How it all began... The Chatting Zone (TCZ) all began as a dream I had to write the 'ultimate' MUD/talker system. In those days, I was only a user/builder on a number of MUD's around at the time. My aim was to design and develop a system of my own, which was not only user-friendly and easy to use, but also extremely flexible and powerful too.
On the 21st December, 1993 I downloaded the source to TinyMUD v1.5 and began to turn it into the bare basics of TCZ. At this time, I was studying at the University of Greenwich in London, UK, and my Internet access was very limited (Home Internet access in the UK at that time was virtually non-existant.)
The game was ran locally on one of the servers at the university, where it picked up its first ever regular users (Ratty, Diceman, The Captain and UK1 - Most of these users are still with us today.)
After the Christmas 1993 holidays, I obtained an early version of the UglyMUG source code (1990-1991 version) - Both this and the TinyMUD code (Which I was still working on) were both very primitive and unstable. Over the next few weeks, I integrated the TinyMUD code and most of the features I had added to it into the UglyMUG code to produce the basics of TCZ v1.0 (10th March 1994.)
TCZ goes 'live' at the University of Plymouth... Two months of hard work and bug fixing saw the completion of TCZ v2.0 (18th May 1994) - This version was just about functional enough for networked use - All I had to do was find an Internet site from where I could test and run it. After a few weeks of searching, I was offered the opportunity to run it on a machine at the University of Plymouth, where a student BBS system (Originally named 'Hades BBS', then later 'Flux BBS') was presently operating.
I accepted the offer of a site and TCZ became available 'net-wide' for the first time ever near the end of May 1994 (zeus.sc.plym.ac.uk, port number 8342.) The main administrators of the game were me (JC Digita), Whoosh, Case and Nemo (Whoosh, Case and Nemo were the administrators of 'Flux BBS'.)
At this time, the game was very unstable (An up-time of 1 day was extremely rare) and had very few features. Although we never had peaks of more than 10-15 users at that time, running the game 'net-wide' enabled many bugs which had evaded testing sessions to be tracked down and fixed, resulting in greater stability.
Plymouth TCZ saw the introduction of a simple town structure to the game. This was fairly successful, but wasn't planned or organised - I saw the potential for a good town layout for the basis of the game, so I drew up a map on paper (Which I still have today) and started to develop this town on my own copy of TCZ, which was still running locally at the University of Greenwich.
Near the end of June 1994 saw the completion of TCZ v2.2 - In this version, ANSI colour was implemented, the connection interface was improved (So you were prompted to enter your name, password, etc. instead of having to type 'connect <NAME> <PASSWORD>' or 'create <NAME> <PASSWORD>'), character names with spaces were allowed (Thanks to the new connect interface) and early versions of the '@if', '@for', '@with' and '@while' (Selection and interation) commands were implemented (See '@if', '@for', '@with' and '@while'.)
After a few weeks of enjoying TCZ v2.2 at Plymouth, it was the end of term, and the long (About 3 months or more) summer holidays began...
The summer re-write... Over the summer holidays I had no access to the Internet (I didn't have a modem at the time and there were no Internet Service Providers within 100 miles of my home town either.)
I decided that there was very little chance of the code in its present state ever running reliably, and its design wasn't flexible enough for the developments I had planned for TCZ in the future, so I spent most of my time over the summer holidays taking the entire game apart, re-designing and re-writing large portions of the code from scratch.
Nearing the end of the summer holidays, the more stable and efficient basis for TCZ was nicely taking shape: The entire database structure had been improved to allow flexibility for future expansion, the socket code (Which handles the Telnet connections of users) had been re-written from scratch and the command-line editor was implemented, along with an early version of the On-line Help System.
Thanks to downloading and installing Linux 1.0.8 on my 386DX/40 computer before going home for the summer holidays, I was able to undertake the vast task of redesigning, re-writing and testing the code without any access to the Internet or the UNIX server machines at the university.
Help pages were created from the Official Manual ('manual.txt') and the finishing touches were put to a number of the main locations in the town (Such as The Swan Pub, The Chatting Zone Luxury Flats and several shops.)
Plymouth TCZ was scrapped over the summer holidays.
Term begins again... The summer holidays passed very quickly, and before I knew it, I was back in London again, living in student accommodation instead of halls of residence. With just a week to go before lectures started again, I decided to splash out and upgrade my computer. Soon I was sitting at a 486DX/2 with 8 meg of RAM.
Soon I was back on the Internet, and enjoying the upgrades made to the university's computer network over the holidays: We now had full Internet access, including Telnet, FTP, etc. I soon had TCZ installed, compiled and running again on one of the University's machines (atlas.gre.ac.uk, port number 8342.) I introduced my two flat mates (Scavy and Demon) to TCZ, who very quickly became hooked to it.
Thanks to the re-write over the summer holidays, the game was more stable and often stayed up for longer than a day without crashing. Most of the original Plymouth TCZ users were soon connecting to TCZ again, and a number of them were recruited to form the new Admin team. Crafty, Joliet Jake, NorthernGet and Unicorn were given Wizard status, along with many other users who were given Apprentice Wizard status.
From this point onwards, I started planning and implementing the huge number of ideas and features (Many original and unique) which I had for TCZ and its code.
TCZ very soon had peaks of 15-20 users, so it wasn't long before the staff at the University began to notice it. One member of University staff began to explore the town and unfortunately wandered into an area built by a user which was slightly X rated. 24-hours later I was forced to shut the game down permanently at the University.
The search for a new site... Having lost our University of Greenwich site (Where TCZ ran for about 2-3 weeks), the long, hard search for a new site began. During the next month, I sent out E-mails to every Internet Service Provider and suitable site I came across. After receiving many refusals, and being offered leased line rental at a cost of 300 UK pounds or more per month, an error occurred in my favour.
An E-mailed reply, which was aimed at one of the many Internet Service Providers I had been trying for a site accidentally ended up at a company called Lasermoon Ltd., UK. It turned out that they were having a 64Kb leased line installed soon and would be setting up an FTP server on it.
As I was the first person who had asked, I was offered the opportunity to put a machine of my own on their network, from which I could run TCZ. The leased line wouldn't be operational until late November, so I had several weeks to try and get a suitable server machine together.
I still had the motherboard and case of my old 386DX/40, so this, along with the addition of 8 meg of RAM, a 450Mb hard disk and a network card became the basis of a server machine on which to run TCZ.
After having the machine delivered to Lasermoon, I eagerly awaited for their leased line and the machine to go on-line. Around 5pm on November 28th 1994, I connected to the machine for the first time (Named Reliant (After the Startrek starship, NOT the car
Having successfully managed to log on to the machine, I uploaded TCZ's code and compiled it. At around 6pm, users of TCZ when it was at the University of Greenwich got the news they'd been waiting to hear: TCZ was back!!!
The Chatting Zone at Lasermoon... One of the biggest problems with starting up The Chatting Zone from its new Lasermoon site was that we had to provide our own server machine on which to run the game. Being a student, I had very little money to spare, but luckily I had recently upgraded my 386DX/40 to a 486DX/2 66mhz (I still had my 386DX/40, which I originally planned to sell.)
To begin with, the 386 was perfectly adequate (With 8 meg of RAM) to run TCZ (At this time there were only around 2,000 objects in the database.) However, the 386 soon began to get overloaded and over worked (Especially when complicated compound commands were executed.) It did manage to handle 30 users though without getting too bogged down.
A few months on, the 386 was no-longer adequate, and was beginning to run low on memory. To solve the problem, I bought a 486DX/33 motherboard and an extra 4 meg of RAM - This was installed in the machine, giving an instant improvement in speed and giving it 12 meg of RAM.
Around early March 1995, we managed to establish a small overseas userbase, which began to increase at a rapid rate, on top of the already established UK userbase, which was also expanding at an equal rate. It soon became apparent that the Building Point system needed redesigning and replacing with a more controlled system - Building Points were scrapped and replaced with Building Quotas (See 'quota'), which allowed us to keep a much tighter control on the expansion rate of the database (At this time, the database was expanding faster than we could cope - One week we put in an extra 4 meg of RAM, the next week it was all used up.)
At 5:26pm, 28th November 1995 (Only an hour before TCZ celebrated its first birthday of running at its Lasermoon site), a peak of 100 users was reached for the first time ever.
The move to a new site... The site at Lasermoon was adequate for over a year, but fairly soon, problems started setting in. The company needed to use the line to transfer large quantities of data as part of their day-to-day business, which very quickly started causing problems by using up a lot of bandwidth and in turn slowing connections to TCZ down to a crawl. At first, this wasn't too much of a problem, as it only occurred during business hours. However, fairly soon, it became a 24-hour problem, and as a result, TCZ and its reputation began to suffer (As long periods of excessive delay (Or 'lag') which were not the fault of TCZ itself spoilt the game for its users.)
By this time, I had already established a good friendship with a local Internet Service Provider (AngliaNet Ltd.) in my home town of Ipswich, England. In return for the help and assistance I gave them, I was offered the opportunity to move TCZ's server machine on-site. This had many advantages, including ample bandwidth and the server machine itself being within a short distance of my home (To upgrade or resolve problems would only require a 10 minute journey instead of an expensive 200 mile journey to where Lasermoon were based.)
Everything was set, and the move took place. Some 5000+ E-mails were sent out to users of the game to inform them of its new address, and the major task of changing its address on the 100's of MUD lists on which it was registered began. After a week, most regular users had found their way to the new location and the number of new users being created began to increase again.
With the move, several other changes took place, including a hardware upgrade to the server machine and the moving of TCZ's FTP and World Wide Web (See 'www') sites to its server machine. The domain 'galaxsw.co.uk' was registered for GALAX Software Ltd., giving the addresses 'tcz.galaxsw.co.uk' for TCZ, 'www.galaxsw.co.uk' for its World Wide Web site and 'ftp.galaxsw.co.uk' for its FTP archive. In addition to this, E-mail could now be sent to 'tczadmin@galaxsw.co.uk'.
Miscellaneous... TCZ has exceeded all of my original expectations, and there's very little in my original dream of writing the 'ultimate' MUD which hasn't been achieved. Even after so many years of development, TCZ still presents a steady stream of new programming challenges, along with the enjoyment of implementing them - I look forward to continuing the development of the TCZ source code for many years to come, along with help from others now that TCZ is public open source code released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) - See 'gpl'.
TCZ facts... * TCZ is pronounced "tea-sea-zed"!
* TCZ's first ever users were: JC Digita, Ratty, Diceman, UK1 and The Captain.
* TCZ's first ever overseas user to be promoted to Admin (Apprentice Wizard) status was: Price (Now known as Steve.)
* TCZ went on-line for the first time at its Lasermoon site on 28th November 1994 at 6pm (GMT)
* TCZ's first ever peak of over 100 users occurred on 28th November 1995 at 5:26pm (GMT) - Almost exactly one year after TCZ first opened to the public.
* As of 12th August 1996, there were over half a million connections to TCZ, and over 35,000 characters created since March 1995 (When recording of statistical data was first implemented.) The highest ever peak so far is currently 122 users simultaneously.
* On Sunday 22nd June 1997, one million connections to TCZ was reached.
* The longest recorded uptime of TCZ (Total running time, without being shutdown for a code update, shutdown by a power failure or crashing) is well over 7 months.
* The TCZ 2000 Project commenced on 11th April 1999. This ended nearly five years of sole maintenance and development by J.P.Boggis (Aka JC Digita) by introducing Simon A. Boggis (Aka Badpenny) to the source code and the creation of plans for TCZ's long term future.
* As of 22nd March 2000, the TCZ v4.3.0 source code consists of 51 source files, totaling 3665kb in size and 61,327 lines.
* On Wednesday 30th May 2000, the original The Chatting Zone (TCZ) MUD was finally closed after over six years of running.
* On Wednesday 23 May 2001, the original The Chatting Zone (TCZ) MUD database was re-opened as part of an official research project of the Information, Media and Communication (IMC) Research Group in the Department of Computer Science, Queen Mary, University of London.
* On Thursday 20th November 2003, TCZ was moved to a new dedicated machine in the Department of Computer Science, Queen Mary, University of London.
Do you remember... * When the town didn't exist, and the main locations (Of which there were very few at the time) were all accessed from a room called 'The Crossroads'? (Ratty, Diceman, UK1 and The Captain probably will * When you couldn't have spaces in your name or name prefixes/suffixes? * When you had to type 'connect <NAME> <PASSWORD>' to connect? * When there was no ANSI colour support (In the very early Plymouth days)? * When there was a code update almost every day to fix major bugs and implement new features? * When an uptime of more than 1 day was extremely rare? * When there was no World Wide Web Interface? * When TCZ ran on a 386 PC with 8Mb RAM? * When you had to use '@desc' and lots of protecting backslashes to write compound commands (Before the editor was implemented.) * When the TCZ source code was not publicly released under the GNU General Public License (GPL)? - See 'gpl'. Also, see 'features', 'version info', 'bug fixes', 'acknowledgements', 'modules' and 'authors'.
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