Alternate Universe (or AU, as it is affectionately known) is a free, futuristic-themed multiplayer text-based adventure game (of the MUD genre). It first went online around 22nd February 2002 and gathered over 2000 players in a relatively short time over the next few years. AU has been offline periodically for a while since then, but has now made a comeback, running on a Raspberry Pi.
I wrote the Java code for the game engine from scratch, with valuable contributions from 'scribe' and 'barnoid'. The maps were partly built from inside the game itself by players who have the title 'Builder' or 'Architect'.
The game features spaceships, an astronomical observatory, mudmail and mud-wide-web terminals, a stock market, various robots and even an auditorium where Shakespeare's plays are performed by bots every few hours.
For more, visit the Alternate Universe Website or the AU group on facebook.
