From: fortony@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Felix Sebastian Ortony)
Subject: Re: Text based world-building in MUDs, esp. LP-mud (LONG)
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1991 02:28:51 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL



beeman%cats.UCSC.EDU@ucscc.ucsc.edu (Adam D Beeman) writes:

>        It is my feeling that the one called "LPmud" has the most potential
>right now due to the fact that it has in my opinion the most programmability.
>Currently I have been devoting a great deal of time learning the language of
>this "system", and in the last year and a half I've seen a great deal of
>evolution within the game and the affecting the worlds created by it.

Before the hardliners jump in with religious conviction, let me quickly
run down a history.

There are two basic styles of MUDs: Tiny* and LP*.  Tiny* is the 'social'
style, LP* is the 'D&D' style.  There are hundreds of different variations
under each style.  Both main styles have programmability, databases, and
zealots.  LP* MUDs have a C-like programming language.  Tiny* MUDs have
everything from a FORTH-like programming language to a Lisp-like programming
language to virtually no language at all.  It's probably not correct to
say that LPMud is more programmable than, say, TinyMUCK, or vice versa,
but there's always conflict.  LP*s have a combat system -- Tiny*s don't.
Tiny*s have a faster, sleeker server.  Caveat Emptor.

>-Adam Beeman

fortony@cs.uiuc.edu