From: jna@hitl.vrnet.washington.edu (Johan Anderson)
Subject: Re: More on MUDs (Was Re: VR Worlds better than Reality)
Date: 4 Aug 91 22:34:12
Organization: Human Interface Technology Laboratory, UW, Seattle



In article <1991Aug4.215126.17768@milton.u.washington.edu> decwrl!well.sf.ca.us!well!hlr@uunet.uu.net (Howard Rheingold) writes:

> Can you tell us about LPmud in a way that is consistent with living in
> a kind of VR world? And something about the scope of LPmud as a
> subculture? Do you think this world will be enthralled with VR
> frontends, or is the text format essential to the illusion?

I'd like to pick up this thread, because I think it's important. There are 
thousands of people around the internet living in and creating virtual 
worlds, and they have been doing so for more than two years. The fact that
these worlds are still textinterfaced is mainly because that is all the
bandwidth of the internet can handle. Given a high bandwidth network and
readily accessible VR interfaces, the MUDs would evolve into true VR's.

I have a very deep interest in VR and virtual worlds, I'm currently
doing my exam project at the HITLab for Chalmers University of Technology,
and I'm also heavely involved in the development of the LPmud at the 
original site, called Genesis, at Chalmers Computer Club in Sweden.

LPmud is not the only Multi User Dungeoun game on the internet, there is
a huge variety and three newsgroups: rec.games.mud, alt.mud, alt.mud.lp

The MUDs are games set in virtual worlds. They have two roots, the 
textadventure games and the 'real time' talk systems. These two factors
has, in most MUDs, been joined by a third, namely the capability to, in
runtime, extend and build new parts of the game world. 

There is a huge number of people for which only the 'gaming' and social
aspects of MUDs are important, these form what might be called a 
'subculture'. For them the MUD worlds are much like roleplaying games
and many can spend almost entire days interacting inside them. If you
want to get a feel of what social life could be like in a virtual world
open to a huge number people, I highly recommend spending a day or two
in a MUD game. Be warned though that it is not enough to spend such a
short time as an hour or two, you must sacrifice at least 8-10 hours of
your time.

For me the MUD games are a platform for creating virtual worlds to be used
and tested by people from all over the internet. I choose to make my
creations in LPmud for two reason, its a very flexible platform and the
original design, by Lars Pensjoe, was made at my University.

What gives LPmud its strength is its extremely flexible world building
capabilities. Almost anything conceivable can be created, given adequate
programming skills. 

Seeing the complexity of some of these worlds I'd very much like to stress
a point I'd tried to make earlier in this newsgroup. The true difficulties
in VR will not be the interfaces and such things as rendering. I am
convinced that we will in time be able to bring across any sensory 
impression we have a model for to the user, this is a hardware problem :-)

We will however have very limited models and the underlying simulation
of even a simple virtual world will be extremely complex. My point here is
that the MUD community has been creating simulations and models for a long
time and the experience so gained is very valuable.

I have collected some information on MUDs in general and written a short 
paper on the design and implementation of LPmud. I hope our dear moderator
can make these available through ftp if there is an interest.

Johan

p.s.
	For the wizards of Genesis: This is Commander the Madwand,
	doodling on news instead of correcting mudlib3 bugs.
d.s.

--
Johan Andersson           | "You don`t have conversations with microprocessors
HITL, Seattle, USA        | you tell them what to do, and then you helplessly
Email:                    | watch the disaster when they take you literally."
jna@cd.chalmers.se	  |	Sah`ot in David Brins "Startide Rising"


[MODERATOR'S NOTE:  If the MUD newsgroup has an archive, that would be the
appropriate first place to look for, and to leave, detailed information.
However, if it does not, then we can use the sci.virtual-worlds archives
to make available Johan's excellent notes on MUDs. -- Bob Jacobson]