In 2000, DUNG was renamed into the more marketable BYOND. If the Dantom team liked their creations, the team would grant the user the privilege of permanently keeping their key, and possibly other perks, including advertising and perhaps even hosting their games. If someone wanted to keep their key permanently, they had to participate in the beta test for DUNG, create and make games, and submit them to a particular Dantom-related email. Interestingly, users were granted a key for only a limited amount of time.

Once again much like modern BYOND, usernames were called 'keys', fitting into the vague dungeon metaphor. And if you are interested in making more complex worlds, you can use the powerful DUNG language, DM to complete the task much more readily than with a traditional language. You can design simple DUNG worlds, such as graphical chat servers, in a matter of minutes. The advantage of DUNG is that these elements are automatically handled for you. How many creative game ideas were abandoned because the otherwise capable programmer became overwhelmed with the intricasies of the interface? Many, to be sure. Until now, however, creating such a game required a large amount of programming knowledge, especially in the frustrating field of networks and graphical interfaces. In their own words:ĭUNG is not revolutionary in providing this technology networked graphical games have existed for quite some time now. However, it grew so incredibly complex that it started becoming the game's very own proprietary programming language, prompting Dan and Tom to switch to developing a game engine.Īlso like modern BYOND, DUNG was intended as a quick and easy way for programmers to quickly and easily create online graphical games without having to deal with networking or graphical interface creation code.

Originally, DM was a system for creating spells in the MUD Dan and Tom were initially developing. Like modern BYOND, it used a special programming language called 'DM', presumably as in 'Dungeon Master'. This game builder was given the name 'DUNG', that is, 'Dantom's Universal Network Game', which can be interpreted as a clever shortening of 'dungeon', a poorly-made poop joke, both, or neither. However, as the scope of the game became more and more complex, they realized they would never be able to achieve their original goal and decided to repurpose their project into a game-making suite, essentially allowing others to finish the game for them. The next year, in 1995, the two graduating college students formed a company known as 'Dantom International' (Dan + Tom = Dantom) to develop this game. BYOND began way back in 1994, when Dan Bradley approached Tom Hehre with the idea of creating a graphics-based online multi-user dungeon from scratch.

Coding in byond