History
Moria was created by Robert Alan Koeneke in 1983, in VMS Pascal. He released the source code in 1985. The last official Moria (4.7) was released in 1987.
The availability of the source code spawned several clones and variants, such as Umoria (the Unix version) and Angband (under active development). James E Wilson released the first version of UNIX Moria (shortened to Umoria) in 1987, converting it to C in the process.
This port is based on the source from Umoria 5.5.2, released by David Grabiner in 1991, with features added from the PC version of Umoria by Ed Lee (2003) if I get around to it. The colors are from the PurpleX Mac version by Richard Knuckey which I wasn't able to find for ages until I realized it was staring me in the face from Beej's Mac Moria Files.
I first found Moria in the early 90s while trolling a TurboGopher archive for Mac games. I had no idea what it was and immediately set it aside in favor of more graphical (and easier) games. In high school I revisited Moria and discovered that I could force quit just as the Monster Memory display disappeared to avoid a painful death (GASP)! This let me get far enough into the game that I was able to figure it out and get hooked. I played it a ton, but eventually I no longer had a Mac with that old application on it (and I hadn't discovered that it existed in other forms). When I found it again years later and got it compiled for OS X I was annoyed at the build process and lack of color and decided to try my hand at creating a version of Moria in the language I love most - javascript.
James Wilson's Umoria creation account
License Information
This is the official software license (or as much as I can find) in the original source:
This software may be copied and distributed for educational, research, and not for profit purposes provided that this copyright and statement are included in all such copies.
Moria may be copied and modified freely as long as the above credits are retained. No one who-so-ever may sell or market this software in any form without the expressed written consent of the author Robert Alan Koeneke.
Contributer names I have found include:
- Robert A. Koeneke
- James E. Wilson
- Jimmey Wayne Todd
- Gary D. McAdoo
- David Grabiner
- Christopher J. Stuart
- Richard Knuckey (PurpleX)
/* Original copyright message follows. */
/* Moria Version 4.8 COPYRIGHT (c) Robert Alan Koeneke */
/* */
/* I lovingly dedicate this game to hackers and adventurers */
/* everywhere... */
/* */
/* */
/* Designer and Programmer : Robert Alan Koeneke */
/* University of Oklahoma */
/* */
/* Assistant Programmers : Jimmey Wayne Todd */
/* University of Oklahoma */
/* */
/* Gary D. McAdoo */
/* University of Oklahoma */
/* */
/* UNIX Port : James E. Wilson */
/* UC Berkeley */
/* wilson@kithrup.com */
/* */
/* MSDOS Port : Don Kneller */
/* 1349 - 10th ave */
/* San Francisco, CA 94122 */
/* kneller@cgl.ucsf.EDU */
/* ...ucbvax!ucsfcgl!kneller */
/* kneller@ucsf-cgl.BITNET */
/* */
/* BRUCE Moria : Christopher Stuart */
/* Monash University */
/* Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA */
/* cjs@moncsbruce.oz */
/* */
/* Amiga Port : Corey Gehman */
/* Clemson University */
/* cg377170@eng.clemson.edu */
/* */
/* Version 5.5 : David Grabiner */
/* Harvard University */
/* grabiner@math.harvard.edu */
/* */
/* Moria may be copied and modified freely as long as the above */
/* credits are retained. No one who-so-ever may sell or market */
/* this software in any form without the expressed written consent */
/* of the author Robert Alan Koeneke. */
/* */