Introduction

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due!

The basic zone writing manual you are reading now, didn't just come flying out of this author's head. In fact it is a conglomeration of several old texts no longer used. I had first thought about quoting and giving credit to each person who had ever modified or created portions of the first documentation but because of the nature of the way they were built it was impossible to know who did what. I therefore have decided to create a list here of everyone who has ever worked on or had a hand in the development of the basic zone writing documentation and references. I will also give a short summary for each. I would also like to thank those listed below for their contribution to the development of one of the best mud servers on the internet today.

Original DIKU coding Team

  • Hans Henrik Staerfeldt

  • Sebastian Hammer

  • Michael Seifert

  • Katja Nyboe

  • Tom Madsen

  • Lars Balker Rasmussen

You should all know these people, they are not only the original DIKU mud developers but a few of them designed and developed the new VME server. One or more of the previous mentioned people were the authors of the following texts that have been swallowed up by this book.

  • abilities.txt

  • guild.txt

  • monster.txt

  • objects.txt

  • rooms.txt

  • vmc.txt

Andrew Cowan

One of the original administrators of Valhalla mud and now the administrator of the mud connector. Andrew created the first zone tutorial, which was later included into the vmc.txt to clear up some things missing in the old vmc.txt. Again, my thanks go out to Andrew for his contributions not only to this document but to the growth of the DIL programming language.

Ryan Holliday

Made major updates to the tutorial.txt created by Andrew Cowan, which became version two of the tutorial.

Peter Ryskin

Wrote the original explanation of how to define exits.

John Clare

Made major updates to the tutorial.txt created by Andrew Cowan and updated by Ryan Holliday, which became version three of the tutorial.

Marc Bellemare

An editor and an author Marc combined and revised the tutorial and the vmc.txt into one document making it less Valhalla specific and more for any mud running the VME server.

Jennifer Garuba

Created the first document on how to build shopkeepers. She also was one of the first builders to have the insight to make it clear that a manual like this was needed.

Brian Spanton

Converted the original vmc.txt into HTML, while at the same time fixing many inconsistencies and typos in it.

Kathy Perry

Wrote the original compiler how to to make it easier for new builders to compile their zone. She was also the first builder to open my eyes to the fact we needed a true manual on how to build.

Mark Pringle

Main editor, which spell checked and looked over my major grammar mistakes. I am sure he didn't catch them all but at least the ugly ones were caught.

Morgan Shafer

Wrote the guild definition primer which explained teachers.

Karen E. Hannum

Secondary copy, technical editor, and manual tester, the English major that just happens to play on the mud.