A History of Moria: written by Jim Wilson This history is somewhat biased towards the Umoria versions because those are the versions that I am most familiar with; info for the VMS versions, in particular, may be inaccurate. Moria 4.8: The last version developed by the original authors, R.A. Koeneke, etc., at the Univ Oklahoma. This is written in VMS Pascal, and is only available for VAX/VMS systems. All other versions of moria are based on this program. (Sometimes referred to as VMS Moria 4.8.) Moria UB 5.0: This version was developed at Univ Buffalo, hence the UB in the name. This is also written in VMS Pascal, and is only available for VAX/VMS systems. Some of the distinguishing features of this version are: a Black Market where one can purchase highly enchanted magic items at 100 times normal value, monsters on the town level worth negative experience (Mother and Baby, Small Child), `shadow' Balrogs start appearing at level 50 with the `real' Balrog at level 1200 (this makes it a bit difficult to win). There are also some new items, and many more new monsters. (Sometimes referred to as VMS Moria 5.0 or Moria 5.0. Should not be confused with Umoria 5.x.) This is based on the Moria 4.8 sources. Moria UB 5.1: The latest version of UB Moria. This version is not available outside Univ Buffalo as yet, and I do not know what any of the new features are. Only available for VAX/VMS systems. VMS Moria 6.0: This version was under development at Villanova by Rick Greene. However, it was never completed and was never released. I believe that it was abandoned because Rick lost computer and/or network access. This was based on the Moria UB 5.0 sources. Imoria: This version was developed at the Univ. Washington. It is written in VMS Pascal, and is only available for VAX/VMX systems. This version has never been officially released outside U. Washington. I know very little about this version, but have been told by people at U Washington that it is far superior to any other Moria version that currently exists. It has many new monsters, new objects, new races, new classes, new terrain types (like water), etc. Unfortunately, the authors have never shown any serious intent to release the sources, they are simply unavailable. I believe that it is based on the Moria 4.8 sources. Imoria 4.9: The latest version of Imoria. I do not know anything about this version. PC-Moria 4.00+: This version is a port of the Moria 4.8 Pascal sources to the IBM-PC by John W. DeBoskey. This is a faithful port of the original game, unfortunately, this version has quite a few bugs and hence is not as good as the unrelated PC-Moria 4.87 version. Umoria (UNIX Moria) 4.83/4.85/4.87: This version was developed by Jim Wilson at UC Berkeley. It is written in UNIX/C and is much more portable than the original sources. These sources, at one time or another, were ported to VMS, IBM-PC, Atari ST, Amiga, Macintosh, Apple IIGS, VM/SP, Archimedes, are probably others too. This version fixes very many bugs, spelling errors, and inconsistencies in the original Moria 4.8 sources. This version has no help facility like the original program. It has character rerolling (in the later versions), but few other changes from the original game. (This version has many names, e.g. Umoria 4.87, UNIX Moria 4.87, PC-Moria 4.83, PC-Moria 4.873, Mac Moria 4.87, etc. Just about anything with a .83/.85/.87 in the name is a version of this program.) This is based on the Moria 4.8 sources. PC-Moria 4.83/4.873: This version was developed by Don Kneller, based on the Umoria sources. These sources are identical except that they will compile on machines with 16 bit integers, had many changes to reduce program size, and introduced the reduced map display. (Note: PC-Moria 4.83 is extremely buggy, and is unplayable. I strongly recommend that you upgrade to a newer version if you are still playing it.) Amiga Moria v3.0: This version was written by Richard and Bryan Henderson of Kettering, Ohio. It is based on the Umoria 4.85 sources. This version has bitmapped graphics, unlike the ascii graphics of all other versions. It has weapons of Godly Might (which make one practically invicible) and some other changes that make it far far easier than all other Moria versions. It also has several new monsters, such as Lavender Leprechauns. Sources for this version were never released. BRUCE Moria: This version was developed by Christopher J. Stuart at Monash University, Clayton, Victoria Australia. This version has many great new features: monster memories, look any direction code, settable options, better run/find code, can center character on screen, stat code rewritten to fix bugs, rudimentory help facility added, plus many other enhancements. This was considered an experimental version, and source never publicly released. This was based on the Umoria 4.85 sources. UMoria 5.x: This version is under developement by Jim Wilson at Cygnus Support. It has unified source for the UNIX/IBM-PC/Atari/Mac/VMS/Amiga ports of Umoria 4.87. It includes many new features borrowed from BRUCE Moria, many more bug fixes, all floating point code eliminated, many changes that affect play balance (hopefully for the better), many type/structure changes to reduce game size and allow fixes for pervasive bugs. See the doc/FEATURES.NEW file for a list of most user visible changes. (Sometimes called Umoria 5.0, Moria 5.0, Moria 5.x. Should not be confused with Moria UB 5.0.) Umoria 5.4: The latest version of Umoria 5.x. Vertical position indicates roughly when the versions were made available, although the scale is not very accurate. 1983 Moria 1.0 | 1985 Moria 4.8 / \ 1987 UMoria 4.83 ------ ----------------------\ / \ | \ / ------- PC-Moria 4.83 | | UMoria 4.85 | | | / | \ | | Moria UB 5.0 1988 /------ | ------ | | | / | UMoria 4.87 | | | | BRUCE Moria | \ | | | Amiga Moria | | PC-Moria 4.873 | |---\ (surviving) | | / | | \ 1989 | /----------/ | | VMS Moria 6.0 | / | | (defunct) 1990 Umoria 5.0 | | | Imoria 4.9 Moria UB 5.1 | | | Umoria 5.2.2 (alive and well) (alive and well) | (alive and well)