The MUD Exhibit

DikuMUD was created in 1990–91 by Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyborg, Michael Seifert and Hans Henrik Stærfeldt at DIKU (Datalogisk Institut, Københavns Universitet) in Copenhagen, whose institute lent the game its name. Inspired by AberMUD, it adopted a Dungeons & Dragons–style system of classes, levels and stat-driven combat around the stock city of Midgaard. As one of the first freely available MUD servers it spread rapidly and became the basis for engines including Merc, CircleMUD and SMAUG. This exhibit runs the early 'dm-dist-alfa' distribution in your browser.

Merc Diku MUD was developed by Michael Chastain ('Furey'), Michael Quan ('Kahn') and Mitchell Tse ('Hatchet') under the name MERC Industries. Release 2.1 was issued on 1 August 1993 and the final release, Merc 2.2, on 24 November 1993. Merc became one of the most influential DikuMUD branches, directly spawning ROM, EnvyMUD, GodWars and SMAUG.

CircleMUD was written by Jeremy Elson at Johns Hopkins University and first released on 16 July 1993 as a derivative of DikuMUD, intended as a clean, stable, well-documented base codebase. The 3.x line added OasisOLC online building and a larger stock world of roughly 1,880 rooms. Elson's final release was CircleMUD 3.1 (2002); development continued as tbaMUD. This exhibit runs CircleMUD 3.1 in your browser.

Following Jeremy Elson's final CircleMUD release (3.1, 2002), the codebase was renamed tbaMUD with version 3.51 and became the maintained continuation of the CircleMUD line, associated with The Builder Academy MUD. It keeps CircleMUD's approachable codebase while folding in the DG Scripts engine, OasisOLC online creation, a quest system and a large finished stock world (Midgaard plus ~190 zones). This exhibit runs the genuine tbaMUD server in your browser; the first character created becomes the Implementor.

SMAUG (Simulated Medieval Adventure multi-User Game) began in 1994 as a Merc 2.1–based MUD, Realms of Despair, developed by Derek 'Thoric' Snider and the Realms team. It added deities, clans, an expanded race/class system, online building and rich ANSI colour, and its source was first publicly released in December 1996, after which it became the base for dozens of MUDs and derivatives including Star Wars Reality. Version 1.4a (1998) is the last official release and the base for this in-browser exhibit.

ROM, originally 'Rivers of MUD', was created by Russ Taylor ('Alander') from the Merc codebase, with ROM 2.3 released in 1993 and the widely distributed ROM 2.4 following thereafter. Taylor formed the Rom Consortium in 1994. ROM reworked combat, skills and spells, ships the classic Midgaard stock area and starts new players in 'Mud School'. This exhibit runs ROM 2.4 beta 6 in your browser.

Star Wars Reality (SWR) was created in early 1997 from an early version of SMAUG to recreate the Star Wars setting, adding starships you can pilot between real star systems, space combat, the Force and playable species. It spawned numerous space-themed MUDs and codebases. SWRFUSS, the 'Fixed Up Smaug Source' edition, is a continuing community project to fix bugs in and modernise the SWR codebase, and is what this exhibit runs in your browser.

Richard Woolcock ('KaVir') created the original GodWars MUD in 1995 as a derivative of Merc 2.1. Thematically influenced by White Wolf's World of Darkness games, it featured supernatural PvP classes and spread very widely. Woolcock later wrote a separate from-scratch successor, God Wars II.

Anatolia ('Realms of Anatolia') was created by Serdar Bulut, Ibrahim Canpunar, Murat Bicer and Devrim Baris Acar and first released in 1997, originally a Turkish-language MUD that became one of the larger ROM-derived worlds. Built on ROM 2.4 (itself on Merc 2.1, itself on DikuMUD), it adds a 109-area stock world, a dozen classes (warrior, cleric, thief, paladin, ninja, ranger, samurai, vampire, necromancer, invoker, transmuter, elementalist), races with their own skills, choosable hometowns and alignment/ethos, and a remort system. This exhibit runs Anatolia 3.1 in your browser; new characters start in the Merc Mud School.

AFKMud (the AFKMud / Alsherok codebase) is a modern C++ continuation of SMAUG maintained by Roger 'Samson' Libiez and the Alsherok team since 1997. Built on SMAUG 1.8b, it has been rewritten and extended over decades, adding an overland wilderness map system, OasisOLC-style online building, MUDProgs scripting, a name-authorization system, connection history, MCCP compression and MSP sound, and modernised onto current C++ (C++23). The public release ships the Alsherok framework world rather than a large content world, so it serves as a clean, modern SMAUG sandbox; this exhibit runs it in your browser.

SmaugFUSS (Smaug Fixed Up Smaug Source) is the community's maintained continuation of the original fantasy SMAUG 1.4 codebase, led by Roger 'Samson' Libiez and members of the SMAUG community on the SmaugMuds/AFKMods site. Where SMAUG 1.4a (1998) was the last official release, FUSS keeps the same lineage (SMAUG → Merc 2.1 → DikuMUD) and the same Realms-of-Despair-style stock world (deities, clans, races/classes, online building, MUDProgs, rich ANSI colour), but fixes long-standing bugs, removes crashes and security holes, modernises the build (current C++), and adds MCCP/MSSP and IPv6. It is the canonical 'keep playing stock SMAUG' branch (the Star Wars conversion SWRFUSS is its sibling); this exhibit runs it in your browser.

Dead Souls is a mudlib for the MudOS/FluffOS driver written by George Reese (Descartes of Borg), the author of the earlier Nightmare mudlib, and later maintained by Bill Sanchez. Designed to be clean, well-documented and approachable, it became one of the most popular starting points for new LPMuds. Dead Souls 3 targets the FluffOS driver line; the exhibit runs the stock Dead Souls 3 world on the FluffOS 2.23 (MudOS-lineage) driver compiled to WebAssembly, with the whole mudlib compiled from LPC source in the browser at boot.

Pavel Curtis, then at Xerox PARC, took Stephen White's MOO design, language and code, fixed bugs and added features, and released the second version, LambdaMOO, on 30 October 1990. The LambdaMOO server (last canonical release 1.8.1) became the most widely deployed MOO codebase, and the LambdaMOO world remains online. Other early contributors included Roger Crew, Judy Anderson and Erik Ostrom. A 1993 incident in the world prompted Julian Dibbell's widely cited essay 'A Rape in Cyberspace'. This site runs the 1.8.1 server in your browser with the classic LambdaCore database.

ToastStunt, maintained by lisdude, is the latest in the chain of LambdaMOO-derived servers: it descends from Stunt (itself forked from LambdaMOO) and adds SQLite database support, PCRE regular expressions, IPv6, TLS and threading. It powers live MUDs such as Miriani and ChatMUD, and is paired with the ToastCore starter database. This site runs the ToastStunt server in your browser with ToastCore.