Moria Release Highlights: 1981-Present

February 2017 marks 30 years of Umoria development, and more than 35 years since the Moria development started, and to celebrate I've spent a little time doing some Moria archeology!

Releases Timeline

This timeline consists of a list for when the different versions of Moria/Umoria were released. For those where we still have the source code you'll find a link to the archive -- unfortunately in the intervening years the source code for most of the Moria releases has been lost.

Moria (VMS BASIC)

Unreleased Moria BETA 0.x versions of the game

1981 (end of year) — Robert A. Koeneke begins work on the Moria game
1983-03-25 - possibly the last VMS BASIC version

Moria (VMS Pascal)

1983 (Summer) - Koeneke starts work on the VMS Pascal rewrite
1984-05-01 - v1.0
1984-07-10 - v2.0
1984-11-20 - v3.0
1985-01-20 - v4.0
1985-03-xx - v4.43 (no earlier than this date)
1986 (Spring) - v4.5 - Possibly the last version released by Koeneke
1986-11-06 - v4.8 (date needs confirming)

Information about VMS Moria is sparse, and what we do have is a somewhat contradictory, so the above dates may not be completely correct. Please see the history page for more information.

Umoria

1987-02 — James E. Wilson starts work on Umoria.
1987-04-30 — v4.81
1987-05-03 — v4.82
1987-05-14 — v4.83
1987-09-16 — v4.84
1987-10-26 — v4.85
1987-11-05 — v4.85 source code posted to the comp.sources.games Usernet group.
1988-05-04 — v4.86
1988-05-26 — v4.87
1989-02-26 — v5.0.0
1990-01-12 — v5.0.10
1990-01-15 — v5.0.11
1990-01-20 — v5.0.12
1990-01-24 — v5.0.13
1990-02-10 — v5.0.14
1990-02-11 — v5.0.15
1990-02-14 — v5.0.16
1990-02-22 — v5.0.17
1990-02-27 — v5.1.0 (on rec.games.moria J.E.W said this is Alpha source code)
1990-03-04 — v5.1.1 (J.E.W said he considers this as "alpha-level" source code)
1990-03-25 — v5.1.2
1990-03-28 — v5.1.3
1990-04-20 — v5.1.4
1990-05-07 — v5.1.5
1990-05-09 — v5.2.0
1990-05-21 — v5.2.1
1990-06-10 — v5.2.2
1991-03-25 — v5.3.0
1991-03-30 — v5.3.1
1991-10-12 — v5.4.0
1992-08-09 — v5.4.1
1992-08-13 — v5.5.0
1994-06-25 — v5.5.1
1994-07-21 — v5.5.2
2000-05-28 — v5.5.2-1
2000-10-14 — v5.5.2-2
2001-01-06 — v5.5.2-3
2001-07-09 — v5.5.2-4
2001-10-24 — v5.5.2-5
2008-10-13 — v5.6.0 (GPL-3.0 re-license)
2016-11-27 — v5.7.0 (Restoration Project)
2021-02-27 — Latest Release

Development Highlights

The original CHANGELOG contains a great deal of interesting information about the game's development, however, at over 4000 lines it can make for very dry reading. Therefore I've created this highlights section covering all the changes from over the last thirty years of Umoria development up until the present day, which covers v4.81 through v5.7

The following highlights contain what I consider to be the more interesting changes and updates to the game. It omits all bug fixes, UI tweaks, compiler information, and any other non-gameplay changes.

4.81 (1987-4-30)

Enchant Armor Scroll
Recharge Spell
rogue_like key binding option
Monster 'o' Ogre Magi casting unknown spells

4.83 (1987-5-14)

Added 'drools' and 'insults' messages.

4.85 (1987-10-26)

First public release of Umoria!

Changed version number to 4.85 for distribution purposes.
Started mailing to comp.sources.games

4.85 (1988-2-19)

Add re-rolling of characters
Can now enchant Boots with Enchant Armor scroll

4.86 (1988-5-4)

Bashing effects (stunned) not cumulative
When player overeats, he is temporarily slowed
Turn over store contents every 1000 turns, if player not on town level

4.87 (1988-5-26)

When spell casters lose EXP, they lose spells too quickly. Lose spell when:

not high enough level
num spells more than INT allows

Should lose spells when lose INT/WIS

5.0.0 (1989-2-26)

(The following changes were made over the whole year. Order has been maintained.)

Merged the umoria and PC-Moria sources
Grey Snakes, renamed one to Green
Give monsters a chance to recover from Bash, depends on square of monster level
Give monsters a chance to ignore bash, function of hitpoints and level
Giant Red Ant Lion, not hurt by fire, move and attack normally
Restore mana potion made more valuable (35 -> 350)
Staff of speed value increased (800 -> 1000)
Ring of sustain charisma level changed (7 -> 44)
Ring of stupidity level decreased (20 -> 7)
Potion of gain strength value increased (200 -> 300)
Halfling Clan Elder had 0% chance, gave warrior higher base to hit chance than paladin
Crown of The Magi, now has RL instead of See Invisible
Allow searching while blind, decrease chance of success if blind or have no light
creature.c: in get_moves, change 1.732 to 2, makes it faster
Can no longer circle monsters by moving in a diamond shape
Bugfixes from CJS (Bruce Moria)
Merging changes from Christopher J Stuart...zillions of changes
Door bashing different and noisy too!
Creatures only eat lower level creatures
Crowns higher chance of magic
Monster dist changed to increase chance of higher level monsters
Damage added to bows
Use up mana if prayer fails.
Double regen if searching
Damage if really hungry
Increase treasure in streamers
Add todam for using bow/arrow
Jamdoor p1 values changed successive spikes have smaller effect
Add Bruce Moria comment, new options, read environment variables, etc.
Merged Xenix diffs and Atari ST diffs
Potion of Sleep no longer cures blindness
Food/potion/scroll/staff/wand objects do not give experience when used
Replaced LOS code with an integer arithmetic version by JNH (Joseph Hall)
Moria no longer users floating point numbers!
Make flasks of oil vulnerable to frost and fire, like potions
New "look" code from Bruce Moria, look in arcs so that can see anything on the screen
Increased store turn around from 4 (avg 2.5) to 9 (avg 5)
Made Spirit Troll into 'G', made invisible, pickup/carry's obj, added drain wisdom attack, added drain intelligence attack to green glutton ghost
Make Priests harder, gave negative str adjust, inc expfact from 10% to 20%
All wands now have limits on range
Doubled Balrog eye sight from 20->40, evil iggy from 20->30
Change Corrosive Gases to Poison Gases
Green Glutton Ghost no longer drains INT
Made Ring of WOE decrease wisdom, to balance ring of stupidity
Add storenice feature by Dan Berstein: if (good bargain > 3 * bad bagains + 20) then always get final price in that store
Decrease search chances if hallucinating, decrease disarm chances if hallucinating, look fails completely
Decrease Priestly HP bonus from 3 to 2
Allow Sling Ammo to be enchanted
For "type 2" rooms, make them dark below level 25, not 30
When close a door, print "Something" instead of monster name if the monster blocking the door is invisible
Make the digging chance for non digging weapons equal to their max damage + tohit bonus instead of proportional to weight, the old code made lances better for digging than shovels
Spirit Troll too hard to hit when can't be seen, lower AC 56->40
Change stealth code, instead of randint(10) < stl, it now cubes randint(64) and compares against 1 << (17 - stl), the result is that a change of one in stl always decreases monster notice chance by 80%, and perfect stealth is impossible

5.0.8 (1989-12-5)

Changed stealth code, amount monster woken by from 100 to 125 (used to be 75 before 12/4)
More monster fixes from DJG:

Change (SM) to (SA), slay monster to slay animal
Change 'unnatural creature' to 'natural creature'

Changed stealth code again, if resting/paralyzed monster has a chance of noticing once every 50 turns instead of never like before, change 64 to 1024, and 17 to 29 for a better distribution
Do not put character off balance if bash is successful
In dispel_creature() set EVIL/UNDEAD flag if creature hurt
In turn_undead() set UNDEAD if creature hurt
In drain_life() set CD_UNDEAD if creature not hurt
Stealth value changed again from 125 to 100
Change Rogue base stealth from 4 to 5, let wizard set stealth to 18
White Worm Mass sleep value from 10 to 1
Crystal Ooze 60 -> 1
Change ghe way spell learning works
New command 'G'ain magic spells
New field py.flags.new_spells number of spells can learn
Remove Potion of Learning as it is no longer useful

5.0.9 (1990-1-1)

In mon_cast_spell(), must update_mon() to light monsters before they cast a spell
If no shovel/pick, divide total tabil chance by two
Change eye-sight and sleep values for consistency, as noted by David Grabiner
When monster bashes down a door, call disturb() to halt resting
Change chance for ego weapons/missiles to 3*special/2 instead of just special, needed because treasure distribution change has made ego weapons not as common as before
Let nether wraith phase
Set Black/Red/Multi ancient dragons to a sleep value of 700
When step back after setting off a falling rock trap, check to see if have stepped back onto another trap

5.0.10 (1990-1-12)

Apply William Setzer's objdes() diffs, 500K patch file

5.0.11 (1990-1-15)

Novice Rogue now evil like other rogues

5.0.12 (1990-1-20)

If py.misc.mana == 0, this is for characters who did not know any spells before the 'G' command, can't gain spells if blind/no light/confused
Moving into a wall is no longer a free turn
Priests no longer need book before can learn spells from it, mages still need the books
Made scribe_object() a free turn again
Creeping Coins hit instead of bite, and touch instead of breath

5.0.13 (1990-1-24)

Give player attack on creature if it is in the way
Increase effect of aggravate_monster attack from range of 5 to 20

5.0.14 (1990-2-10)

In calc_spell() spells are now remembered in the order that they were learned, and forgotten in the reverse order learned
Merged in Mac sources

5.0.15 (1990-2-11)

Merged in VMS sources

5.0.16 (1990-2-14)

Add Dan Bernstein's name to credits
Make moving into walls a free turn again, but player can not attack invisible creatures in walls by moving into wall (hence preventing him from using 6 free turns to search for invis creature), must tunnel into wall instead, which always takes a turn
tunnel() now checks confusion, and tries to tunnel in random direction if confused
Clone monster wands changed from level 2 to level 15, makes them recharge less, max 6 new charges instead of max 18 new charges
Change stinking cloud from 16 to 12 damage as it was too close to lightning bolt at 18, reduce mana for mage/ranger from 4/6 to 3/5
Add in diffs to get MSDOS version working again, add files from binary PC-Moria distribution
Change knowdamage() so that higher damage attacks take longer to learn than lower damage attacks
Jellies and Molds no longer have treasure
Move Crystal Ooze from level 31 to level 40, to make raising Crystal Oozes for treasure much more dangerous

5.0.17 (1990-2-26)

Merged in Atari ST diffs from Stephen A. Jacobs
Creeping Coins always carry gold now, 1d2 for copper, 1d2+60 for silver, and 1d2+90 for gold
Change non-weight limit from 57 to 60

5.1.0 (1990-2-27)

When bash open door, only break it 50% of the time to be consistent with code in creature.c

5.1.1 (1990-3-4)

Merged more Mac diffs, Mac version should compile now
Change chance of failure from randint((num+40)/10)=1 to randint((num+40-i_ptr->p1-i_ptr->level)/10)=1 to make it harder to recharge high level and highlly charged wands
Earth elementals/spirits can now move through walls
For earth elementals, increase their hit points
Cloning a monster will wake it up now

5.1.2 (1990-3-25)

Merge Wizard/God mode, God mode nolonger exists
monster_death(), increase tries from 10 to 20 so that treasure will be created more often

5.1.3 (1990-3-28)

Multiply damage for missile by 2/3/4 instead of adding when use proper weapons, makes missiles much more useful
Penalty for attacking invisible creatures modified, was minus lev * BTH_LEV_ADJ-1, now minus lev * BTH_LEV_ADJ/2, hence warriors have less penalty than mages/priests
treasure.c: delete one ring of adornment and one amulet of adornment, add arrows at level 15, and bolts at level 25
Change missile cost to 5*pluses instead of 10*pluses, since missiles appear in groups of 20 or so, this is comparable to normal weapons which are 100*pluses
Teleport monster will wake it up
Wall building now heals Xorns in addition to earth elementals
Drain life damage increased from 50 to 75, to match other 50th level wand damages
Let monsters eat other monsters of equal exp, helps prevent using oozes as treasure factories
Sleep values too hard to learn, change test from r_wake > sleep to (r_wake*r_wake)>sleep

5.1.4 (1990-4-20)

Moved see invisible from slay animal to slay undead weapons
Updated documentation to reflect changes from 4.873 to 5.1, added section which explains crowns, added some sections from Chris J Stuart's BRUCE Moria's documentation

5.1.5 (1990-5-7)

Ogre Mage is now evil
Reduce plus to dam for slay dragon arrows from +10 to +3, no longer need such high damages because ptodam is multiplied now when used with right weapon

5.2.0 (1990-5-9)

Change the version number to 5.2.0

5.2.1 (1990-5-31)

Released umoria 5.2.1

5.2.2 (1990-6-10)

Fixes for VMS, define USG for VMS, merge in fixes from Todd Pierzina
Added AMIGA support
Merge in more VMS patches
New feature: '*' rest until reach max mana and hp
Make spikes wield-able objects, fight with them like missile weapons, i.e. they disappear after use

5.2.2 (1990-10-8)

Released 5.2.2 sources

5.2.2 (1990-10-30)

Rings of Searching cost was 100*p1, amulet of searching cost 20*p1, change both to 50*p1
Slow monster and confuse monster modified to wake up monster if the attacks fails
Don't create a trap under the player, to prevent strange occurrences such as ending up under a falling rock
When wielding heavy weapon, make tunneling more difficult
Change rogue start inv from Soft Armor to Cloak, so that it is the same as the other non-Warrior classes

5.2.2 (1991-1-4)

Grave Wight, no longer has confusion spell, no other wight/wraith has it
Creatures which are repelled should not be confused because they did not hit the player
Apply Atari ST/GCC patches from Scott Kolodzieski.
Updated versions of Amiga source files from Corey Gehman
Complete rewrite of the Atari ST curses code by Hildo Biersma
Add Mac THINK C support

5.3 (1991-3-25)

Changed version numbers to 5.3

5.3.1 (1991-3-30)

Merge in changes from Ralph Waters, which are needed to compile the sources under VMS and IBM-PC/Turbo C.
Remove good armor items from armory, to force players to search for them in the dungeons, hard leather boots, iron helm, partial plate, full plate
Always create dragons sleeping here, to give the player a sporting chance

5.3.1 (1991-4-27)

Give moves to monsters trapped in rock, so that they will die/dig out immediately, mon_move() if a monster in rock is already dead, don't kill it again
Novice Priest, change sleep from 10 to 5 to match other novice 'p'

5.4.0 (1991-10-12)

Many bug fixes

5.4.0 (1992-7-16)

(Maintenance taken over by David Grabiner)

enchant(), chance of failure is now (plusses/limit), with very slight chance of success over limit
When enchanting melee weapons to damage, set limit to weapon's maximum damage, otherwise use 10 to give behavior similar to old method
magic_treasure(), make standard deviation of damage bonus on a melee weapon proportional to weapon's maximum damage; these changes mean that daggers can no longer become powerful weapons
The Zweihander has now become a great weapon, value increased from 1000 to 1500
Give everyone a slight chance to use difficult wands and staffs, otherwise a warrior will never be able to use many items
noneedtobargain(), changed to sliding scale, (good-3*bad) must be more than 5 + (price/50) to skip haggling, so that haggling for cheap items is over quickly, but can still eventually skip haggle for all items
updatebargain(), now update for all items worth >9 gold, instead of just 10-999, since it is now possible to skip haggling for more valuable items as well
Unsuccessful bash takes a turn; otherwise, you can attempt to bash in different directions while confused or to locate invisible monsters; eliminate variable no_bash

5.4.1 (1992-8-9)

Bugfixes and minor game balance changes

5.5.0 (1992-8-13)

Release umoria 5.5.0

5.5.0 (1994-6-7)

Included changes from Andrew Chernov for 386BSD support
Included changes from Berthold Gunreben for HP-UX support
Added patches for HP Apollo, which doesn't allow multiple processes to use the same file
Added code from Harry Johnston which allows use of 0-9 to specify an item with the corresponding inscription
Set AC bonus on cursed weapon, hit/dam bonuses on cursed armor to zero (in case HA/DF/gauntlets of slaying had bonus)
Reworked monster confusion: monster's confused value now gives duration, turn_undead has guaranteed duration equal to player's level, other confusion random
Undead which have been turned will flee rather than moving randomly, attack only if cornered
Allow monsters to resist attacks if they have no breath weapon but use the attack type (so fire giants resist fire)
noneedtobargain(), change scale again, (good-3*bad-5) must be positive and its square must be at least price/50, this allows high-level characters to become good bargainers for expensive items
Strengthened Holy Word
Reduced failure chance for Holy Word

5.5.1 (1994-6-25)

Include changes from Ronald Cook for Lattice C support on Amiga
Include changes from Brian Johnson for Linux support
Include changes from Eric Bazin to merge monster memories
Allow thieves to pick up objects on the floor
Fixed many treasure inconsistencies, mostly prices and names
magic_treasure(), fixed values of SU and SA, which weren't changed when see invisible was moved from SA to SU; also changed magical bonuses for these weapons
Don't clear out haggling record if player is thrown out (it might be worse than zero), just penalize as for bad bargain

5.5.2 (1994-7-21)

Fixed a few more inconsistencies with treasure items

5.6.0 (2008-10-13)

Umoria released as Free Software under the GPL-3.0 license.

5.7.0 (2016-11-27)

(Umoria Restoration Project)

Windows, macOS, and Linux support.
Renames binary from moria to umoria, save file to game.sav, and scores to scores.dat.
Lots of code refactoring, standardization, modernization, and general clean up.
Reorganize all old document files; create a historical directory.
Remove support for discontinued computers and OS: Atari ST, Amiga, MS DOS, "Classic" Mac OS (pre OS X), VMS, System III, etc., etc.

You can view all the latest changes in the Umoria source code on Github.com