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How Copyover MUD Servers Worked

hen I was younger, I played a lot of MUDs (“Multi-User Dungeons” — the text-only predecessors of modern MMORPGs, often played over Telnet). They were great fun, particularly during high school: a lightweight multiplayer game with no client state meant you could log in from any machine in any lab, even Windows shipped a Telnet client in those days, the Telnet protocol was light enough to run on my school’s slow PCs and limited internet connection, and the lack of flashy graphics meant it was easy to hide the window from a passing teacher or librarian.

They were great fun, particularly during high school: a lightweight multiplayer game with no client state meant you could log in from any machine in any lab, even Windows shipped a Telnet client in those days, the Telnet protocol was light enough to run on my school’s slow PCs and limited internet connection, and the lack of flashy graphics meant it was easy to hide the window from a passing teacher or librarian. This was incredibly cool at the time — even through a clumsy line-oriented ( ed-style) editor, there was something magical about summoning blank rooms from the void, writing rich descriptions to turn them into “real” spaces, and adding items and “mobs” (Mobile OBJects — NPCs) to make them come to life. If you give up maintaining a constant PID, I can imagine more elaborate and robust schemes; for example, swapping out the pipe for something more sophisticated allows the new server to report that it’s ready to take over.

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