MUD on line from Century

MULTI USER DUNGEON, the play by modem interactive adventure game run on the University of Essex DEC 10 mainframe, is to go commercial next year.

Publishing house Century Communications has bought the rights to the game from the designers, Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw. Century now hopes to buy or rent a VAX computer on which to run the game.

[Photograph]

Richard Bartle
Image size: approx. 9K.

At present, MUD can handle up to 30 players simultaneously, but only in the early hours of the morning or at weekends when memory is available. Century intends to have 100 players initially, but Richard Bartle says that the only limiting factor is the number of telephone lines installed. "There is no reason why you cannot have up to 1000 people playing at once," he claims.

Century was the only company to show any interest in MUD and, as a reward, has been turned into a character, Century the Wizard. Senior Editor Simon Dally plays every night.

Richard Bartle estimates that 800 or so people have played MUD in the four years it has been running. About 100 play it now, some 30 of them every night.

Century are understandably reluctant to commit themselves to any definite date, and will only say that MUD will be launched "sometime in 1985."