[Juan] describes himself as a software engineer, a lover of absurd humor, and, among other things, a player of Nethack. We think he should add computer game archaeologist to that list. In the 1990s, he played a game that had first appeared on USENET in 1987. Initially called “Middle-earth multiplayer game,” it was soon rebranded with the catchier moniker, Conquer.
It may not seem like a big thing today, but writing multiplayer software and distributing it widely was pretty rare stuff in the late 1980s or early 1990s. In 2006, [Juan] realized that this game, an intellectual predecessor to so many later games, was in danger of being lost forever. The source code was scattered around different archives, and it wasn’t clear what rights anyone had to the source code.
[Juan] set out to find the original authors [Edward Barlow] and [Adam Bryant]. Of course, their e-mail addresses from USENET were long dead. With persistence, he finally found [Barlow] in 2006. He was amenable to [Juan] porting the code over, but didn’t know how to contact [Bryant].
[Juan] continued to leave posts and follow up leads. He did eventually find [Bryant], who read one of the posts about the project and offered his permission to GPL the code. This was in 2011, nearly five years after the release from [Barlow]. He also discovered there was a third author who was also game. Unfortunately, [Richard Caley] had already passed away, so there was no way to obtain his release.
You can compare the original version with the new updated version from [Juan]. A software accomplishment worthy of Indiana Jones.
We love digging through old code. Especially for software that was especially influential.
Great story :-)
19 years to do things right, that’s dedication!
Also, old game are always interesting, that’s a nice story to read, and, maybe a play or two for this cold winter = )
u wot m8? XD
Tibia was already a very popular MMORPG during the 90s
A thing existing doesn’t mean that it’s not rare.
Tibia is not “late 80s or early 90s”, it was released in 1997, m8.
Author of the article here. The main difference here is that what was distributed was the source code, and that was done in chunks across USENET newsgroups, and you had to compose it back to be able to compile in unix machines. Many students that had access to internet on their universities did this tinkering to build the game and many shared the improvements back. That was the case of Adam Bryant, who became the maintainer after Ed Barlow, and even released the next version: conquerv5.
You rock!
I played MajorMUD quite a bit in the mid-90’s, but I had visited MUDs with 50-100 players online at a time several years before my regular MajorMUD addiction.
Me too, I started to play a little bit to Final Realms while around 96 or 97, and forgot about it for years, until 2004, where I spent more time than I should till 2008, where I decided I needed to live in the real life too :D
You made me dig a little bit for it, and just found its code: https://github.com/MudRen/FinalRealms
you may have awakened a subproject, check the license, to see if we can have something that is more compatible with distributions :D
Love stories like this, Al, and actually pretty much anything you write up on Hackaday.
For those interested in the old 8 bit Atari/Commodore/etc game M.U.L.E., there’s a wonderful true-to-the-original online multiplayer version available for $5 here: https://puzzud.itch.io/mule-online
The software is actively maintained. Good stuff!
There’s also a fantastic Discord server where folks using that software set up regular matches that anyone can join. https://discord.gg/DFwgJR8Z
Makes me miss Dominion, the bbs ‘door’ game. You had a collection of land (planets) and you could launch attacks on your neighbors that would be evaluated at nightly upkeep. Sigh. Even back in the day i had a hard time finding people interested in playing it. I only had one game with dedicated opponents and they didn’t put in enough effort to develop strategy
Door games were a lot of fun. My favorite was L.O.R.D., aka Legend of the Red Dragon. Even hosted it for a while when I had my own BBS in the mid 90’s.
I recall that around ‘92 when our latest kid was born, I took the 2am bottle feeding. I used to log into the local BBS and play in an online RISK tournament. I was the champion one month and thus qualified for the year-end tournament of the 12 best in the city. I took all my turns from 2-3am each morning … mouse in my right hand and our newborn cradled in my left arm and left hand holding the bottle to feed him. It was a win-win!
And for what it’s worth, I came in 3rd in that yearly champions tournament of 12. Could have done better but found out at the Awards Ceremony held at a local Pizza Hut that the #1 and #2 in the tournament were a married couple who never attacked each other and collaborated to gang up on others. So I think I really finished 1st! 🤣
Great story, and yes you definitely deserved the prize, does your boy know these stories? :D
I remember playing Infinity Complex (MajorBBS) back in 1988; first MMO game I ever played and got me excited, was so amazed to play against human players.