From: awhitloc@ringer.cs.utsa.edu (Andrea Whitlock)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud
Subject: Top Mud Dies...
Date: 8 Apr 92 02:40:04 GMT
Organization: University of Texas at San Antonio

I've been asked by numerous people to post about why Top Mud was
killed.  Although this posting is somewhat lengthy, it's only a
brief account of what happened.

For you UTSA people who don't know, Top Mud was an entertainment service 
offered by the Lonestar e-mail system.  It was an "advanced text-based, 
object-oriented virtual reality system."  If you progressed past the
player stage (which encompassed adventuring, solving puzzles, riddles,
and quests, and socializing with other players to name only a few
features), you became a wizard.  At the wizard stage, you were allowed
to add your area to the game, which kept the mud constantly changing
and alive.  To add an area, you learn an object-oriented C dialect,
called LPC, and program objects for the game.  Once you progress to
a high enough level of a wizard (close to a "god" level), you maintain
and upgrade the real C code that makes the game run and simulates the
LPC programming (as well as deal with IRIX OS bugs :).  To say the
least, the game was great entertainment as well as a great challenge
to play, be a part of, and create.

The gods of Top Mud are still unclear as to the REAL reason the game
was killed.  I believe it started when I asked Dr. Senseman (who 
administrates the machine) if I could pull the mud backups off of the
hard drive and put them onto tape to free up disk space.  The mud
took up about 20 megs of disk space, not including the 20 megs of
backup files we had and the 5 to 10 megs of temporary files and swap
files that game makes.  So, instead of transferring backups of the
mud files to tape, we were told to delete our backups and that quotas
were going to be imposed shortly.  

True to the threat, a short time later, Top Mud had a 30 meg quota, 
and crashed.  Of course.  The quota was increased, but due to faltering
support and enthusiasm from Dr. Senseman over the past few months,
Beowulf wrote him a letter.  In the letter, Beowulf suggested that Dr. S 
just outright kill the mud if that was his intention.  The game used
far too many files to have a quota and that some backups were necessary
to make the mud self-sufficient.  He also told Dr. S that he felt that
any support of the mud had pretty much been dropped, based on the fact
that Lonestar deficiences are generally blamed on the mud, at which
times we lose control of the mud and it stays down until we fix the
mud to get around an IRIX OS problem.  Beowulf also vowed never to log
back onto the mud due to his frustration and disgust of the whole
situation.

Beowulf's letter was sent Sunday, April 5th, at 10:04 am (CST).  At
11:00 am, Sunday morning, Dr. S replied and asked the other game gods
if they shared Beowulf's views and suggestion to put the mud out of
its misery.  (Note that Beowulf suggested to Dr. S that HE, Dr. S, 
kill the mud if that is what HE wanted to do by imposing a quota.
Beowulf did not say that we, all the collective game gods and higher-
ups on the game, wanted to kill the mud.)  Then Dr. S outlined his 
glorious battle to keep the mud up over the past year (and he DID fight 
for us, BTW).  

At approximately 12:30 pm Sunday, I read all the mail and replied to
Dr. S's mail calling for the opinions of the other gods.  I told him
that Beowulf was retired and the other gods who were (had been) officially
running the game were still willing to do it, although the quota would 
present a problem in the future.

At 12:38 pm Sunday, Dr. S sent the following letter to the people who
ran the game:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

After careful consideration of Jeff Rowe's suggestion that
we terminate Lonestar's lpmud (TopMud), I have decided to
follow through with his suggestion. A number of factors
went into this decision including both the postive and
negative aspects of the game. Besides the inordinate amount
of system resources consumed by the game, my biggest concern
was the danger the games poses to the computer system itself
and to the students who play TopMud. The fact that more
than one student has been the object of physical threats
as result of playing this game is deeply disturbing and 
can not be allowed to continue. 

I greatly appreciate the long hours everyone has put into making
TopMud one of the most popular lpmud's in the world. You
all have much to be proud of. I have 'tarred' up the game,
with the hope that you may find another machine to continue
your activities.

Since your services as "gods" are no longer needed, I have
returned your Lonestar accounts to the normal student
"mailshell" variety. You will need to reduce the number of files
in your directories below the 0.5 MB allocation for undergraduates
as soon as possible. Let me know if you need assistance in 
moving/deleting certain files and/or subdirectories.

Once again let me thank-you for efforts with the Lonestar Information
Service. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's take a look at this.  

1) The careful consideration took him about 2 hours (after Beowulf's letter 
was sent), about an hour and half after he called for everyone else's 
opinions, and about 8 minutes after my reply.  Dana submits that his call 
for opinions was only rhetorical.

2) It's true that the game uses a large amount of resources.  However,
since his Neurobiology research is being separated from Lonestar, Lonestar
remains only a mail machine, whose resources are idle most of the time.
The game also offers help with security and finding OS bugs.  Not to
mention making Lonestar one of the hottest and most popular machines
on campus (ok, I'm pushing it here :).

3) The danger the game posing to students who play it.  Let me explain
this situation.  Some students attended a party over spring bring.  One
student, who played the game--let's call him X, boasted that he was going
to break into Lonestar and trash the entire machine.  X claimed that Z was 
going to help him do this.  Other students who attended the party overheard 
this conversation (or were present and involved in the conversation).  These
students happened to play the game also.  Being concerned for Lonestar (and 
their accounts) and the mud, they reported the incident to me.  I, in turn, 
informed Dr. S and forwarded all the mail I received about it to him.  Now, 
Z (who X said was going to help him) was not impressed to say the least.  He 
personally talked to me and assured me that the accusations were not true.  
However, X has claimed that he has broken into Lonestar before.  So to be on 
the safe side, Z's and X's accounts were removed.  Dr. S also said that their 
accounts were scheduled to be terminated anyway (I guess they were graduating
*shrug*).  Anyway, Z was upset about the accusations made and let everyone 
know about it.  Z was reported to have threatened people with physical 
violence because of the accusations made against him.  It was a LONESTAR 
SECURITY problem (not a mud problem) that was at the root of this mess. 

And so for reporting security problems, IRIX OS flaws, making Lonestar
very popular, entertaining 1100+ active mudders, and draining resources
of a mail machine, the mud was shut down.  So it goes...

Where does that leave us?  Out in the cold.  Those of us who had special
accounts to run the mud, either don't have an account on the machine any
more or have a restricted account.  This means that we cannot give copies
of code (castles) out to the people that wrote it.  We no longer have
access to the mud.  Furthermore, it has been rm -rf`ed off the drive.
Only a tar of it remains (with all of our backups, .o files, temp files,
and swap files included *boggle*).  I have requested that Dr. S make
castles available to their owners or provide us (game gods) with a mechanism 
to distribute the code to the proper owners ourselves.

Top Mud is dead.  With the game, died the gods.  As of now, we cannot
help you get your code.  If my request is denied (to salvage castles),
all your work is lost.  I'll be very sorry and disappointed if that is
the case; and I apologize to all of our players and wizards for the
manner in which this was handle.  Twas nothing I could do.

If you have any more questions, complaints, or pleads, send them to
senseman@lonestar.utsa.edu (you know where it says "send problems/
suggestions to:..." in your mailshell :).  Don't mail us.  There is nothing 
else that we can do for you.

Andrea (Toonsis)