The recent OTA update to my Hiptop contained an interesting little addition: Terminal Monkey, a SSH/Telnet app. I know jack-all about SSH, but I do have a history with Telnet.
Years 2 through 4 of my college experience (and real world Year 1 thereafter) involved a lot of MUSHing on TinyCWRU. A MUSH is a variant on the well-remembered MUDs of the early internet. Essentially, shared text adventures. In MUDs you trawled dungeons, fought monsters, gained experience, all in the D&D fashion. In MUSHes, the emphasis was on socializing and building. TinyCWRU had no theme and no limits to how many objects you could create, making it open season for anybody who wanted to code... I'm not explaining this very well...
Basically, you have to think of a huge database. The database contains objects - which could be a door, a coffee mug, a killer robot, whatever. Each object has a number in the database and a series of letter codes (flags) assigned to it. An object with an R flag is a room, P indicates a player character, E is an exit. The MUSH program examines these numbers/flags and controls them in a fashion that mimics an interactive text-based experience. You create a character (P), walk from room (R) to room using exits (E) and enter in specific MUSH-recognized commands to interact with the various objects in the room. The commands start with normal adventure stuff like "say" and "look" and "get," but you can quickly develop into the deep programming language involved in creating your own objects... and by extension, your own rooms, robots, toys, tools and worlds.
TinyCWRU went public in October 1990, after an initial period local to students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Although I had two high school chums who went to CWRU, I was introduced to TinyCWRU by a college pal at my own school, Steve (who I believe heard about it from an old friend of his.) Steve and I created our first characters in October 1993... Tolby and StocDred, respectively.
Eventually, Steve and I got the idea to create something. In about a month we accumulated a decent knowledge of MUSH coding and started planning out a text adventure. The underlying basis of our adventure was the concept of keys and locks. To complete our adventure, a player would need to travel across our land (rooms described to simulate a spooky mansion and the surrounding acreage) and collect particular key items. Those items would grant access to other areas and eventually, a clever ending sequence that wrapped up the mystery story woven throughout the adventure. It was a great working relationship. I remember calling him up and asking "Did you finish the cave maze bit yet?" while I was creating the robot puppets that populated the rooms and revealed clues and storyline. Steve christened it "The Von Till Mansion."
We made some announcements and attracted a lot of attention, as it were. Our creation managed to impress the admin, and even resulted in my being "promoted" a rank to Senior Programmer... which understandably rankled my partner Steve, since he built just as much of the Von Till Mansion as I did. However, I was probably more chatty and social than he was, and over weeks of near-constant dorm room MUSHing I had developed friendships with many of TinyCWRU's admin. I guess I kissed ass.
The point is, it's still all there. Ten years after my first login, TinyCWRU still exists. I have no idea who's hosting it these days; it was relocated off CWRU's servers years ago. Of course, it's a shadow of its former self. In 1993 you could find 30+ people logged in at a time (and the popular MUDs could command many, many more) and 100's of different players over the week. Back then, TinyCWRU was a chat room, a multiplayer game, a creative toy box all in one. Today, it's a relic. The internet equivalent of cave art.
Rediscovering TinyCWRU via my phone's new Telnet ability, I can only imagine how my college career would have been ruined. TinyCWRU consumed a crazy amount of time just on my dorm room's Apple Performa 430, and I often got distracted in class just by having a blank sheet of paper in front of me. Much less the entire MUSH in my pocket.
If you're curious, check out TinyCWRU. You'll need to create a character, naturally, and once you do, type in the command "@tel #73168". That will teleport you to the opening room of the Von Till Mansion adventure (make sure you look at the dog's tag there to refresh your memory on simple text adventure actions.) I bet it still all works. And if you see StocDred, wish him a happy tenth birthday.
