Imperium Gothique was a Finland-based custom modified Merc (MUD) that featured a 18th Century gothic world that took place in a town resembling Victorian London instead of stock Midgaard. The game boasted many unique artificial life sequences including daily schedules for NPCs such as lamplighters, smarter shopkeepers, conversational encounters and NPC-to-NPC interactions.
The game was entirely based on the life of the player being in a single, sophisticated gothic city with technology of the 18th century including hand-cannons, swordplay, poisons and occult magic. The main administrator and developer, Newt, became a contributor to the combat system used in NiMUD - co-designing the multiple-stance hand-to-hand and melee combat system that was featured in The Isles (but never fully completed).
Newt also contributed to the Mobprogs documentation and its port to ROM Merc-derived MUD server codebase. During the porting process, he extended the scripting language to include rooms and objects, which he then later removed during the port to keep it compatible with existing ROM installation methods. MMORPG.com list this as a "significant MMO event in 1994" :
My implementation of MOBprograms owes a lot to the original MOBprogram code by Natasha. However, having heard reports about unstability of the code supplied, and because the code seemed unnecessarily complex to me, I decided to rewrite the MOBprogram driver. Admittedly, I have dropped out several features that were present in the original version, such as reacting to several triggers at once and string comparison in if_checks. On the other hand, the MOBprogram code has been simplified and made more stable (there are no memory leaks), and several new if_checks and MOBcommands have been added. The system of linking MOBprograms to mobiles has been changed to allow procedure-like calls. This version is an adaptation of my earlier MOBprogram system I created for Imperium Gothique MUD. The IG system has object and room programs as well, but I chose to omit them from this version.
-- Newt
- Historical contact information: Imperium Gothique mud.pitek.fi 192.163.46.7 4000
- Link to "Timeline" at MMORPG [1]