Editing LPMud (section)

==Development==
[[File:LoginScreen.jpg|thumb|right|The login screen from ''Genesis'' since May 2011]]

Lars Pensjö had been an avid player of [[TinyMUD]] and [[AberMUD]]. He had wanted to create a world with the flexibility of TinyMUD and the style of AberMUD{{R|bartle-lpmud}} but did not want to have sole responsibility for creating and maintaining the game world. He once said, "I didn't think I would be able to design a good adventure. By allowing [[Wizard (MUD)|wizards]] coding rights, I thought others could help me with this."{{R|dog}}  The result was the creation of a new, [[C (programming language)|C]]-based, [[object-oriented programming]] language, LPC, that made it simple for people with minimal programming skills to add elements like rooms, weapons, and monsters to a virtual world.{{R|giuliano}}

To accomplish his goal, [[Lennart Augustsson]] convinced Pensjö to write what today would be called a virtual machine, the LPMud driver. The driver managed the interpretation of LPC code as well as providing basic [[operating system]] services to the LPC code. By virtue of this design, Pensjö made it more difficult for common programming errors like [[infinite loop]]s and [[infinite recursion]] made by content builders to harm the overall stability of the server. His choice of an [[object-oriented programming|OO]] approach made it easy for new programmers to concentrate on the task of "building a room" rather than programming logic.{{R|pike}}

Pensjö created ''Genesis'' in April 1989 as the first implementation of the LPC language, and therefore the first LPMud, in which the developer (commonly known as a [[Wizard (MUD)|wizard]] within the MUD) could code their own objects.{{R|netgames1|dog|reese-genesis|bartle-genesis}}

Pensjö's work has been extended or reverse engineered in a number of projects:
* {{Anchor|Amylaar}}LPMud 3.2, better known as the Amylaar driver, after its lead developer, Jörn "Amylaar" Rennecke{{R|ywwr2|reese-amylaar}}
* [[MudOS]]{{R|ywwr2}}
* [[Dworkin's Game Driver|DGD, Dworkin's Game Driver]], a conceptual rather than code derivative of LPMud developed by [[Felix Croes|Felix "Dworkin" Croes]]{{R|shahromine-dgd}}
* [[SWLPC (programming language)|SWLPC]], [[Shattered World]]'s [[Fork (software development)|fork]] of LPMud 2.4.5{{R|reese-sw}}

Though an LPMud server can be used to implement nearly any style of game,{{R|hahn}} LPMuds are often thought of as having certain common characteristics as a genre, such as a mixture of [[hack and slash]] with [[role-playing game|role-playing]], [[Quest (gaming)|quests]] as an element of advancement, and "guilds" as an alternative to [[character class]]es.{{R|internetculture|ywwr1}}