Moria for DOS v4.87 - Going Way Back

[vultures]

I'm overly impressed with new DCSS's changelog so beat me to smitherines for writing this -
 - even when neglecting readme portions of their docs, devs explain changes they've made through changelogs.

So there, compare both these ancient files and you're golden.

[akeley]

I`m trying to establish what the latest version of Moriais, for the Archive, it`s a bit of a headache though. According to wiki it`d be around 4.7 - 5.0

Seems that in some point it morphed into UMoria and people here and there started calling this version "Moria".

What I`d like to know, is UMoria an exact port of the original VMS Moria? Is the VMS version available anywhere for DOS/Win, or is this what UMoria is?

[Ancient]

No, UMoria is not exact port of VMS Moria, although it is the closest thing you can get without doing some nontrivial work. The reason for introduction of many changes is original Moria was in Pascal while UMoria is in C. Nonetheless it is basically the same thing from user perspective. In my opinion you can reasonably treat it as valid continuation of original game.

In order to have VMS Moria available on modern platforms you would need to create another UMoria or do what I have done with BOSS (a variant of VMS Moria) - port it to Free Pascal.

[akeley]

Thanks for clearing that up. It`s a tough call how to sort these often extremely tangled roots of the originators... For now I`ll just leave UMoria as a separate entity, with annotation that it is  "Moria" for those looking for the newest one.

Funny thing, there is actually no "Moria" if you`re looking from a strict archivist point of view (and I am :) since the original is actually called The Dungeons Of Moria. It seems that this here DOS version 4.87 is a straight port of the latest original, so it will go into DOS directory and by proxy it will be possible to play this original "Moria" on a PC.