Editing Multi-user dungeon (section)

==Popular variants==

===AberMUD===
{{Main|AberMUD}}

The first popular MUD [[codebase]] was AberMUD, written in 1987 by [[Alan Cox (computer programmer)|Alan Cox]], named after the [[University of Wales, Aberystwyth]]. Alan Cox had played the original [[University of Essex]] MUD, and the gameplay was heavily influenced by it.{{R|carroll}}  AberMUD was initially written in [[B (programming language)|B]] for a Honeywell L66 mainframe under GCOS3/TSS. In late 1988 it was ported to [[C (programming language)|C]], which enabled it to spread rapidly to many [[Unix]] platforms upon its release in 1989. AberMUD's popularity resulted in several inspired works, the most notable of which were [[TinyMUD]], [[LPMud]], and [[DikuMUD]].{{R|bartle-abermud}}

===TinyMUD===
''Monster'' was a multi-user adventure game created by [[Richard Skrenta]] for the [[VAX]] and written in [[OpenVMS|VMS]] Pascal. It was publicly released in November 1988.{{R|monster-release|monster-home}}  ''Monster'' was disk-based and modifications to the game were immediate. ''Monster'' pioneered the approach of allowing players to [[online creation|build the game world]], setting new puzzles or creating dungeons for other players to explore.{{R|monster-introduction}}  Monster, which comprised about 60,000 lines of code, had many features which appeared to be designed to allow ''[[Colossal Cave Adventure]]'' to work in it. Though there never were many network-accessible Monster servers, it inspired [[James Aspnes]] to create a stripped-down version of ''Monster'' which he called TinyMUD.{{R|mud-info}}

TinyMUD, written in C and released in late 1989, spawned [[TinyMUD family tree|a number of descendants]], including [[TinyMUCK]] and [[TinyMUSH]]. TinyMUCK version 2 contained a full programming language named [[MUF (programming language)|MUF]] (Multi-User [[Forth (programming language)|Forth]]), while [[MUSH]] greatly expanded the command interface. To distance itself from the combat-oriented traditional MUDs it was said that the "D" in TinyMUD stood for Multi-User "Domain" or "Dimension"; this, along with the eventual popularity of acronyms other than MUD (such as MUCK, MUSH, MUSE, and so on) for this kind of server, led to the eventual adoption of the term [[MU*]] to refer to the [[TinyMUD family tree|TinyMUD family]].{{R|bartle-acronym|hahn-acronym}} UberMUD, UnterMUD, and [[MOO]] were inspired by TinyMUD but are not direct descendants.{{R|burka-mudline-tinymud}}

TinyMUD is also used to refer to the first database run under the TinyMUD codebase, which is also known as TinyMUD Classic;<ref>{{cite web| url = http://toccobrator.com/classic.html| title = toccobrator.com: TinyMUD Classic}}</ref> it ran from August 1989 to April 1990, and still comes back up every August during a holiday called Brigadoon Day, a reference to the Scottish village in the musical [[Brigadoon]].

===Hourglass===
The first version of Hourglass was written by Yehuda Simmons and later Daniel James for ''[[Avalon: The Legend Lives]]'' which debuted in 1989 at the last of the London MUD mega Meets aptly named ''Adventure '89''{{R| BartleAdventure89}} and initially hosted on the IOWA system. Initially written in ARM assembly language on the [[Acorn Archimedes]] 440, in 1994 it made the leap from the venerable Archimedes to [[Debian]] Linux on the PC and later [[Red Hat]] where, other than shifting to [[Ubuntu (operating system)|Ubuntu]], it has remained ever since. An early version of Hourglass was also ported to the PC, named Vortex, by Ben Maizels in 1992.

Although written specifically for ''Avalon: The Legend Lives'', it went on to spawn a number of games, including ''Avalon: The First Age'', which ran from 1999 to 2014. The now defunct 1996 ''Age of Thrones'' and notably ''[[Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands]]'' started life in Vortex prior to moving to its own Rapture engine. Hourglass continues to be developed as of 2016 and ''Avalon: The Legend Lives'' currently has 2,901,325 written words and 2,248,374 lines of game code (with 2,417,900 instructions). The original game came in at 1&nbsp;KB in 1989, compared to 102&nbsp;GB in January 2016.

===LPMud===
{{Main|LPMud}}
In 1989, LPMud was developed by [[Lars Pensjö]] (hence the '''LP''' in LPMud). Pensjö had been an avid player of [[TinyMUD]] and [[AberMUD]] and wanted to create a world with the flexibility of TinyMUD and the gameplay of AberMUD. In order to accomplish this he wrote what is nowadays known as a [[virtual machine]], which he called the LPMud driver, that ran the C-like [[LPC (programming language)|LPC programming language]] used to create the game world.{{R|dog-lpmud}} Pensjö's interest in LPMud eventually waned and development was carried on by others such as [[Jörn Rennecke|Jörn "Amylaar" Rennecke]], [[Felix Croes|Felix "Dworkin" Croes]], Tim "Beek" Hollebeek and Lars Düning. During the early 1990s, LPMud was one of the most popular MUD codebases.{{R|livinginternet-lpmud}} [[LPMud family tree|Descendants of the original LPMud]] include [[MudOS]], [[Dworkin's Game Driver|DGD]], [[SWLPC (programming language)|SWLPC]], [[FluffOS]], and the Pike programming language, the latter the work of long-time LPMud developer Fredrik "Profezzorn" Hübinette.

===DikuMUD===
{{Main|DikuMUD}}
In 1990, the release of DikuMUD, which was inspired by AberMUD, led to a virtual explosion of [[hack and slash]] MUDs based upon its code. DikuMUD inspired [[DikuMUD family tree|numerous derivative codebases]], including [[CircleMUD]], [[Merc (MUD)|Merc]], [[ROM (MUD)|ROM]], [[SMAUG (MUD)|SMAUG]], and [[GodWars]]. The original Diku team comprised Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Staerfeldt. DikuMUD had a key influence on the early evolution of the [[Massively multiplayer online role-playing game|MMORPG]] genre, with ''[[EverQuest]]'' (created by avid DikuMUD player [[Brad McQuaid]]{{R|guru3d}}) displaying such Diku-like gameplay that [[Verant]] developers were made to issue a sworn statement that no actual DikuMUD code was incorporated.{{R|verant-diku-persons|verant-diku-server}}

===Simutronics===
{{Main|Simutronics}}
In 1987, David Whatley, having previously played ''[[Scepter of Goth]]'' and ''[[Island of Kesmai]]'', founded Simutronics with Tom and Susan Zelinski.{{R|cambron-dunin}} In the same year they demonstrated a prototype of ''[[GemStone IV|GemStone]]'' to [[GEnie]]. After a short-lived instance of ''GemStone II'', ''GemStone III'' was officially launched in February 1990. ''GemStone III'' became available on [[AOL]] in September 1995, followed by the release of ''[[DragonRealms]]'' in February 1996. By the end of 1997 ''GemStone III'' and ''DragonRealms'' had become the first and second most played games on AOL.{{R|dunin-simutronics}}