Fishroom: A Brief History

source
FishRoom was initially created by Kevin N. Carpenter in June of 1995.
Kevin was an avid player of Internet based MUDs (multi-user dungeons) for several years prior to his decision to create FishRoom. Like many mudders with the technical capability, he went from being a player on several muds to helping support an individual one. During that period, he hosted a mud run by other individuals on his home computer. Dissatisfied with the software he was exposed to at that time, he decided to try his hand at coding his own environment. After awhile, Kev in settled on using the Dworkin Game Driver (DGD) as the interpreter of his MUD code (a "mudlib"). Kevin succeeded in creating a functional mudlib complete with rooms, armour, weapons, combat routines, and similar features required to create the combat style MUDs he was use to playing. After proving to himself that he could do it, his interest faded...

Shortly thereafter, Kevin started to see postings on rec.aquaria (an Internet NewsGroup) for people to meet via IRC (Internet Relay Chat) at specific times to discuss aquarium issues. While enjoying a peaceful evening walk with his dog, it occurred to Kevin that he could easily modify his mudlib to provide a similar service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Furthermore, by using a MUD instead of IRC technology, more people could gain access (since all one needs is the common "telnet" capability rather than special IRC software). About 2 hours later, Kevin had stripped his combat mudlib down and created the original FishRoom.

Technically, FishRoom should be called "FishRoomS", in that it consist of a number of room, each dedicated to specific topics. Originally, there was a room for each of the proposed rec.aquaia extensions. Since then FishRoom has grown substantially due to the efforts of several of its members.

FishRoom is currently running on an AMD DX2-80 based system with 32mb of RAM and abit over 2gb of disk space. It is connected to the Internet via a dedicated 28.8kbs CSLIP connection running at 115kbs on both ends. Fishroom can be accessed by telnetting to kplace.monrou.com port 1025.