To build the 84 source you first need to restore the MUD.TAP tape to your TOPS-10 host. I suggest that you restore it to a PPN of [2011,2776] as that is where we need to work. See the FAQ for how to restore.
Next you need to unpack the source files. There are two compressed files on the MUD 84 tape: MUD.MAS and MUDTXT.MAS. In addition you will need MUD.TXT, the main game source file.
To unpack the source RUN SUBFIL-MUD.MAS. This unpacks MUD.MAS which contains the code source. SUBFIL is a binary provided on the MUD 84 tape, but is a general use utility that you probably already have on your TOPS-10 system. It operates like a very primitive ZIP program.
The MUD.MIC that is unpacked from the MUD.MAS may need to be altered to work with your BCPL installation. I used SOS to remove the references to DSKF: and also changed the NSS and NSA commands to SSAVE and SAVE respectively.
Once this is done, you should simply need to DO MUD M and then DO MUD DM. This will compile and produce two EXEs: MUD.EXE and DBASE.EXE. If you don’t get this or you get an error during compilation or linking, it is likely that either your BCPL is missing libraries, your high-mem settings are wrong, or the linker broke somehow. The obvious symptom that you had linker errors is you end up with something called LINK.EXE in your directory and it should not be there.
Assuming you have got DBASE.EXE and MUD.EXE (which is incomplete and will not run successfully), you now need to generate the MUD from the game sources and build the complete MUD.EXE.
Generating the game from MUD 84 sources
First you need to unpack the game source files. RUN SUBFIL-MUDTXT.MAS. You should already have MUD.TXT, but you will now find you also have a bunch of TXT???.GET files and some *.DBA files.
Now build MUD: type RUN DBASE. When complete, if all has gone well, you will see diagnostic output about the number of rooms and synonyms and stuff and at the end of the run it will say:
.ru dbase initialisation used 3519 persona used 0 levels used 67 hours used 7 rooms 435 = last room number used 6487 maps 8 = last map number used 26 vocabulary ;vocabulary objects ;vocabulary actions ;vocabulary action synonyms ;vocabulary demon actions used 12914 demons 48 = last demon number used 153 objects 470= last object number used 5065 travel 435 = last travel number used 8106 text 1041 = last text number used 636 187 classes, 233 objects and 16 motion words defined Total space used 36996 Loading database from MUD.DMP nss .?nss? ..
At this point you must type SSAVE, and it will say MUD saved. You should now have a working MUD 84:
..ssa
MUD saved
.ru mud
ESSEX UNIVERSITY: Multi-User Dungeon
This Mud created: 8th December 2018 at 12:53:48
Welcome! By what name shall I call you?
*
Thanks Quentin for all those pointers! I managed to get MUD84 running, the pre-compiled one and several players interacting at the same time through telnet.
Now, I tried to compile it myself, and the DO MUD M works fine, while the DO MUD DM crashes with several errors. I carefully checked the SOS edits, so I presume there’s something at BCPL side.
In earlier post, I was able to SOS a new HELLO.BCP and compile it properly, so maybe some missing library. I’ll “rewind” all the steps I took to reach up to here, and follow again.