LPMud

LPMud (sometimes shortened to simply "LP") is a MUD variant developed in 1989 by Lars Pensjö (hence the LP in LPMud) that separates the MUD environment functionality between a virtual machine (known as the driver) and world-building components in the LPC programming language (known as the mudlib).

Motivation

Pensjö had been an avid player of TinyMUD and AberMUD. He wanted to create a world with the flexibility of TinyMUD and the power of AberMUD. Furthermore, he did not want to have sole responsibility for creating and maintaining the game world. He once said, "I didn't think I would be able to design a good adventure. By allowing wizards coding rights, I thought others could help me with this." [cite web
url=http://www.rpgmud.com/lpmud_timeline.htm
title=LPMud timeline
author=George Reese
year=1995
quote=Having fun playing Tinymud and Abermud, Lars Pensjö decides to write a server to combine the extensibility of Tinymud with the adventures of Abermud.] The result was the creation of a new, C-based, object-oriented programming language, LPC that made it simple for people with minimal programming skills to add elements like rooms, weapons, and monsters to a gaming world.

To accomplish his goal, Lennart Augustsson convinced Lars to write what today would be called a virtual machine, the LPMud driver. The driver managed the interpretation of LPC code as well as providing basic operating system services to the LPC code. By virtue of this design, Lars made it more difficult for common programming errors like infinite loops and memory leaks made by game builders to harm the overall stability of the game. His choice of an OO approach made it easy for new programmers to concentrate on the task of "building a room" rather than programming logic.

By the end of 1989, there were two major muds built on top of the LPMud engine:
*Genesis LPMud (Lars Pensjö's original "LPMud")
*Nanvaent

Evolution of LPMuds

Lars's interest in LPMuds eventually waned. By the time it did, in the early 1990s, LPMud had become one of the most popular forms of MUD. [cite web
url=http://www.livinginternet.com/d/di_major.htm
title=MUD History
author=William Stewart
year=2002
quote=The original LPMUD was written by Lars Pensjl and others, and became one of the most popular MUD's by the early 1990's.] His work has been extended or reverse engineered in the following drivers:
* CD LPMud driver (short for Chalmers Datorförening, the computer club of the Chalmers University of Technology)
* Amylaar (also known as LPMud 3.x)
* MudOS
* DGD (Dworkin's Generic Driver, originally Dworkin's Game Driver)
* [http://www.bearnip.com/lars/proj/ldmud.html LDMud] , a game driver based on Amylaar by Lars Düning
* UriMUD, a derivative of LP 2.4.5
* FluffOS, Discworld MUD's fork of MudOS
* The Pike programming language

The LPMud approach also enabled the development of gaming frameworks built in LPC that game builders could use as the foundation for their worlds. The original mudlib was the Genesis Mudlib that came with LPMud drivers up to LPMud 2.4.5. As LPMud matured, the separation between driver and mudlib grew to the point that the developers of MudOS and DGD did not ship their drivers with fully functional mudlibs. Popular LPMud mudlibs include:
* Discworld Mudlib from the Discworld MUD
* CDlib from Genesis LPMud
* Nightmare Mudlib from Nightmare LPMud
* TMI Mudlib from The Mud Institute
* Lima Mudlib from Lima Bean
* [http://heaven7.sourceforge.net/ Heaven7 Mudlib] from Heaven7
* Dead Souls Mudlib
* LPUniversity Mudlib from the LPUniversity Foundation

LPMud talkers

While the first talker was invented in 1984, until 1990 they were only available on small intranet services. LPMud was used as the basis for the first Internet talker, Cat Chat, which opened in 1990, and also for the second Internet talker Cheesehouse, which opened in 1991, and historically formed the basis of most other talkers, creating the ew-too code that was the most popular talker code base until 1996.

References

ee also

*LPC (programming language)
*LPMud family tree

External links

* [http://www.faqs.org/faqs/games/mud-faq/lp/ LPMud FAQ]
* [http://www.rpgmud.com/lpmud_timeline.htm LPMud Timeline]
* [http://www.bearnip.com/lars/proj/ldmud.html LDMud Website]
* [http://www.mudos.org/ MudOS Website]
* [http://lpmuds.net/ LPMuds.net] - A resource for MUDs that use LPC.
* [http://www.mudconnector.com/ The Mudconnector]
* [http://mudseek.com/ MUDseek] - A Google custom search engine for MUDs.