AberMUD
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AberMUD was the first popular internet based MUD. The first version was written in B by Alan Cox for an old Honeywell mainframe and opened in 1987. In 1988 it was ported to C and to UNIX. This version (AberMUD 3) was made freely available to the world and as a result became the first popular MUD on the internet.
AberMUD was however far from the original MUD. The authors played the Essex University MUD1 written by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle several years earlier, and the gameplay (although not the game world) were heavily influenced by MUD1.
AberMUD 3 was rewritten by Rich $alz and others to create an "AberMUD 4". This was rewritten to be far more efficient by Alf and Nicknack whose system "Dirt" is now used by most of the remaining AberMUD games on the internet.
In 1991 Alan Cox wrote AberMUD IV (unrelated to AberMUD 4) and then AberMUD V, which was also used, with graphical extensions in the "Elvira" game by Horrorsoft. AberMUD V was later released under the GNU General Public License.
AberMUD is named after the University of Wales Aberystwyth. Several dozen AberMUDs remain in operation, but in 2002 they have few players.
A complete history of AberMUD can be found in the AberMUD V packages at http://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/alan/Software/Games/AberMUD5.
External links
- List of extant AberMUDs (http://www.efylon.org/mudlist/showme.php)