Cheeseplant's House

Cheeseplant's House
Developer(s)	Daniel Stephens
Platform(s)	Platform independent
Release date(s)	1991
Genre(s)	Talker
Mode(s)	Multiplayer
Media/distribution	Online
System requirements Telnet client or MUD client, Internet access

Cheeseplant's House, frequently known as Cheesehouse, was the second Internet talker, and the first of its kind to achieve more than 100 simultaneous users (in January 1992).^[1] Created by Daniel "Cheeseplant" Stephens,^[2] it ran on the same University of Warwick Server/Port as the original Internet talker, Cat Chat, after that talker's abrupt shutdown.^[3] It originated several important technical innovations in talkers.^[1][2] Through its popularity, it is credited with starting the "talker movement"^[1] and inspiring the ew-too genre.^[4]

Technical infrastructure

Though it emulated the LPMud-based command structure of Cat Chat, and the ew-too talker codebase that it inspired used LPMud as its infrastructure, Cheeseplant's House was written from scratch in C.^[5]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} "Talker History". NetLingo the Internet Dictionary. http://www.netlingo.com/more/talker.php. Retrieved 2010-04-13. "Relatively simple code to begin with, Cheeseplants later grew to being highly advanced. For the first time, a talker had private rooms, or 'mindscapes', and people had many flexible commands available to them. [...] Over the summer of 91, Cheeseplants House version 2 was written, but then completely scrapped, as the author looked in horror on the code he had written, and declared it junk. So, in October 1991, Cheeseplants House version 3 was released, bound to orchid.warwick.ac.uk 2001. The program grew rapidly in size until one day, for the first time, in Janurary [sic] 1992, an internet talker had over 100 people connected to it at the same time. [...] Cheeseplants was gone, forever, but it had started the talker movement with a great example." 
2. ^ ^{a b} "Introduction to MUDs". The Mud Connector. http://www.mudconnect.com/mud_intro.html. "Talkers began in 1990 with the program "CatChat" at Warwick University which, ironically, used an LP MUD driver and had snoop capability. Daniel Stephens then took Talkers one step further with "Cheeseplant's House" which had similar commands, was a dedicated Talker, and, most importantly, did not have the ability to snoop." 
3. ^ Stephens, Daniel. "Cheeseplant's House". /home/daniel, the ramblings of Daniel Stephens. http://www.cheeseplant.org/~daniel/pages/cph.html. "So I ran the embryonic talker on the port which Cat Chat used to occupy, and left myself logged in there while I worked on adding improvements. Reboots and additions were frequent and significant. On February 8th 1991, a somewhat bewildered Frodo logged into the house and expressed a deal of surprise at finding it there, he was the first of the 'refuges' who tried the old address and found the house." 
4. ^ "Alt.Talkers FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)". 2008-08-31. http://groups.google.com/group/alt.talkers/msg/ed79292251dcd3aa. Retrieved 2010-04-13. "3.7 CheesePlant's House This was the 'original' talker that inspired the whole EW-Too genre." 
5. ^ Stephens, Daniel. "Cheeseplant's House source code". ftp://ftp.cheeseplant.org/pub/cph/.