TinyMUD

TinyMUD is the name of a MUD server codebase, and the first MUD running that codebase. The MUD itself has subsequently come to be known as "TinyMUD Classic" or simply "Classic", or occasionally "DaisyMUD" (since in the final days of its first incarnation, it ran on a computer named "daisy"). To distance itself from the combat oriented traditional MUDs it was said that the "D" in TinyMUD stood for Multi-User "Domain" or "Dimension", which led to the eventual adoption of the term MU* to refer to TinyMUD and its many derivatives.

Most modern MUSHes are descended from TinyMUD.

History

The TinyMUD server was originally written by James Aspnes in mid-to-late 1989 with the intention of focusing on player cooperation rather than point-gaining: it became the first so-called "social" MUD. TinyMUD was inspired by Skrenta's 1988 Monster. Aspnes announced the availability of the first TinyMUD on August 19, 1989; seven months later, on April 29, 1990, he announced TinyMUD's closure (due to the process size exceeding the memory limit of 32 megabytes on the host system).