A Brief History of Dark Pawns

Recorded by: Frontline

This is the unabridged history as best anyone can remember. There is likely some stuff missing. If you know what it is, send us a mudmail and we'll get it corrected. This is an updated version of the history of DP originally written by Orodreth circa 1999.

September 1994

DP is Born! It is based upon CircleMUD 1.7 and ran on knight.ufp.org. At this time Serapis (D. Karnes) and Tracer (C. Jackson) are the primary developers.

December 1995

The base code for DP is changed to CircleMUD 2.2, now known as DP v1.0

February 1996

Arak (B. Parker) and Orodreth (S. Thompson) join the team as coders. Oddity (A. McConnell) joins the team as head builder and proves very valuable.

March 1996

DP's base is once again changed, this time to CircleMUD 3.0pl9, which is a beta version of CircleMUD 3.0. Frontline (R. Paret) joins the team as a coder. Nimos and Aralius (R. Martin) join as builders. This version has become known as DP v2.0

June 1996

Upgraded the base code to CircleMUD 3.0pl11.

December 1996

Moved to augusta.net

May 1997

DP moves to www.mystech.com, known as pawns.guru.org, because our location on augusta.net was discovered. Mystech is Serapis' employer at the time.

October 1997

Moved to darkrune.guru.org a machine owned by Orodreth and hosted at the University of Virginia, Blacksburg. The mud is still advertised by the alias pawns.guru.org

Staff changes as Orodreth and Serapis become co-implementors. All inactive immortals fired/deleted. Oddity leaves.

May 1998

The hardware is the same, but the hostname changed to ritual.darkrune.org also known as pawns.darkrune.org DP v2.1 is unveiled!

Serapis leaves. Frontline and Orodreth become co-implementors.

December 1998

DP moves again! This time it's because Orodreth has graduated from University. Wolfpaw.net, an upstart mud hosting provider, is gracious enough to host us for free in exchange for some advertising. We move to alcatraz.wolfpaw.net, and change port for the first time from the default 4000 to 4300. Alcatraz is aliased as pawns.wolfpaw.net and pawns.darkrune.org.

We release DP v2.2, the largest update in DP's history.

Delirium and Hulk join the immortal staff.

The next version, called Dark Pawns:Age of Cities is announced. This is later refered to simply as 3.0.

October 1999

Staff shake-up as several immortals (Delirium, Hulk) and all chosen are demoted/fired.

December 1999

Doragar joins DP staff as a builder/coder.

April 2000

Our free account with Wolfpaw expires and DP starts costing money to operate. We move to talon.wolfpaw.net and keep pawns.wolfpaw.net and pawns.darkrune.org as our aliases.

February 2001

Disaster! A malicious user breaks into talon.wolfpaw.net and destroys all of the files associated with DP! We are able to recover somewhat from backups made by Orodreth but all player rent files and newer player data are lost, along with significant portions of the new version of Dark Pawns, 3.0.

darkpawns.com is registered and is now used as our alias. A redesigned DP website is unveiled.

Current

The mud remains active and fully operational while work continues on the long-overdue version 3.0