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22439: RE: [MUD-Dev] Online Worlds Timeline Update
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From: "Richard A. Bartle" <richard@mud.co.uk>
Newsgroups: nu.kanga.list.mud-dev
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 10:29:13 -0000
References: [1]
Organization: Kanga.Nu
On 21 February 2002, Raph Koster wrote:
> The name, "multi user dungeon" refers to a variant of ADVENT known as
> DUNGEN.
No, not ADVENT, ZORK.
ZORK was written in a language called MDL ("Method Definition
Language", 1975) which was all the rage at MIT's AI lab but which
wasn't used a great deal at institutions with punier computing
facilities. ZORK was ported to ForTran and renamed "Dungeon"
(ie. DUNGEN for a sixbit file name), for use on less computationally
endowed systems.
The TADS game list includes the following historical note about a
TADS conversion of DUNGEN:
"The original 'Zork' as written in 1977-79 at the MIT by a group
including Marc Blank and Dave Lebling. It was programmed in MDL
but ported to Fortran (and renamed 'Dungeon') by Bob Supnik in
1979/80" (from
http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/tads-gamelist2.txt)
The date looks a little wrong there, because MUD got its name in
1978 (either that or Roy's recollections as to the origins of the
name MUD don't match reality). I know that Marc Blank and David
Lebling were Zork's main authors, though, so I assume that Bob
Supnik did indeed do the conversion to ForTran.
Richard
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