Who were known as dikus...?
Answers
I wish someone who has a good memory of these things and was there, would document that the key game design features of a DIKU are, if everyone is going to refer to MMOs as DIKU derivatives.
— a comment from Daniel Speed on Broken Toys » Wikicrap.
Glossing much here… Edit: this article is getting updated on the fly as people add comments and reminiscences.
DikuMUD was derived from AberMUD, which was similar mechanics, but had more of a scavenger hunt mentality in some ways.
At its core, it is a class-based RPG with the principal classes being fighter, healer, wizard, thief. (Later codebases added more). It was heavily based on the combat portion of Dungeons and Dragons. Advancement handled by earning experience points through combat, reaching a set amount of points, returning to town and “levelling up,” which unlocked new abilities. Classes were immutable (though eventually systems such as remorting, etc were added). Rewards for killing things also included equipment, which affected your stats and damage capability. If you reached the maximum level, common cultural practice was that you were invited to become a game admin (this practice dates back to much earlier, and existed in some form in MUD1).
Combat was generally on a fixed rate, with “faster attacks” in cruder systems consisting of actually running the same attack multiple times in a row (so you could only do damage on multiples: 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x). More advanced systems added true variable interval attacks. Tactics were centered around controlling which target the mob was attacking, and using special state-affecting attacks that did things like trigger periods of indefensibility (stun), periods of damage multipliers, etc, using stances.
Much of the gameplay consisted of moving about solo or in groups attacking monsters for XP and loot. Grouping was a typical strategy because it was a large force multiplier, permitting players to kill targets much more powerful than they were alone. Because of this, an array of systems including level limits on equipment, on grouping, and even on monster attacking were in place. A command called “consider” told you whether the monster was too easy or too hard.
Monsters spawned originally on time intervals called resets. At first, the whole zone reset at once, then resets evolved in Diku-derived codebases into per-monster timers. (A zone was a collection of world data, including rooms, monsters, and items — each zone could at first have 100 of each.). There evolved the practice of “rare spawns” and eventually “rare drops” as well.
Weapons, potions, and the like were all based on simply on performing spell effects, in the fashion today referred to as a “proc.” They were hardcoded back then, however. Players had the typical array of D&D stats, with the addition of “move points,” which were literally spent by moving from room to room and based on the weight of stuff you were carrying and your strength. You had to rest to recover these.
Death in Dikus involved losing all your gear, because everything stayed in the corpse. It also could set you back levels, as it cost you a fraction of your experience points. You respawned back in town at the central spawn point, and in later codebases at your “guildhall” (a class-specific spawn point and levelling trainer). You then had to do a “corpse run” to get back to your body naked and reequip your gear. In an inheritance from aspects of AberMuds, you could scavenge gear from the “donation room” which was a place where excess gear nobody wanted (usually from outlevelling or from trash drops) went when it was donated or “sacrificed” by other players.