MUNDI - Multi-User Networked Dungeon Interaction

3rd May 2001

handbag$ date
Mon Apr 20 15:56:18 BST 2001
handbag$ mundi

Made connection with daemon ...
Welcome to MUNDI, version (6.3)
Enter persona name: mirk
That account already exists.
Enter password: ********
Password is OK.
(Couldn't open /home/staff/mike/src/mundi/lib/mundi)
(No initialisation file)

This is game number 87 for this persona.
Last game was on Thu Nov 22 22:16:56 1990
That was 3811 days, 16 hours, 34 minutes, 25 seconds ago.
You feel invogriated.

[PLAY]<0> _

(That's just over ten years. And yes, it really does say ``invogriated'')

MUNDI was the first true multi-user adventure game I ever wrote, and perhaps the first one ever to run over the internet - history is inconclusive on this point. Now, after more than a decade in cold storage, its body is exhumed, and life breathed back into it!

Here's what I have on MUNDI:

• Notes on the history of MUNDI.

• Source code and binaries for download.
  I like to run the client in an xterm -fg green -bg black :-)

• An actual running daemon which you can connect to. The downloadable client (or one built from the downloadable source) connects to it by default;

• Easier still, Martin Keegan, the author of The MUD Tree, has provided a telnet-to-MUNDI gateway on port 4999 of oh.no.ucant.org - so just:

  telnet oh.no.ucant.org 4999

• An ugly but complete ASCII-art map of the MUNDIverse.
  Also available in HTML at various sizes:
  • Normal
  • Small
  • Tiny
  • Microscopic
  (Some of these may appear to be the same size, depending on how broken your web browser is. And face it, all web browsers are broken.) My experience using Netscape 4.51 is that if I print the tiny version in landscape mode, it fits nicely across the page. Your mileage may vary.

• Web-browsable form of the ``info'' hierarchy

• There's an open-membership mailing list hosted at www.topica.com/lists/mundi - The simplest way to join is to send an email to <mundi-subscribe@topica.com>

• The help file from Island, a MUD written by MUNDI players who were influenced by MUNDI's distinctive flavour. (Also available in plain-text format.)

Why would anyone except me care about this? Mostly, I think it'll just be people who were at Warwick University during MUNDI's heyday, wanting to relive the part of their life when they could sleep 'til ten every morning. Game historians may also be interested.

If you like this kind of late-eighties retro-computing, you should check out Marke ``The Chief Slime Monster'' Fincher's bizarre arcade games Chicken Vomit and Fishmonger. If you're interested to know what I'm working on now, then my current MUD project, Herring, is starting to show signs of life.