

A different version called Moria UB 5.0 appeared at the University at Buffalo this is the last VMS version released, and is sometimes called VMS Moria 5.0. Koeneke was working on Moria 5.0, which was an almost complete rewrite with interesting features like streams, lakes and new weapons, however it was never released. In 1985 they started sending out the source code to other Universities, and it was during this time that the game started to became popular. Koeneke's good friend, Jimmey Wayne Todd Jr., wrote many of the core features in the early days of Moria.

In 1983 he enrolled in a Pascal operating systems class and started rewriting Moria in VMS Pascal, releasing v1.0 the following summer.

Around 1980/81 he got a job in a new department where the game wasn't available, so in 1981 he decided to write his own Rogue game written in VMS BASIC, and called it Moria Beta 1.0. Koeneke became hooked on "Rogue" while at the University of Oklahoma. Moria was also the first open source roguelike, which made it possible for it to be ported to many different computer platforms in a time when that was generally hard to achieve.Īlthough the game is not as popular as it once was, it is still considered as one of the major roguelikes. Although inspired by Tolkien there is little else that the game shares with the books.Ĭreated by Robert Alan Koeneke in 1983, Moria is one of the earliest clones of Rogue and was the first roguelike to have a "Town" level where you buy weapons, armor, spellbooks, potions, and various other items to help you on your difficult quest to defeat the Balrog. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, with the game world is set in the Mines of Moria, where the player has to venture deep into the mines to defeat the Balrog. The Dungeons of Moria (usually just called Moria) is a roguelike inspired by J.R.R. Linux, MS-DOS, Mac Classic, Atari ST, Amiga, *NIX
