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<H1>Re: MUD Development Digest</H1>
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<LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#null,net">mud-dev#null,net</A></LI>
<LI><em>Subject</em>: Re: MUD Development Digest</LI>
<LI><em>From</em>: "Dr. Cat" <<A HREF="mailto:cat#bga,com">cat#bga,com</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Date</em>: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:04:42 -0600 (CST)</LI>
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<PRE>
> From: "Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com>
>
> Ultima I used a redefined B&W character set at 80x24 for all
> graphics,including the "3d" dungeon view, which was very simple. The
> space sections were overhead view, with an asterisk for a star, and
> little ship icons... Space got left out of all subsequent Ultimas, and
> Richard now says he was "putting the kitchen sink in" and now knows
> better. :)
This might be uninteresting to many of the list-members, but I have a
personal obsession with being the "historian of computer FRPGs", so when
I see a minor factual inaccuracy I have a knee-jerk compulsion to speak
up. I did write an article for the Journal of Computer Game Design many
years ago but the early history of them. If I could ever find a copy in
machine readable form, it might be worth putting up in some obscure
corner of the web somewhere.
I worked on the remake of Ultima I in 1987, so I know it pretty well. I
also bought the original version when it first came out and played it all
the way through - back in 1981 I think. The Apple II family didn't have
hardware redefinable character sets, like the later Atari 800 and
Commodore 64 did. Some companies provided software character generators
that ran in the "hi-res" graphics mode, but Richard wasn't using one of
those. The wildenress display used "tiles" that were twice as tall and
twices as wide as a text character, giving the ability to put around
20x16 tiles on the screen. Maybe less than 16 vertically, I forget
whether he used the Apple's hardware 4 line text window. The remake had
a little less because of the addition of fancy blue and white borders, as
used in Ultima 3 and 4. The towns and castles used smaller shapes to get
more detail and maneuvering room on-screen, and matched the 40x24
dimensions of an Apple text screen. The dungeons weren't drawn with
bitmap shapes at all, they were done entirely with line-drawings, with
correct perspective calculated in interpreted BASIC with floating point
(handled in software by ROM code Bill Gates and Paul Allen may even have
gotten their hands dirty working on) running on a 1MHz 8 bit processor.
In the remake this code was rewritten in assembly language by yours
truly. Ah, those were the days...
Sorry if I'm boring the list with this stuff, I'm just obsessed with the
details. Like when people think that MUD at the University of Essex was
the first widely accessible online multiplayer CRPG. When I know that it
was the early games on the Plato network, based out of the Univrsity of
Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. They had games like Moria, Oubliette, and
later Avatar not long after Dungeons and Dragons itself came out. They
could also claim to be the first *graphical* online multiplayer CRPGs,
something MUD certainly isn't in the comptetion for, nor anything else
I'm personally aware of until almost a decade later when Habitat showed up.
Wizardry was a blatant imitator of Avatar, even down to using the exact
same spell names that Avatar had. (Which its author once publically
tried to claim was a "coincidence".)
Anyway I'll end this digression here, and I promise next time I post to
the list it'll be about something more relevant, like my unusual approach
to designing my server's scripting lnguage or something.
*-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------*
Dr. Cat / Dragon's Eye Productions || Free alpha test:
*-------------------------------------------** <A HREF="http://www.bga.com/furcadia">http://www.bga.com/furcadia</A>
Furcadia - a new graphic mud for PCs! || Let your imagination soar!
*-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------*
</PRE>
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<ul><li>Thread context:
<BLOCKQUOTE><UL>
<LI><STRONG>Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00552" HREF="msg00552.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></strong>,
Stephen Zepp <a href="mailto:zoran#enid,com">zoran#enid,com</a>, Sat 21 Feb 1998, 18:38 GMT
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</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00199" HREF="msg00199.html">Re: MUD Development Digest</A></strong>,
Dr. Cat <a href="mailto:cat#bga,com">cat#bga,com</a>, Sun 11 Jan 1998, 21:18 GMT
<UL>
<li><Possible follow-up(s)><br>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00361" HREF="msg00361.html">Re: MUD Development Digest</A></strong>,
Dr. Cat <a href="mailto:cat#bga,com">cat#bga,com</a>, Sun 01 Feb 1998, 01:20 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00394" HREF="msg00394.html">Re: MUD Development Digest</A></strong>,
Dr. Cat <a href="mailto:cat#bga,com">cat#bga,com</a>, Sun 08 Feb 1998, 22:30 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00626" HREF="msg00626.html">Re: MUD Development Digest</A></strong>,
Dr. Cat <a href="mailto:cat#bga,com">cat#bga,com</a>, Fri 27 Feb 1998, 20:04 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00193" HREF="msg00193.html">FAQ</A></strong>,
Ling <a href="mailto:K.L.Lo-94#student,lboro.ac.uk">K.L.Lo-94#student,lboro.ac.uk</a>, Sun 11 Jan 1998, 15:26 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00218" HREF="msg00218.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] FAQ</A></strong>,
Alex Oren <a href="mailto:alexo#bigfoot,com">alexo#bigfoot,com</a>, Mon 12 Jan 1998, 19:12 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00236" HREF="msg00236.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] FAQ</A></strong>,
Nathan Yospe <a href="mailto:yospe#hawaii,edu">yospe#hawaii,edu</a>, Wed 14 Jan 1998, 02:01 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00335" HREF="msg00335.html">[MUD-Dev] FAQ</A></strong>,
Marc Eyrignoux <a href="mailto:Marc.Eyrignoux#efrei,fr">Marc.Eyrignoux#efrei,fr</a>, Wed 28 Jan 1998, 10:30 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
</UL></BLOCKQUOTE>
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