User:Kmariecg/Oubliette (computer game)

Oubliette - A Fantasy Adventure "For many, a rite of passage - for others, a lifetime quest!"
Oubliette was one of the first multi-user online games developed for the PLATO computer system based at the University of Illinois in the late 1970's. Based on the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy worlds, computerization allowed Oubliette gamers to move past the paperwork and more fully enjoy the challenge of role play and multi-user gaming.

History of Oubliette
(Interview with Jim Schwaiger 8/2010)

"I saw the paper version of Dungeons & Dragons back in the mid 70's, and while the style of the game and player interaction intrigued me, the record keeping and rolling of dice was just time consuming and tedious. You could literally spend a few hours getting ready to go into the dungeon, without meeting a single monster.  The tiresome aspects of the game could easily be delegated to a computer, allowing the human players to focus on the fun.

A friend of mine, Bancherd “Mike” DeLong was play testing the original version of Oubliette during the summer of 1977 with his friend, John Gaby. They were both working on their Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Illinois, and were fascinated by the style of the game and ultimately accepted my offer to become authors themselves. The first version of the game was released on November 18, 1977, and was the first game of its kind to allow players from all over the world to meet and play together."

Oubliette was created and first played on the University of Illinois' PLATO system out of the Biology Department. Personal computers were a thing of the future and computing was done on the college mainframe using PLATO terminals with very primitive black and orange plasma graphics screen. Designed with educational goals in mind, the PLATO program (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations) very soon was commandeered during off hours by aspiring gamers using the new Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL). Users’ gaming time was limited to nighttime on about 60 terminals used by all of the students there at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, in addition to 1000 or so more terminals scattered at various universities and educational sites around the world. Oubliette, as one of the first successful multiplayer games, became quite the rage in the late 1970's and was the reason that more than one student had to drop out of college due to bad grades. Students stayed up around the clock playing the game with each other, assembling parties for travels down into the dungeon, creating high level characters, and even selling them to each other for real world cash.

The three authors of Oubliette eventually scattered to the far reaches of the world - Mike DeLong to Thailand, John Gaby to the east coast and then California as a software developer, and Jim Schwaiger headed to medical school to become a radiologist. Oubliette was put on the back burner by the others while Jim Schwaiger ported it to the PC platform in 1983 and continued to hone it through the years.

In the summer of 2010, Dr. Schwaiger and John H. Gaby again teamed up to bring Oubliette to a new generation of gamers on Apple's iPhone series of devices. Oubliette in the App Store stayed true to the original approach to the game while allowing the player to create and control the entire party of dungeon explorers. In early 2012, John Gaby enhanced the iOS version to more easily exploit the audio of capabilities of iOS devices to serve the sight impaired community. In early 2011, Oubliette was also put on the Android tablet platform, including support for the Barnes & Noble Nook and Amazon's Kindle.

Oubliette now has a small but loyal following of device users, both young and old. They stay in touch with with changes in the Oubliette on handheld devices via the GabySoft page at www.GabySoft.com or on Facebook at wwww.Facebook.com//OublietteAtGabysoft

Inspiration
"Oubliette was one of the main inspirations for the well-known Wizardry series of computer role-playing games. If you play Oubliette and have played the Apple or IBM versions of Wizardry you will see striking resemblances between them. Robert Woodhead, co-author of Wizardry, explains this in this excerpt of a post he made on the Slashdot forum on November 14th, 2001:

"Both Andy and I were active on the PLATO system, which was a tremendous influence on us. PLATO had email, chat, newsgroups, multiplayer realtime game, and much more, all starting in the early 70's. The multiplayer dungeon games were particularly good. Pretty much all of the basic concepts of multiplayer gaming were developed there. Wizardry was in many ways our attempt to see if we could write a single-player game as cool as the PLATO dungeon games and cram it into a tiny machine like the Apple II."

Empire - 1973, dnd - 1973, Oubliette - 1977, Mines of Moria - 1978, Avatar - 1979

Gameplay
Oubliette earned its reputation as "The Thinking Man's Dungeon Game" by blending mortal combat with the challenges of strategy, tactical planning, and adaptation.

Each player (or character) in the game was created from one of eight player races, which vary in attributes such as strength, intelligence, dexterity and durability. Elves are highly intelligent and (potentially) immortal, Orcs are strong with short life spans, Dwarves are strong with high wisdom, Kobolds are quite weak in most areas but advance more quickly. Depending on these attributes, each player would be qualified to join a limited number of player classes (occupations). More balanced players had more choices, including Hirebrand (fighter), Mage, Priest and Thief. Less commonly, players may be qualified for a highly selective class with special skills such as Ranger, Sage, Paladin, Samurai or Ninja.

Unlike games which focused on single players against each other, Oubliette allowed for a party of players with complementary skills to face the various types of monsters found in the dungeon. There are more than 150 different monsters, and to deal with them, more than 100 different pieces of equipment, which may be enchanted with special properties or skills.

Varget Spell Language
The Varget spell language used in Oubliette was created by David Emigh, a graduate physics student at the University of Illinois, and also an amateur linguist. He created a language just for the game, including carefully deriving word roots, so the spells have a consistency and poetry. It is similar to what Tolkien did with his elven language, except that, according to legend, Tolkien created the language first and then developed a story around the language, while David crafted the language to fit Oubliette.

Platforms
PLATO System - University of Illinois (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations)

IBM - PC

Commodore 64

iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad by Apple