A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ?

v

noun Abbreviation for the vampire, a nasty mobile from which it is advised you should steer well clear unless you are kitted out with the appropriate defences.

Valley

noun The rooms between the stone wall (to the west) and the fast-flowing river (to the east). Historically, these were once a small, independent database that could be reached by going east from the NRBL. In this incarnation, the Inn was a single room, there was nothing under it, and the Evil Wood was incomplete. When MUD2 went up, the attic of the Inn formed the first four rooms of the entire database. See The Land, section (1).

vamp

noun The 'vampire' mobile. If it weren't for the fact that vamp is a word with nice, decadent overtones, everyone would call it the v instead. vampy is another variant.

VAX

adjective Used in many phrases (eg. 'on the VAX', 'VAX MUD', 'VAX version') to describe the first public incarnation of MUD2 (as MUD version 4B). It actually ran on several BT-owned VAXen between 1985 and 1991, but there was a strong line of continuity between them and any changes were imperceptible to players not specifically looking for differences. On the VAX, MUD2 was crippled by other programs also running on the same machine, which meant it was incredibly slow at times. This wasn't helped by the fact that the BT people insisted it was programmed in VAX Pascal so they didn't have to buy a C compiler, and VAX Pascal is monstrously inefficient at certain tasks (eg. memory management). Of course, BT bought a C compiler for the VAX about 6 months after the programming of MUD2 was complete...

version

noun The means by which significantly different programmings of MUD are named. versions consist of a number followed by a letter: if the number changes, the system was completely rewritten; if the letter changes, major surgery was performed but the database from the previous version should be pretty well compatible. The full version list up to 4E is:

1A 1978 Original Macro-10 shared memory test.

2A 1978 Macro-10.

3A 1979 BCPL (Essex MUD, CompuNet MUD).

3B 1986 BCPL/Fortran 4 for CompuServe (BL).

3C 1987 Fortran for PR1MEs.

4A 1985 Apricot MS-DOS in Turbo-Pascal (development only).

4B 1986 VMS Pascal for VAXen.

4C 1988 Pascal under OS9 for the MUDbox (development only).

4D 1989 C for Archimedes (development only).

4E 1991 C for Unix SVR4 (and SCO SVR3.2.4).

Version 1A was called MUD, although the main comment in its code said "MUDD - MULTI-USER GAME OF ADVENTUROUS ENDEAVOUR". It was conceived and written by Roy Trubshaw, with helpful programming suggestions by Keith Rautenbach and others, and encouragement/praise from Nigel Roberts and Richard Bartle. Version 1A was not programmed as a playable game: it was a test to see whether the shared memory system Trubshaw envisaged would work (it did). The date on the earliest surviving listing is 1979, but actually it was first run in 1978. Version 2A was called MUD, but expanded the acronym into 'Multiple User Dungeon'; however, the more informal 'Multi-' was always used, and this became the standard in Version 3A.

Version 2A was coded entirely by Trubshaw, and its database was run-time programmable by privved players; Roberts and Bartle again chipped in with suggestions, and created rooms/objects in the system (the 'ox', still in the database today, got in that way). Programmability turned out to be something of a Bad Thing: it used too much memory/disc space, and people kept adding things which were not in character (5) with the rest of the game. The database-design module was therefore removed in later versions, and the task done separately.

The heart of version 3A was Trubshaw's, amounting to perhaps 25% of the code (the hardest 25%!); the rest was added incrementally by Bartle over the next 3 years. Brian Mallett and Ronan Flood each provided useful hacks to the low-level code. Although the program was begun in 1979, it wasn't in a playable state until 1980, and therefore this later date is more often quoted concerning the program's beginnings. The alterations to version 3A which made it 3B were Bartle's. 3C was a recoded 3A by Mike Arnautov for the PR1ME system at Glaxo.

Version 4A was Bartle's work, and the interpreter made it to 4B, with Trubshaw coding the FE and the inter-process communication. Bartle converted the lot for 4C, and Jon Thackray did the transliteration into C for 4D, working from 4A and 4B; Thackray's database compiler is still used, with minor additions by Bartle. Bartle did the transliteration to C for 4E from 4C, with help (ha!) from a program called 'ptc'.

See also SUD (1).

vial word

noun The magic word which can be caused to appear at the bottom of the piece of paper that starts off in one of MUD2's bottles; the uttering of this word enables the vials to become of very practical use, but also knocks a great chunk out of your stamina. Getting people to say the vial word without realising they're being had is therefore one of the finer art forms of MUD2. As the word used to appear at the bottom of the scroll (1), sometimes the form scroll word is observed in use by the more nostalgic players. See dream word.

the villa

noun The name by which most players refer to "Il Castellare". Ostensibly, this because the villa shorter, but it's more likely because they can't spell "Il Castellare" correctly nine times out of ten.

vis

adjective Synonym of 'visible'. The opposite of invis: you can still be vis even if you're in a dark room with no light source.

vocab

noun The usual contraction of vocabulary.

vocabulary

noun The set of words, abbreviations and synonyms which are known to a FE. commands consist of words in the vocabulary plus strings (1), ordered grammatically (the grammar is hard-wired into the parser). Nouns will reference classes or objects, modified by adjectives, superlatives, conjunctions, articles, and some prepositions. Verbs are modified by adverbs and other prepositions, and together with the nouns are arranged in a canonical command passed to the interpreter, which thereupon invokes the binder and executes the result. When the phrase is used as the vocabulary, it means all the words that anyone can use, eg. "Is 'bl' in the vocabulary?". When used with a possessive, it indicates a subset of the complete set, eg. "It's in the wiz vocabulary but it's not in yours".