Talk:Online creation

The Isles 15
The Isles 15 came out before 1.1. Though ILAB/OLC was written based on the 1.1 version, OLC had already made its rounds as "TheIsles15" and "TheIsles16" one year earlier. 98.111.199.226 (talk) 15:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Prove it, the only decent source I know of says Jul 29, 1994. There's some evidence of a limited release in early 1994.  --Scandum (talk) 16:00, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

First of all, prove that it wasn't User:Scandum. We're here to prove that it WAS WRITTEN, not RELEASED by the end of 1993, not 1994 as this erroneous article states. Furthermore, OLC was written initially for Merc 2.0, not 2.2 -- we kept updating OLC as they released new versions of Merc throughout 1993. 2.0b was the one I started with I believe. This occurred earlier in the year. As soon as 2.2 was released in October, we were already porting our 2.0b version to 2.2. We did all of our development on MS-DOS using the DJ Delorie GNU C Compiler for MS-DOS.

Timeline, April 5, 1993 - December 31, 1993

Merc 2.0 released in 1993 : Merc 2.0 Beta released for anon ftp - rec.games.mud.diku | Google Groups

Already on MSDOS: Merc for dos - rec.games.mud.diku | Google Groups April, 1993

Already distributed by April 21: Merc 2.0 Beta - rec.games.mud.diku | Google Groups Mid-1993

This is the post that shows Hidden Worlds added their OLC, mid-1993. It was never distributed and only worked on that mud. It was written by Kalgen, who also wrote another un-distributed OLC. This was the first one I ever saw on a Merc and it was the inspiration for ours though I never immorted -- Chris Woodward did -- our OLC was released only a few months later: Merc2 Area Editor - rec.games.mud.diku | Google Groups

Me announcing CthulhuMUD using my friend Chris Tchou's Andrew account: Cthulhu MUD - rec.games.mud.diku | Sept 1, 1993 -- this is precisely the time when we wrote OLC for our MUDs. It was only a few weeks/a month later that it was hacked and stolen, so we then released it publically. I re-released it several times in 1993 and 1994. This is the basis for the claim of October 15th. A week or month either way from October 15th is when it was written, period. I believe CthulhuMUD was hacked on Halloween, 1993.

Cthulhu MUD the saga continues - rec.games.mud.diku | Google Groups Looking for a site <- Sept 1993

Where's Hidden Worlds..?? - rec.games.mud.diku | Google Groups Hidden Worlds goes down

Hidden Worlds is back up! - rec.games.mud.diku | Google Groups Hidden Worlds back up!

CircleMUD 2.11 now available at ftp.cs.jhu.eduub/CircleMUD - rec.games.mud.diku | Sept 19, 1993, Circle 2.11 released

Cthulhumud - rec.games.mud.diku | Google Groups User looking for CthulhuMUD October 7th, 1993

C T H U L H U M U D - rec.games.mud.diku | Google Groups CthuhuMUD back on new server

CircleMUD 2.20 now available at ftp.cs.jhu.eduub/CircleMUD - rec.games.mud.diku | CircleMUD 2.20 released Nov 17, 1993

NiMUD had been created at this point, and my personal "NiMUD" development site, post-Chris Woodward's involvement: NIMUD. - rec.games.mud.diku | Dec 3, 1993

Evidence that OLC was already written: Looking for online creation code - rec.games.mud.diku | Google Groups Dec 27-31, 1993 .. I gave it to the one person, then the same day I released it because I felt everybody deserved it.

<- OLC was made available in December, 1993, thus it had been written earlier than December, 1993.

98.111.199.226 (talk) 18:50, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * There's a usenet post about considering a private release at Dec 31 1993, so the first release would have been January 1994, except there's only proof of the 1.0 release in mid 1994. I failed to find a usenet post of a public release or leak prior to that. --Scandum (talk) 19:24, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

There is no reason to write "Copyright 1994" when it's obviously "Copyright 1993". We're here to prove that it WAS WRITTEN, not RELEASED by the end of 1993, not 1994 as this erroneous article states. 98.111.199.226 (talk) 05:32, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

First MUD with online creation
The line "The first publicly available mud that featured in-game creation of the game world was Monster" is wrong. The first publicly-available MUD that did this was Gods; it was also "invented" by the IOWA system (they called them "multi-user player-extensible games"). See for details.

The usual warnings about "first" apply, though. The reason that Monster is important is not that it was first, because it wasn't; rather, it's because today's MMOs descend along a line that passes through Monster. Gods (and perhaps the IOWA MUDs) may have got there first, but they didn't propagate the idea to the present day. You can't even cut MUD version 2 out of the definition by invoking a "public release" clause, because it was released publicly. The term you're looking for is that Monster was the progenitor of today's in-world object creation. It's not the first, but it's the one from which current practice descends.

RichardBartle (talk) 12:15, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

"Historical Notes: Although the present system went live in October 1988, Gods began in 1985 as a non-commercial MUA; its author was inspired by MUD1 to write his own game, and was among the first people to do so. Gods was Shades' only rival to be the Prestel Micronet MUA.

Review: The dominant concept in Gods, which permeates every facet of it, is that of object creation. Instead of becoming a wiz when one gains the appropriate experience points, one becomes a 'god'. Gods have the ability to alter the game at will, but doing so costs them points. When mortals cash in treasure for points, they take it to the temple of their favoured god. This will add to that god's points, as well as to their own. Thus, popular and respected gods will be able to make more changes to the game, and ones that are unpopular will lose the ability." Here it is called "Object Creation" .. by the way, why does this article focus on online MUD level editing, rather than just "OLC" which is Online Creation? Isn't that too broad of a scope for this article? 98.111.199.195 (talk) 08:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The article focuses on level editing mainly because the article was originally created by Herb Gilliland in order to back up some incorrect stuff in his NiMUD article, and much of the effort on this article has been spent correcting misinformation rather than expanding the article. If it was up to me, there wouldn't be a MUD-specific article about level editing because I don't think there's enough unique stuff about MUDs to make this article rather than adding onto other video game articles; perhaps other people have the same view as me and that'd be why they haven't added much to it. Atari2600tim (talk • contribs)  23:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Highly debatable, Atari2600tim ... I am fairly certain that you are of no level of credible expertise to make such commentary. Furthermore, I wanted to mention that _no one_ has revised this article since Dr. Bartle revealed the Gods fact.   Also, no one addresses the fact that "object creation" and "level editing" have little to do with the OLC software package released in 1993.  I'd say the authors of this article were just being mean to the person who created the article, considering you have deleted almost every single reference to him in the last 405321960 revisions, and have continually kept the copyright dates measured incorrectly on this article.  I doubt the primary editors of this article are at all interested in anything other than their continuing expression of FUD, and suppression of any and all speech that comes from anyone whom even may be incorrectly determined as the same person(s) as the initiator of this article.  Also, someone has been redacting references to The Isles OLC / ILAB OLC on other articles even when they are factually correct (see the Rivers of MUD article). 71.199.121.3 (talk) 17:47, 12 February 2011 (UTC)


 * "I am fairly certain that you are of no level of credible expertise to make such commentary" Perhaps logging in to an account and referring to yourself in the first person might make other people feel that you yourself have some level of credibility, and maybe even raise it up to the level of my own.
 * "Also, no one addresses the fact that "object creation" and "level editing" have little to do with the OLC software package released in 1993." The article seems to specifically say that Armageddon which made its way into SillyMUD (I assume that's what you're talking about, since it was released in 1993) allowed builders to create "zones, rooms, exits, objects, and mobiles".  Why would it say that it had little to do with those things?
 * "...suppression of any and all speech..." You posted that February 12 and I can look at it right now April 10; if I waited 2 more days then it'd be 2 months later.  Obviously nobody's suppressing speech.  The talk page or your user space is where speech goes, the article is where articles go.  Blatantly obvious incorrect stuff doesn't belong in the article, but is perfectly fine as speech.  Atari2600tim (talk • contribs)  21:35, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

HeroEngine
This should be mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.4.68.112 (talk) 10:51, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Why? It has nothing to do with: MUDs, "OLC", text-based adventure games, "object and room creation" or the 1993 release of the "online creation package" which FYI has been completely eliminated from this lame article. 71.199.121.3 (talk) 07:36, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * It looks to me like it's quite relevant. From that article: "The engine has won awards for its advanced support of online creation" (then goes on to list specific examples).  If true, it should be included.  I'll update this article appropriately after validating the claims.  I don't know where you got the idea that this article was solely about a single obscure software package.  If it were, it wouldn't be worth keeping. Nandesuka (talk) 14:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Scope
This article has two scopes in one. (1) The majority is about the ability to edit a virtual world within the world itself as a feature of MUDs (multi-user dungeons). I haven't found a single reliable source that describes this feature in any depth, i.e., to use as a reason to create and redirect to an entry of MUD terminology. The vast majority of the MUD-related refs in this article are primary sources, unreliable, or only tangentially related to the topic. (2) The second part of the scope—minor in terms of weight within the article—is contemporary user-generated content, e.g., for Second Life, and is shoehorned into this concept of "online creation".

I'm seeing nothing useful to do with the MUD part, due to lack of source material, and I don't see how this article would be repurposed around user-generated content when there is an existing section for that already. I'm planning to merge and redirect there. (not watching, please )  czar  05:42, 28 May 2021 (UTC)