JediMUD
Encyclopedia
JediMUD is a MUD
MUD
A MUD , pronounced , is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, with the term usually referring to text-based instances of these. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat...

, an online text-based role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...

, one of the longest-running of its kind. It has been open to the public since August 28, 1992 and is based on the CircleMUD
CircleMUD
CircleMUD is a MUD codebase written by Jeremy Elson first released on July 16, 1993. It is a derivative of DikuMUD that was written in 1990 by Katja Nyboe, Tom Madsen, Hans Henrik Staerfeldt, Michael Seifert and Sebastian Hammer.- Overview :...

 derivative of the DikuMUD
DikuMUD
DikuMUD is a multiplayer text-based role-playing game, which is a type of MUD. It was written in 1990 and 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Staerfeldt at DIKU —the department of computer science at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen,...

 code-base.

History

In its infancy, JediMUD was created by the Department of Psychology at Johns Hopkins University in an effort to study human behavior. On occasion, one of the original creators of the game would recruit people for more specific studies. Since then, JediMUD has been included in various technical, psychological, philosophical and historical whitepapers.

The game serves as a live, fully functional example of the origin of today's MMORPGs
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

. Players can experience, first-hand, how people of the 1990s played and interacted together online. In many ways, the game is like walking into a museum and not only seeing how cultures like the Mayans or Aztecs interacted but actually having people from those cultures there to interact with you, personally.

Although in name JediMUD appears to be a MUD based on specific source material, it actually is not. JediMUD has a wide variety of areas to explore and classes to play grounded in a number of genres, most notably fantasy and sci-fi but also history and contemporary pop culture. The reasoning behind this is to allow players to focus on the areas which they like most and to allow them to develop their alternative personas as they see fit.

While text-based games like JediMUD lack the graphics of today's common MMORPGs, the trade-off is the ability to allow normal people to more easily contribute to the enjoyment of the game, through a team of administrators who take player-submitted ideas and use them to create the code, areas, mobiles
Mob (computer gaming)
A mob, mobile or monster is a computer-controlled non-player character in a computer game such as an MMORPG or MUD. Depending on context, all such characters in a game may be considered "mobs", or usage may be limited to hostile NPCs and/or NPCs vulnerable to attack.-Purpose of mobs:Defeating...

 and everything else required for the game to run.

Access

JediMUD is played via a telnet
TELNET
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...

 client or MUD client
MUD client
A MUD client is a computer application used to connect to a MUD, a type of multiplayer online game. Generally, a MUD client is a very basic telnet client that lacks VT100 terminal emulation and the capability to perform telnet negotiations...

. Its interface is text-command driven, in what is often thought of as the Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...

 style.

Community

Due to sharing of the same software developer, Jeremy Elson
Jeremy Elson
Jeremy Elson is a computer researcher specializing in wireless Sensor Networks. He is also the creator of the popular CircleMUD. Elson received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 2003. He is currently working at Microsoft Research, in the Distributed Systems and Security group within Systems and Networking...

, JediMUD has often been tightly tied to the evolution of the popular MUD code-base, CircleMUD
CircleMUD
CircleMUD is a MUD codebase written by Jeremy Elson first released on July 16, 1993. It is a derivative of DikuMUD that was written in 1990 by Katja Nyboe, Tom Madsen, Hans Henrik Staerfeldt, Michael Seifert and Sebastian Hammer.- Overview :...

.

JediMUD enjoys an international audience, including players from the US, UK, Germany, Norway, Austria, Australia, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines, Japan, Costa Rica and many others. Some individuals have been playing JediMUD since its inception.

One former contributor to JediMUD created a YouTube video to illustrate the tight ties to history that several zones in the game have. Whereas some games focus on their own imaginary world, many JediMUD contributors have added zones based on historical figures and occurrences, such as the life of Emperor Honorius Augustus.

Reception

In September 1995, JediMUD was named Mud of the Month by The Mud Connector
The Mud Connector
The Mud Connector, abbreviated TMC, is a computer gaming web site which provides articles, discussions, reviews, resource links and game listings about MUDs. The site allows mud owners, administrators and enthusiasts to submit information and reviews about specific MUDs...

.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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