This will be a somewhat brief discussion of mooing, as most of the people who come here will probably already know it backwards and forwards and are in fact living with someone they met on a MOO. So. Onwards.

A MOO is an outgrowth of a MUD. A MUD is an outgrowth of ZORK. ZORK was the coolest game ever written. With MUD's, which are sort of what happens when ZORK gets ported to a UNIX system, you can have multiple people online at the same time, interacting (virtually) and hacking up the monsters, each other, and the twisty turny mazes. MOO is a flavor using a different language for implementation: MOOcode, rather than C. (At least the muds I've worked with have been C-based; my experience is mostly with diku's.)

I'll probably show a sample of moo-code here eventually. Anyway. LambdaMOO is the granddaddy of them, designed and implemented by Pavel Curtis and others, under the aegis of Xerox's Skunk Works, the parc research lab. MOOcode reminds me of a combination of C++ and LISP; other people might give different interpretations. It is weakly typed and involves a lot of schemes for multiple inheritance and shared ownership. It's also a LOT of fun.

I personally hang out on several moos, which you are free to try. They are, in part:

Instructions in case you are a new MOOer:

You speak to people by typing: say hello world I'm new please don't kill me.

You move from place to place by typing the direction: go north.

You page friends or enemies, to communicate when they're not in the same room you're in, by typing: page jens help help help I'm in the living room and they're ripping off my toes one by one!

And so forth. Give it a try. I've been on LambdaMOO since 1992, and am almost always willing to talk. Page me, jens, and say hi!

Coming soon: a picture of The Blacksmith's Hovel, with help from Sam_Spade@LambdaMOO.

This page created on 12/26/96, last modified on 12/27/96.

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