Journal Journal: MUD-1, The Source, and other programs
The source code for MUD-1 has been released under GPL-3. This includes the two adventures - MUD and Valley - that the server originally supported. A third, based on Essex University memes and a genocidal interpretation of Fraggle Rock, no longer exists anywhere, regrettably. Instructions for building the game on an emulator running under Linux is provided, but I'd still rather do a proper port to a modern language and not have to run emulators. Essex BCPL is the dialect of BCPL needed to compile the MUD1 sources for the DEC10.
Machine-independent BCPL will compile most of the code and would be the place to start if wanting to run on a Linux box. Be warned, as MUD-1 doesn't use sockets, the networking code would have to be rewritten or emulated if the engine was to be ported.
For those who missed my earlier journal, MUD-1 is the original multi-user text adventure, originally written for a DEC-10 mainframe. For its time, the map is massive, and the full-sentence parser (although primitive) was more powerful than that of any PC adventures (including Infocom's) and, indeed, that of any of the later MUDs. although Discworld's custom game engine comes close.
Porting MUD-1 to a modern language would be tough - BCPL doesn't have many conversion programs out there - but I can't see it as being impossible. This would demonstrate the mad coding skills of people like Richard Bartle (who now writes such software professionally). The alternative would be to write a translator that converted the MUD-1 map and objects into a format suitable for FluffOS (the Discworld MUD game driver that has been publicly released) or one of the other MUD engines. Technically, this should be much easier, but still very challenging.
Also included in the archives released are the original Zork and Spacewar. Zork was converted from MDL to C, by way of Fortran. and one person's archive of this can be found here. MDL isn't BCPL, so I can't use the same code.
For those wanting to run the original original Zork, as opposed to the translated version, MUDDLE is the original name for MDL and this should work. At worst, it's another language for geeks to learn.