible, and Quentin (dot-co-dot-uk) took a great stab at it with some really old code, and Viktor Toth had BL running, so I figured that was enough. Sometime in this period, Bletchley Park got something that looked like a PDP-10, and they suggested that I go and put MUD onto it for the museum. It wasn't a PDP-10, but I did look into putting it onto a VAX for a while, but the management of Bletchley, as it turned into The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), was getting more corporate and boring, so I gave up bothering.
19th Feb to 22nd Feb, 2026: I decided to build a PRIMOS machine on a Simh emulator for no apparent reason. It went fairly smoothly, so I wondered again about a DEC-10. I was missing TOPS-10 anyway, so why not? Proof of concept, setting up some test systems, seeing where TOPS-10 emulators were at these days and seeing how far Quentin had really got and how much extra work was needed. Realised I am going to have to start from scratch, mostly, using a prebuilt Steuben distro of TOPS-10 7.03 as the base.
Took a couple of weeks off to ponder whether the rest was worth it, but decided my $200 a month ChatGPT Pro subscription may as well pay for itself with background research, so I decided to go ahead.
9th March 9 to 18th March, 2026: A long sprint, and I mostly got it all working. 92 hours of concentrated swearing and about 15 hours of destroying the planet with GPT Deep Research mode later (*), after at least 2 false starts and complete wipes. I got a system I am relatively happy with. Somewhere in there is about 4 hours of relearning TECO and fighting with getting ROCK working on code it was never meant to work on. There's still more to do, but that's just maintenance now.
BUT I FOUND ROCK! I thought it was lost forever. Somehow, that's my major victory in all this. Building the setup was hard, tedious, and very frustrating work. It probably did need somebody who knew a lot about both DEC and Unix systems management, and the MUD engine, to guide it, but it was still mostly a matter of putting together things that already existed and forcing them to work together. ROCK, though, I genuinely thought was 100% lost.
It's taken a hundred plus concentrated hours, two new dedicated hosts, a small town's water supply, and probably a few megawatts of power in the background. But this is the final re-creation of the systems I closed at the start of the 1990s.
MIST (and MUD and ROCK) will still probably end up as relics that nobody properly plays, but this project is not pretending to be anything other than an interesting throwback and museum piece now, which, 35 years after I closed it down, seems a fitting end. It also means I can resurrect Duncan Rogerson's arch-wizard, and that seems right, somehow. I will leave it up and running now.
(*) Since someone whined about my use of GPT - I could not have mentioned it, but I did because, for some tasks like this one, it saved me hundreds of hours and a lot of Googling. If I have to pick (which I do!) I'd rather use GPT than Google still. One of the useful things you can do with Deep Research is to give it a topic you want to aggregate information on (like ACCESS.USR usage) and send it away to make a summary PDF of the key points of what's useful, but triple-checked and sourced. I have read the Original TOPS-10 manuals that are wonderfully hosted on @bitsavers many times, I could knock up a perfect ACCESS.USR in a drunken stupor, whilst half asleep once, but these days I barely remember the 3-part octal protections, so I am happy to have a reference I don't need to read 10 parts of 3 different manuals to make. That's why I use AI, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. Since I work in AI Ethics and actually put into practice what I preach, I am comfortable with my use of AI, and I always disclose it :P
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security #TNMOC #blog #ADHD #Autism
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I am happy with this DECSystem-10 MUD system for now; it's been a 35-year task.
If anyone is bored enough to be curious!
31 January 1991: Essex University's DECSystem-10 closes, meaning that MIST and ROCK, and the dodgy version of MUD we had on there, had to close. I had a mostly working VMS system that would run it with some extra programming, but I'd already sent out AberMUD to Vijay, and he'd sent it out to the world, and TinyMUDs were becoming common. MIST was losing its captive audience, and it needed that level of addiction and co-dependence to run, so I decided to let it die in its prime, rather than become a sad old relic that nobody played.
2003 and the next 20 years: I decided to build a TOPS-10 system on a VMS machine and install MIST/MUD and ROCK. Got quite a long way, and then discovered there was no BCPL compiler existing anywhere in the known world. A few years later, Richard Bartle told me that Paul Allen (I think) had found one. So this became possible, and Quentin (dot-co-dot-uk) took a great stab at it with some really old code, and Viktor Toth had BL running, so I figured that was enough. Sometime in this period, Bletchley Park got something that looked like a PDP-10, and they suggested that I go and put MUD onto it for the museum. It wasn't a PDP-10, but I did look into putting it onto a VAX for a while, but the management of Bletchley, as it turned into The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), was getting more corporate and boring, so I gave up bothering.
19th Feb to 22nd Feb, 2026: I decided to build a PRIMOS machine on a Simh emulator for no apparent reason. It went fairly smoothly, so I wondered again about a DEC-10. I was missing TOPS-10 anyway, so why not? Proof of concept, setting up some test systems, seeing where TOPS-10 emulators were at these days and seeing how far Quentin had really got and how much extra work was needed. Realised I am going to have to start from scratch, mostly, using a prebuilt Steuben distro of TOPS-10 7.03 as the base.
Took a couple of weeks off to ponder whether the rest was worth it, but decided my $200 a month ChatGPT Pro subscription may as well pay for itself with background research, so I decided to go ahead.
9th March 9 to 18th March, 2026: A long sprint, and I mostly got it all working. 92 hours of concentrated swearing and about 15 hours of destroying the planet with GPT Deep Research mode later (*), after at least 2 false starts and complete wipes. I got a system I am relatively happy with. Somewhere in there is about 4 hours of relearning TECO and fighting with getting ROCK working on code it was never meant to work on. There's still more to do, but that's just maintenance now.
BUT I FOUND ROCK! I thought it was lost forever. Somehow, that's my major victory in all this. Building the setup was hard, tedious, and very frustrating work. It probably did need somebody who knew a lot about both DEC and Unix systems management, and the MUD engine, to guide it, but it was still mostly a matter of putting together things that already existed and forcing them to work together. ROCK, though, I genuinely thought was 100% lost.
It's taken a hundred plus concentrated hours, two new dedicated hosts, a small town's water supply, and probably a few megawatts of power in the background. But this is the final re-creation of the systems I closed at the start of the 1990s.
MIST (and MUD and ROCK) will still probably end up as relics that nobody properly plays, but this project is not pretending to be anything other than an interesting throwback and museum piece now, which, 35 years after I closed it down, seems a fitting end. It also means I can resurrect Duncan Rogerson's arch-wizard, and that seems right, somehow. I will leave it up and running now.
(*) Since someone whined about my use of GPT - I could not have mentioned it, but I did because, for some tasks like this one, it saved me hundreds of hours and a lot of Googling. If I have to pick (which I do!) I'd rather use GPT than Google still. One of the useful things you can do with Deep Research is to give it a topic you want to aggregate information on (like ACCESS.USR usage) and send it away to make a summary PDF of the key points of what's useful, but triple-checked and sourced. I have read the Original TOPS-10 manuals that are wonderfully hosted on @bitsavers many times, I could knock up a perfect ACCESS.USR in a drunken stupor, whilst half asleep once, but these days I barely remember the 3-part octal protections, so I am happy to have a reference I don't need to read 10 parts of 3 different manuals to make. That's why I use AI, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. Since I work in AI Ethics and actually put into practice what I preach, I am comfortable with my use of AI, and I always disclose it :P
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security #TNMOC #blog #ADHD #Autism
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I am happy with this DECSystem-10 MUD system for now; it's been a 35-year task.
If anyone is bored enough to be curious!
31 January 1991: Essex University's DECSystem-10 closes, meaning that MIST and ROCK, and the dodgy version of MUD we had on there, had to close. I had a mostly working VMS system that would run it with some extra programming, but I'd already sent out AberMUD to Vijay, and he'd sent it out to the world, and TinyMUDs were becoming common. MIST was losing its captive audience, and it needed that level of addiction and co-dependence to run, so I decided to let it die in its prime, rather than become a sad old relic that nobody played.
2003 and the next 20 years: I decided to build a TOPS-10 system on a VMS machine and install MIST/MUD and ROCK. Got quite a long way, and then discovered there was no BCPL compiler existing anywhere in the known world. A few years later, Richard Bartle told me that Paul Allen (I think) had found one. So this became possible, and Quentin (dot-co-dot-uk) took a great stab at it with some really old code, and Viktor Toth had BL running, so I figured that was enough. Sometime in this period, Bletchley Park got something that looked like a PDP-10, and they suggested that I go and put MUD onto it for the museum. It wasn't a PDP-10, but I did look into putting it onto a VAX for a while, but the management of Bletchley, as it turned into The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), was getting more corporate and boring, so I gave up bothering.
19th Feb to 22nd Feb, 2026: I decided to build a PRIMOS machine on a Simh emulator for no apparent reason. It went fairly smoothly, so I wondered again about a DEC-10. I was missing TOPS-10 anyway, so why not? Proof of concept, setting up some test systems, seeing where TOPS-10 emulators were at these days and seeing how far Quentin had really got and how much extra work was needed. Realised I am going to have to start from scratch, mostly, using a prebuilt Steuben distro of TOPS-10 7.03 as the base.
Took a couple of weeks off to ponder whether the rest was worth it, but decided my $200 a month ChatGPT Pro subscription may as well pay for itself with background research, so I decided to go ahead.
9th March 9 to 18th March, 2026: A long sprint, and I mostly got it all working. 92 hours of concentrated swearing and about 15 hours of destroying the planet with GPT Deep Research mode later (*), after at least 2 false starts and complete wipes. I got a system I am relatively happy with. Somewhere in there is about 4 hours of relearning TECO and fighting with getting ROCK working on code it was never meant to work on. There's still more to do, but that's just maintenance now.
BUT I FOUND ROCK! I thought it was lost forever. Somehow, that's my major victory in all this. Building the setup was hard, tedious, and very frustrating work. It probably did need somebody who knew a lot about both DEC and Unix systems management, and the MUD engine, to guide it, but it was still mostly a matter of putting together things that already existed and forcing them to work together. ROCK, though, I genuinely thought was 100% lost.
It's taken a hundred plus concentrated hours, two new dedicated hosts, a small town's water supply, and probably a few megawatts of power in the background. But this is the final re-creation of the systems I closed at the start of the 1990s.
MIST (and MUD and ROCK) will still probably end up as relics that nobody properly plays, but this project is not pretending to be anything other than an interesting throwback and museum piece now, which, 35 years after I closed it down, seems a fitting end. It also means I can resurrect Duncan Rogerson's arch-wizard, and that seems right, somehow. I will leave it up and running now.
(*) Since someone whined about my use of GPT - I could not have mentioned it, but I did because, for some tasks like this one, it saved me hundreds of hours and a lot of Googling. If I have to pick (which I do!) I'd rather use GPT than Google still. One of the useful things you can do with Deep Research is to give it a topic you want to aggregate information on (like ACCESS.USR usage) and send it away to make a summary PDF of the key points of what's useful, but triple-checked and sourced. I have read the Original TOPS-10 manuals that are wonderfully hosted on @bitsavers many times, I could knock up a perfect ACCESS.USR in a drunken stupor, whilst half asleep once, but these days I barely remember the 3-part octal protections, so I am happy to have a reference I don't need to read 10 parts of 3 different manuals to make. That's why I use AI, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. Since I work in AI Ethics and actually put into practice what I preach, I am comfortable with my use of AI, and I always disclose it :P
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security #TNMOC #blog #ADHD #Autism
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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:
Or:
telnet telnet.dec10.uknet.net
(Port 2653 is available for ISPs that block 23)
And 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.
** Update: New web client that works better.
** Another update - I added a telnet client.
Historically, the telnet connection is much more true to the traditional experience, where you were connecting to a working machine that didn't care about the MUD Guests, so there were no pointers at all. Just rumour and hearsay :)
If any of you Unix/Security people notice I messed up something, please tell me. I left "^], !sh" open on the telnet link for about 2 minutes and nearly had a heart-attack once I spotted it :D
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security
(don't try this on a phone!)
-
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:
Or:
telnet telnet.dec10.uknet.net
(Port 2653 is available for ISPs that block 23)
And 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.
** Update: New web client that works better.
** Another update - I added a telnet client.
Historically, the telnet connection is much more true to the traditional experience, where you were connecting to a working machine that didn't care about the MUD Guests, so there were no pointers at all. Just rumour and hearsay :)
If any of you Unix/Security people notice I messed up something, please tell me. I left "^], !sh" open on the telnet link for about 2 minutes and nearly had a heart-attack once I spotted it :D
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security
(don't try this on a phone!)
-
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:
Or:
telnet telnet.dec10.uknet.net
(Port 2653 is available for ISPs that block 23)
And 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.
** Update: New web client that works better.
** Another update - I added a telnet client.
Historically, the telnet connection is much more true to the traditional experience, where you were connecting to a working machine that didn't care about the MUD Guests, so there were no pointers at all. Just rumour and hearsay :)
If any of you Unix/Security people notice I messed up something, please tell me. I left "^], !sh" open on the telnet link for about 2 minutes and nearly had a heart-attack once I spotted it :D
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security
(don't try this on a phone!)
-
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:
Or:
telnet telnet.dec10.uknet.net
(Port 2653 is available for ISPs that block 23)
And 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.
** Update: New web client that works better.
** Another update - I added a telnet client.
Historically, the telnet connection is much more true to the traditional experience, where you were connecting to a working machine that didn't care about the MUD Guests, so there were no pointers at all. Just rumour and hearsay :)
If any of you Unix/Security people notice I messed up something, please tell me. I left "^], !sh" open on the telnet link for about 2 minutes and nearly had a heart-attack once I spotted it :D
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security
(don't try this on a phone!)
-
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:
Or:
telnet telnet.dec10.uknet.net
(Port 2653 is available for ISPs that block 23)
And 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.
** Update: New web client that works better.
** Another update - I added a telnet client.
Historically, the telnet connection is much more true to the traditional experience, where you were connecting to a working machine that didn't care about the MUD Guests, so there were no pointers at all. Just rumour and hearsay :)
If any of you Unix/Security people notice I messed up something, please tell me. I left "^], !sh" open on the telnet link for about 2 minutes and nearly had a heart-attack once I spotted it :D
#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security
(don't try this on a phone!)
-
For screen reader users, text-based multiplayer games (MUDs) are often easier to access than graphical games.
So why can playing one from a web browser feel harder instead of easier?
Brandon Cross (aka bscross) explains it all in this interview:
https://writing-games.org/accessibility-interview-bscross/ -
For screen reader users, text-based multiplayer games (MUDs) are often easier to access than graphical games.
So why can playing one from a web browser feel harder instead of easier?
Brandon Cross (aka bscross) explains it all in this interview:
https://writing-games.org/accessibility-interview-bscross/ -
For screen reader users, text-based multiplayer games (MUDs) are often easier to access than graphical games.
So why can playing one from a web browser feel harder instead of easier?
Brandon Cross (aka bscross) explains it all in this interview:
https://writing-games.org/accessibility-interview-bscross/ -
For screen reader users, text-based multiplayer games (MUDs) are often easier to access than graphical games.
So why can playing one from a web browser feel harder instead of easier?
Brandon Cross (aka bscross) explains it all in this interview:
https://writing-games.org/accessibility-interview-bscross/ -
There's an online text-based MUD that I've been playing since around 2004 (I've been playing in MUDs since finding them online as far back as 1994, before the web was a thing). By which I mean I started playing it when it came out in 2004, then left somewhere around 2010ish. Then recently came back to play a totally different character last year. This is an RP heavy MUD (plus you can be trans, or NB, and choose your race or change your race, lots of options). Players have a lot of control over making things happen. They get to design everything from clothing to furniture to food and beverages. The Gods tend to be real (and played by real people). Part of what I enjoyed about it was that PvP on the main plane of existence was monitored and controlled. So it was possible to avoid a lot of griefing that happens in other games.
This time around I've created a cook who is running a fine dining restaurant. The admins recently added a whole bunch of stuff to make running a restaurant more feasible and I'm really down for this. It's got my creative juices flowing again.
But I do miss when there were more people around to interact with. I don't miss when most of the people around to interact with were just jerks who wanted to RP being an asshole and just expected everyone around them to take it in the name of "good RP". Fuck that noise. I get wanting to play, say, an asshole who does dickish stuff in a game. The thing is, in order to do this, you have to be an asshole to other players who are not assholes. It's tiresome and I don't enjoy being the butt of your mean-girl RP thankyouverymuch. I'm here to have fun, to be cute, to cook and brew beverages, and just generally have a nice time.
The game is dying, of course, for a lot of reasons. But at least some of it is because 1) no one reads any more and 2) They want flashy video games, not games where they have to READ the SCREEN to know what's going on.
This is a really long-winded way of me saying "Hey, come on over here and play! It's a little boring sometimes, but it can be fun". If you do come over, I'm in the city of Gaudiguch, and I have a restaurant based there. Come play! (Feel free to ask me questions or for help if you decide to play)
#lusternia #MUDs #roleplaying #online-community #trans/nb-roleplay #crafting-fun -
There's an online text-based MUD that I've been playing since around 2004 (I've been playing in MUDs since finding them online as far back as 1994, before the web was a thing). By which I mean I started playing it when it came out in 2004, then left somewhere around 2010ish. Then recently came back to play a totally different character last year. This is an RP heavy MUD (plus you can be trans, or NB, and choose your race or change your race, lots of options). Players have a lot of control over making things happen. They get to design everything from clothing to furniture to food and beverages. The Gods tend to be real (and played by real people). Part of what I enjoyed about it was that PvP on the main plane of existence was monitored and controlled. So it was possible to avoid a lot of griefing that happens in other games.
This time around I've created a cook who is running a fine dining restaurant. The admins recently added a whole bunch of stuff to make running a restaurant more feasible and I'm really down for this. It's got my creative juices flowing again.
But I do miss when there were more people around to interact with. I don't miss when most of the people around to interact with were just jerks who wanted to RP being an asshole and just expected everyone around them to take it in the name of "good RP". Fuck that noise. I get wanting to play, say, an asshole who does dickish stuff in a game. The thing is, in order to do this, you have to be an asshole to other players who are not assholes. It's tiresome and I don't enjoy being the butt of your mean-girl RP thankyouverymuch. I'm here to have fun, to be cute, to cook and brew beverages, and just generally have a nice time.
The game is dying, of course, for a lot of reasons. But at least some of it is because 1) no one reads any more and 2) They want flashy video games, not games where they have to READ the SCREEN to know what's going on.
This is a really long-winded way of me saying "Hey, come on over here and play! It's a little boring sometimes, but it can be fun". If you do come over, I'm in the city of Gaudiguch, and I have a restaurant based there. Come play! (Feel free to ask me questions or for help if you decide to play)
#lusternia #MUDs #roleplaying #online-community #trans/nb-roleplay #crafting-fun -
Up next in honor of FOSS February and 📖 Storytelling Week:
Evennia is a free and #OpenSource system for creating your own multiplayer text game.
With tutorials and examples, it lowers the barrier to getting started - a solid option for both experienced devs and beginners learning to code in #Python.
It even comes with a selection of optional add-ons built by the community!
-
Up next in honor of FOSS February and 📖 Storytelling Week:
Evennia is a free and #OpenSource system for creating your own multiplayer text game.
With tutorials and examples, it lowers the barrier to getting started - a solid option for both experienced devs and beginners learning to code in #Python.
It even comes with a selection of optional add-ons built by the community!
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🏰 What do city-building, dream magic, and space trading have in common?
They're all found in Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) - shared online worlds played through text.
This guide looks at 6 modern MUDs that each do something different, with notes on #accessibility and easy ways to play:
https://medium.com/@the_andruid/6-unique-multi-user-dungeons-worth-exploring-cdc9f16bf1e9
-
🏰 What do city-building, dream magic, and space trading have in common?
They're all found in Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) - shared online worlds played through text.
This guide looks at 6 modern MUDs that each do something different, with notes on #accessibility and easy ways to play:
https://medium.com/@the_andruid/6-unique-multi-user-dungeons-worth-exploring-cdc9f16bf1e9
-
What do multiplayer text games actually look like in 2026? 🤔
This updated guide highlights 10 long-running Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) you can still play today, along with 3 additional games that opened more recently.
It also covers #accessibility features, web clients, and a beginner-friendly walkthrough for anyone curious about getting started.
-
What do multiplayer text games actually look like in 2026? 🤔
This updated guide highlights 10 long-running Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) you can still play today, along with 3 additional games that opened more recently.
It also covers #accessibility features, web clients, and a beginner-friendly walkthrough for anyone curious about getting started.
-
What do multiplayer text games actually look like in 2026? 🤔
This updated guide highlights 10 long-running Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) you can still play today, along with 3 additional games that opened more recently.
It also covers #accessibility features, web clients, and a beginner-friendly walkthrough for anyone curious about getting started.
-
What do multiplayer text games actually look like in 2026? 🤔
This updated guide highlights 10 long-running Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) you can still play today, along with 3 additional games that opened more recently.
It also covers #accessibility features, web clients, and a beginner-friendly walkthrough for anyone curious about getting started.
-
I was looking for any info on the Hercules & Xena: Alliance of Heroes MUD by Simutronics, and I came across this retro website with some sw33t retro 3D graphics.
-
I was looking for any info on the Hercules & Xena: Alliance of Heroes MUD by Simutronics, and I came across this retro website with some sw33t retro 3D graphics.
-
I was looking for any info on the Hercules & Xena: Alliance of Heroes MUD by Simutronics, and I came across this retro website with some sw33t retro 3D graphics.
-
I was looking for any info on the Hercules & Xena: Alliance of Heroes MUD by Simutronics, and I came across this retro website with some sw33t retro 3D graphics.
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Been messing around @ thechattingzone.uk port 8342. A social / talker mud with an extensive built in language for building and creating .. and anyone can get access!
Like #muds?! Or even just lurking on a place other than a Discord with pals? Hang out with us on TCZ! :)
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Fans of #MUDs? I've hung out on TCZ off and on since 1998. It's got it's own building system / programming language, decades of places to explore, and some awesome people still hanging out daily.
The only problem? The number of people is declining.
Interested? https://thechattingzone.uk/
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Last monday's edited archive is now up at https://youtu.be/RtNAQU-lsmY
If you have trouble accessing it, wait until it processes, should be in about an hour from the time this is posted.
#Youtube #Miriani #Moo #Muds #Accessibility #Gaming -
Last monday's edited archive is now up at https://youtu.be/RtNAQU-lsmY
If you have trouble accessing it, wait until it processes, should be in about an hour from the time this is posted.
#Youtube #Miriani #Moo #Muds #Accessibility #Gaming -
Last monday's edited archive is now up at https://youtu.be/RtNAQU-lsmY
If you have trouble accessing it, wait until it processes, should be in about an hour from the time this is posted.
#Youtube #Miriani #Moo #Muds #Accessibility #Gaming -
Last monday's edited archive is now up at https://youtu.be/RtNAQU-lsmY
If you have trouble accessing it, wait until it processes, should be in about an hour from the time this is posted.
#Youtube #Miriani #Moo #Muds #Accessibility #Gaming -
What if you could build an entire written world from a PNG file made with MS Paint? 😲
That’s exactly what Hades_Kane and Grieffels did. Their new system turns image files into playable maps for text-based games known as MUDs - complete with in-game editing tools and screen reader support.
Check it out 👉 https://writing-games.org/worldmap-project/