Moria (1983 video game)
![]() Screenshot from a Moria-like game | |
Developer(s) |
|
---|---|
Initial release | 25 March 1983 (0.1) |
Stable release | 5.7.15
/ 4 June 2021[1] |
Repository | |
Cross-platform | |
Available in | English |
Type | Roguelike |
License | GNU General Public License v3 or any later version |
Website | web |
The Dungeons of Moria, usually referred to as simply Moria,
Moria was the basis of the better known Angband roguelike game, and influenced the preliminary design of Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo.[3]
Gameplay
The player's goal is to descend to the depths of Moria to defeat the Balrog, akin to a
Moria begins with creation of a character. The player first chooses a "race" from the following: Human, Half-Elf, Elf, Halfling, Gnome, Dwarf, Half-Orc, or Half-Troll. Racial selection determines base statistics and class availability. One then selects the character's "class" from the following: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Ranger, or Paladin. Class further determines statistics, as well as the abilities acquired during gameplay. Mages, Rangers, and Rogues can learn magic; Priests and Paladins can learn prayers. Warriors possess no additional abilities.
The player begins the game with a limited number of items on a town level consisting of six shops: (1) a General Store, (2) an Armory, (3) a Weaponsmith, (4) a Temple, (5) an Alchemy shop, and (6) a Magic-Users store. A staircase on this level descends into a series of randomly generated underground mazes. Deeper levels contain more powerful monsters and better treasures. Each time the player ascends or descends a staircase, a new level is created and the old one discarded; only the town persists throughout the game.
As in most
The balrog (represented by the upper-case letter B) is encountered at the deepest depths of the dungeon. Once the balrog has been killed, the game has been won, and no further saving of the game is possible.
Player characteristics
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/UmoriaPlayerCharacteristics.png/220px-UmoriaPlayerCharacteristics.png)
The player has many characteristics in the game. Some characteristics, like sex, weight, and height, cannot be changed once the player has been created, while other characteristics like strength, intelligence, and
History
Around 1981,[5] while enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, Robert Alan Koeneke became hooked on playing the video game Rogue. Soon after, Koeneke moved departments to work on an early VAX-11/780 minicomputer running VMS, which at that time had no games. Since no longer having access to Rogue was "intolerable" for Koeneke, he started developing his own Rogue game using VMS BASIC and gave it the name, Moria Beta 1.0.[6]
During the summer of 1983, Koeneke rewrote his game in VMS Pascal, releasing Moria 1.0.[6]
In 1983/84 Jimmey Wayne Todd Jr. joined Koeneke on the development of Moria, bringing with him his character generator, and working on various aspects of the game, including the death routines.
Koeneke started distributing the source code in 1985 under a license that permitted sharing and modification, but not commercial use.
The last VMS version was Moria 4.8, released in November 1986.[7]
In February 1987, James E. Wilson started converting the VMS Pascal source code to the C programming language for use on UNIX systems, which had started to become popular by this date. To distinguish his release from the original VMS Moria, Wilson named it UNIX Moria, shortened to UMoria.
UMoria 4.85 was released on November 5, 1987.[8]
As C was a much more portable programming language than VMS Pascal, there was an explosion of Moria ports for a variety of different computer systems such as MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari ST and Apple IIGS.
UMoria 5.0, released in 1989,[7] unified these separate ports into a single code base, fixing many bugs and gameplay balance issues, as well as adding lots of new features; many of which were taken from BRUCE Moria (1988).
In 1990 the Angband project was started, which is based on the UMoria 5.2.1 source code.
UMoria was in continuous development for several more years, with UMoria 5.5.2 released on July 21, 1994.[7]
During the early 2000s David Grabiner maintained the code base, releasing only minor compiler related fixes.
In 2008, through the work of the free-moria project,[9][4] UMoria was relicensed under the GNU General Public License. Work has since continued on the game, with regular releases.[10]
See also
Notes
References
- ^ "Umoria release page". RogueBasin. Retrieved 1 February 2024.
- ISBN 978-0692501863.
- ^ "[The idea for Diablo] was modified over and over until it solidified when [Dave Brevik] was in college and got hooked on ... Moria/Angband". Pitts, Russ (6 June 2006). "Secret Sauce: The Rise of Blizzard". The Escapist. Archived from the original on 10 August 2013. Retrieved 20 December 2012.
- ^ Free software magazine(2007-03-12)
- ISBN 978-0692501863.
- ^ a b "... I worked on one of the early VAX 11/780s [so] no more games, and no more rogue! This was intolerable! So I decided to write my own rogue game, Moria Beta 1.0". Koeneke, Robert Alan (21 February 1996). "Early history of Moria". Retrieved 3 August 2017.
- ^ a b c "Moria Release Timeline". umoria.org.
- ^ "Here it is! A Unix version of the popular VMS game Moria". Wilson, James E. (5 November 1987). "Umoria - single player dungeon simulation". Retrieved 28 August 2017.
- ^ "free-moria". free-moria.sourceforge.net.
- ^ "Moria / Umoria Release Highlights since 1981 - A Classic Roguelike". umoria.org. Retrieved 1 February 2024.
External links
- Umoria.org v5.7 Windows / macOS executables, much historical information, and links to source code.
- Moria on David J. Grabiner's website at the Wayback Machine (archived 5 January 2021)
- "Freeing an old game" in the Free Software Magazine discusses efforts to relicense UMoria
- Moria at MobyGames
- MS-DOS Moria can be played for free in the browser at the Internet Archive
- Beej's Moria Page
- Online VMS/VAX Moria telnet portal
- RogueBasin Wiki listing of all the different Moria ports and variants.