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Posted
by
michael
from the back-in-my-day-we-used-telnet-and-we-liked-it dept.
br00tus writes "With the advent of MMORPG's like EverQuest, old-fashioned text-based, free MUD's may seem kind of antiquated. Nevertheless, I've been looking around for a good, free (e.g. not ZMud etc.) MUD client that I can use on Windows and/or UNIX. Any ideas?" Uh, TinyFugue?
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we hooked a 300 baud modem to a dumb terminal and dialed into a server with the games we wanted to play, all the while laughing at those chumps that paid for their own computers.
Granted "my day" wasn't that long ago and everyone else have 486 and pentium desktops that cost less than my transcontinental phone bills in my pursuit of 20 y/o MUDs...
Do you really want geeks showing up on your doorstep in full chainmail, a sword, and the amulet of Yendor? I think you should very much encourage them to keep their fantasies stored as harmless electronic and magnetic charges far, far away from this "Real Life". I mean, have you ever actually been to a LARP (Live-Action Role Playing)? It's definately not pretty. I know a guy who ended up getting stitches in a hospital. I guess he thought he had more hit points than he actually did. That's ok, he eventually did end up back at town center, and all his digits were intact and functional after seeing the healer. I think he gave up adventuring though, and he now works answering other adventurers' questions about these magical devices that help in the creation of scrolls at Lexmark.
Now, do you really want us role playing geeks to invade real life? You know these people that role play are usually the ones that right your software. Next time you check your X11 log for the last error to see if it's complaining about the mouse or display modes and all you see is runes, you'll learn to appreciate the fact there is a time and place for these fantasies. I personally don't want to have to describe my problem on the mailing lists using Quenya.
Five different moderators thought you were being funny. And maybe you were, but you make a serious point: why does anybody need a fancy client to play a text-mode game?
Well, the biggest need is separation of entry and response.
You have toGrue slashes you for 10 points of damage! nYou attempt to bash Grue, but miss!ote that JohnMary tells you: "woot, ding 14!"trying to type amid the output of a MU* is an exercise in frustration.
Also, frankly, TinyFugue totally rocks. It manages multiple connections gracefully, it handles all sorts of input and output, it rocks for searching. It just works really well. It has all the features anyone could want from a MU* program, and it's fre
And there are other telnet clients besides Microsoft's. You can even use an X terminal window if you want to go to the trouble of installing Cygwin. Still, Drey has a point about those other MUD client features.
This is also my client of choice - it stays out of your way (looks like telnet to the onlooker) and provides good scripting facilities. There is also a port to Windows (which thankfully looks NOTHING like Windows Telnet;), Wintin [wintin.org].
I don't know of any really good free win32 clients. Zmud is the best, in my opinion, and I bought a license for it back in the 4.xx days. I don't even use 5.x or 6.x even though my license is fully upgradable because I detest eLicense.
I really liked mcl on *nix, by Erwin Andreasen, but he stopped maintaining it a while ago and I'm not even able to access his homepage right now. A cursory whois on the domain seems to suggest that he has abandoned his former "life".:(
I've got a really ancient version of Zmud... let me run over to the windows machine and check... 4.62 16 bit hahah. It works really well though, a great showcase for what you can do with objpascal/Delphi. When I was reduced to one box for awhile I tried to convert to tintin++, but even with a friend that was expert at it a lot of the things I did with Zmud using triggers and functions and the like just couldn't be replicated. Wound up running it under WINE. I agree about the newer versions though - and not
Anyway, prompted by mention of this topic on Slashdot I finally got around in releasing a maintenane release of mcl, 0.53.00. It basically fixes all the ancient C++ code that only compiled with 2.95, and also makes the code work with Perl 5.8.0 etc.
I started out using TF under OS/2, and later under Linux. I tried others, but always went back. No GUI crap for me!
I used it for...far too many years. Try your best to avoid the black hole that is MUD addiction. It just about drummed me out of college. I still fight the urge to go back (I was a long-time player on Duris, as well as some GodWars muds), as the primary MUD I played on is still alive and kicking...as far as I know, at least. Fortunately I haven't checked in on it in almost a year.
I played the original Sojourn like in 1992. I tried Duris after they split (bad move?), but it wasn't the same (and neither was Toril).
I was "Warony". Cleric.
FYI, the lead designer of EQ, Brad McQuaid, played Sojourn aka "Aradune" or something such. Ranger. EQ felt exactly like Sojourn...making it highly successful and extremely boring for someone who played the real thing.
Yeah, the whole ordeal over Everquest was major news on Duris at the time. Everyone complained that the entire EQ game was a blatent rip-off of Duris and it's predecessors.
I never did play on Toril or Sojourn. I started probably a couple months after Duris started up, brought in by a friend who had played on both Toril and Sojourn before that.
Ahh..I recognize the name. I drifted back and forth. Probably the highlight of all my time there (laugh!) was being chosen by Golrith (leader of CBL) to take over the lead of their sister guild at the time, Warpigs. I even stuck through going to Basternae, then back after Duris came back up. Hell, I followed a couple of the admins out and helped do some coding on GreyHawk, but got busy and left before doing anything serious.
I use to play the Battletech muse when it was out, it was one of my favorites. Turn based, not a real moo wich chat, but pretty good.
Plain color Ansi, was pretty fun. TradeWars was also ansi, we would chat in game also. Now its all IRC, which works for me, when Im playing a game, Im too busy to chat.
> But for non-graphical RPGs, just stick to the rogue [nethack.org]-likes [adom.de], and you'll be happy.
Er... rogue-a-likes and MUDs are very different styles of games, with MUDs being closer to chatrooms set in a fantasy world....as such, they have very different ways of making you "happy", and one might not substitute for the other;)
rogue-a-likes and MUDs are very different styles of games, with MUDs being closer to chatrooms set in a fantasy world.
Man.. Don't even dare to similate MUD with chatrooms. To the parent poster (and anyone else, ocourse), I'd rather explain that MUDs are very similar to the Zork/Infocom games.
Yes, I know, it's still not quite the same, but closer than a chatroom..
Note; I had no intent to flame your post, but this is how I see it..
At a MOO system I run with some friends, we use tkMOO-light, http://www.awns.com/tkMOO-light/ [awns.com], with considerable success. Since it is written in Tcl/Tk, it runs on any system which has Tcl/Tk ported; they have prepackaged versions including the Tcl/Tk runtime for Win and Mac for download.
Some more info on MUSHclient. Plugins: triggers/aliases/timers/scripts with their own "namespace". Supports JScript/VBScript/PerlScript/PythonScript. Is still being actively developed! MUDs are disappearing and a lot of clients either die off, or there's no new features added, not so with MUSHclient, the author still actively develops it, and he regularly participates in the forums [gammon.com.au] on his site, and will actually listen to feature requests and bug reports. The only bad thing (for the slashdot crowd anyway),
E_elven wrote: Only if you're too much of a pansy for telnet.
I've never understood this "Real men use crappy tools" philosophy. It is perfectly possible to MUD with telnet --- I recommend turning "scroll to bottom on TTY output" OFF in your xterm --- but anyone with two brain cells to rub together should be able to realise that MUD clients are better. Even if you just use TinyFugue out of the box, you still get basically the same interface as with telnet, but with a couple of lines separated off for text entry and better scrollback support.
(I get these same emotions whenever I see someone proudly claiming that they make their web pages in notepad... I want to go up to them and beat them with a stick until they realise that notepad is complete crap. Just because Microsoft doesn't give you a good text editor doesn't mean you can't go and find one yourself! Use gvim or emacs or ultraedit or just about _anything_ else...
Part of it is a tongue in cheek joke. Another part of it is the ego that comes with being a self-proclaimed "expert" at something. And one last part is actually legitimate: while in this mud-specific scenario I'd agree with you, there are certainly examples out there where the "better" software just obfuscates the functionality and makes it worse. I wouldn't say many mud clients have hit that point (I'd be tempted to argue that it would be a good description of Everquest, though), but it certainly has ha
Seriously, I think most people who claim to have edited their web page in notepad really meant that they edited it with a basic text editor like emacs, metapad, vim, UE, PFE, whatever. Still, I long ago ceased to be impressed by people who consider it a measure of... anything, really. If I had to work with someone so insecure they had to put me down for using Dreamweaver, I'd really consider either foisting off the webmonkey work on them or doing it myself without consulting just so I wouldn't have to ge
Damn it man! Just pay for zMUD, it's a great client. In fact, zMUD's built in scripting language is how I learned to script and got me interested in CS (waaaaay back when). Plus, Zugg, the developer is a great and deserves the money.
I have to agree with the parent. zMUD has some awesome features, for MUDding. However, if you want to do anything else (MUSH, MUX) zMud is crap (No offense at all! It's just geared towards MUDding, and that's what it's good at.) For MUSHs and MUXs, TinyFugue far and away. Nobody has mentioned this yet, but there are Win32 builds of it!
Look around and you may be able to find an older version of zMud for free. Granted, it'll be on the order of 5-6 years old, but I bet you can dig one up.
I personally mud in ZMud 5.55. I abhor 6.66 (er, 6.62) like the devil. I used 4.62 for years until it crashed enough to drive me to upgrade. 4.62 may be "free", but your odds of getting the automapper to work without crashing are roughly 50/50. That's one of the troubles with ZMud--the hit-and-miss nature of upgrading.
The mud I code for/play on (riftsmud.net 4000 [riftsmud.net]) has MSP support (Mud Sound Protocol). At least from what I've seen, MSP requires the player to separately download the sound files (.wav usu
I haven't mudded for a while, but I always used gMud on windows. It has decent scripting/trigger/aliasing capabilities. It is freely avaliable for download. Do a google search.
I mean, by the time the poster will have succesfully sorted through all tho flames and useless jokes, they could have just as easily used google, tried 9 or 10 things, and based the solution on their own preferences. No need for this.
Why is this even on the front page? Why not try Google [google.com], Freshmeat [freshmeat.net], Tucows [tucows.com] or Versiontracker [versiontracker.com]?
You're right, though. Despite what people say, there is very much such a thing as a stupid question. I'd define it as one that could be easily answered with a minimum of thought and/or effort on the part of the questioner.
Because it allows people like me, who haven't ever experienced anything MUD related, to get a glimpse of the fun that could be had. For many like me, a large appeal of slashdot is being introduced to a variety of activities/news/interests/sites. I'm willing to wager that most of the people that saw the story and are now going to check out a MUD would not have initiated the search by themselves.
Why? Because I did check Google and Freshmeat (do people still use Tucows?). For one thing, as I said in the article, MUDs are somewhat obsolete in the face of MMORPGs like Everquest. I know ZMud is a decent client, but it is not free as in beer or speech, after a 30-day trial it conks out. As far as Google, it recently discontinued archival of the
rec.games.mud [google.com] groups, so that answers that question for one.
Theoretically, I could have downloaded 30 MUD clients, many wanting me to download PERL for Windows, or TCL/TK for Windows, or GNOME for Windows, or whatever, just to look at it, but I figured I would ask here. Have people here rallied around a Windows MUD client that is free as in beer and as in speech, that doesn't need a normal user to download Cygwin, TCL/TK, PERL and so forth for Windows, compile it and so forth, that is still actively updated? If so, I haven't seen it. That confirms my suspicion - that there is no good, free (as in beer and speech) MUD client for Windows, or at least one that you can download that doesn't require you to transmogrify your Windows box into a UNIX - I'm better off just using a UNIX then anyway.
You're assuming that anyone using Google or Freshmeat will find what they're looking for. I didn't. So now I'm asking as a last resort, before I possibly even begin writing one (that is beer and speech free) myself, if I have the spare time to do such a thing.
I only do a tiny bit of MUDing, and spend most of my time on MUSHes and MUXes, but I've had wonderful experiences with MUSHclient http://www.mushclient.com [mushclient.com]
More complete answer? It varies. As someone above pointed out, they range from Role-Play Only (I.e., no code.. glorified (if even that) chat room) to Hack-N'-Slash (Everquest without pretty pictures). Also, a lot of times the word "MUD" includes MUSHs (Multi-User-Shared-Hallucination/-Simulated-Hell), MUXs (Multi-User-eXperience, IIRC), MUSEs (Multi-User-Simulated-Environment), and MAREs (Of which there is precisely one, but I don't remember what it stands for). There are only a handful of MUSEs still around, and I am fairly certain they are all social and/or educational, and sparsely popualted. Of MUSHs there are two predominant varities, Tiny- and PennMUSH. Tiny is more geared towards pen-and-paper-type RPGs converted to electronic form, whereas Penn happens to be slightly more suitable for space-based sci-fi games. Much like the Republican and Democratic parties, there is really very little difference to the two. For TinyMUX, the only one worth using is Brazil's MUX 2.0, and it only stands out if you're using it to play a World of Darkness game (Vampire, Mage, Werewolf, etc.). MUDs vary, and I am not very educated on them. Generally they're a lot more like videogames than their four-letter counterparts. There's also MOOs, which are sort of like the bastard child of a MUD and a MUSH. I don't know much about this last type, either.
Very informative, thanks. Sounds like many years ago we played a text based star trek game over 300buad modems, it was like two people playing battleship.
I've been on MUDs since around 1997 and experimented with a few different Windows and *nix clients, and the only thing I use anymore is tintin++ on *nix or wintin95 on any wintendo boxes I may be using at the time. They're very low on the "bells and whistles", as the windows port is basically the terminal version with a simple interface added, and the *nix version is meant for use in terminal windows. They're not low on features, as you can easily add triggers, variables, aliases, and such.
Here's a link for each client: tintin++ [stud.ntnu.no] Wintin95 [wintin.org]
I use powwow [mathom.org] which is a derivative of tintin I believe. It supports aliases, actions, and all the other good stuff, but I found it too limiting without using external scripts to handle database lookups, so I embedded a perl interpreter in it and I maintain a branch based on powwow 1.2.5 called perlwow [hoopajoo.net], which also supports using any perl modules installed allowing you to pretty much script anything that you can do in perl.
I knew it was somethingsomething, heh. Another good list of various clients, is here [elvenrunes.com] . It lists most Win32 and *nix based clients, along with ratings, descriptions, and links. I know a lot will recommend zMUD, but if I ran Win32, I think I'd try JMC [elvenrunes.com] which is no cost and scriptable in JScript, VBScript, tcl, perl, and supposedly others.
one should ask the question of "what's a good MUD"? I'm not trying to be cynical here, I just have never found a MUD that I wanted to spend any significant amount of time in (well, unless you consider/. a MUD).
I remember when I first found out about muds. My internet connection was through a BBS and so I remember setting up macros and triggers through my BBS communication program (Telix). I lost a lot of time to that first mud (Isengard) Later on, I got a shell account and had TinyFugue. I remember the author of TF said he would never do a windows port because of the development tools and insufficiencies of the OS and that got me interested in UNIX. Then I heard about this automap feature in a program called
I was wondering if people had suggestions for a mud client that could be modified to have a Equipment Database. The mud I play on (hexonyx.com:7777) involves swapping EQ in and out, and the current client I have doesn't have a built in way to modify it, or a way to script it.
If it's a graphical MUD client and you're using KDE or Windows, might I suggest XPertMUD [sourceforge.net]. It can be extended using Python or Perl, with multiple windows, triggers, macros and so forth.
To all those recommending google, since when does google have a good-ometer? It gives you hints, and might even come up with a list of all MUD clients available, but usually it is the product/project pages and not reviews.
As for freshmeat and version tracker, yes they have ratings, and for that they are good place to start. But when you get to niche software like this, the best place is to ask the community surrounding the niche.
While slashdot readers do overlap, you best answers will be from more focused mailing list (or, in this case, those you meet in the MUDs). The same could be said of most Ask Slashdot questions. But, then again, if we did that, we'd never ask slashdot dot.
If you're going to reply "ask google" to every "ask slashdot", then please just edit your slashdot profile to ignore the section. We don't need your comments or your moderations.
Jaba MUD Client [homepage.dk] is a great client - fast, flexible, and pretty much all you could want for just about any kind of MUD, including PK.
Shameless plug time: Everwar [everwar.net] is quite simply the best PK mud out there. Check it out if you like alignment-based playerkilling with an emphasis on teamwork. Immortal staff is friendly and helpful, and usually online. And it works great with Jaba. See for yourself. [everwar.net]
If you're willing to use an old 16 bit version of Zmud, those are all free directly from the site. So yes, those are free as in beer and free as in speech.
As for games, there are quite a few popular ones out there. Sure nowhere near Everquest amounts of players. But since when is Everquest about actual RolePlay? With advances in coding, a lot today's Mu* are much closer to the tabletop RPG experience.
A great example is for anyone who has ever played Last Unicorn Games version of the Star Trek: The Ne
But all the link I can find seem to be "dead". It hasn't the sdame capability as Zmud, but it is sleak, small (hold on a 720k disk) and has good script capability. This was free to use. If you can try to find it, there is a windows version (wintin) and a linux one (tintin++ I think).
Mutli-Session support (you can have as many open as your computer will allow) Spell checker case sensitive help Hyperlink detection Clickable hyperlinks Option to conceal program while at work Option to disable URL detection - (useful if mucking from work) Option to disable ansi colours in game - (useful if mucking from work) Macros Highlights Gags Complete colour customisation Advanced Command History Save complete session text Load from file Record partial session Auto login for sessions using the "Connect name password"
If you use only UNIX, TinyFugue rocks. It has a very powerful scripting language (but very complicated too - complicated enough for me to start my own Python client, but that's another matter).
If you use only Windows, Zmud is (1) not free (2) quite slow compared to other alternatives. You might then go for JMC (which is lightning fast, has built-in simple scripting, and can use VBscript and other nasty things with plugins).
If you want to MUD from UNIX and Windows, you could try PowWow when using UNIX and PowTTY when using Windows (PowTTY is really the PowWow engine combined with PuTTY, the famous SSH client).
Finally, I noticed that the most important things in a client are (from my point of view) :
multi-command aliases (possibility to send a bunch of commands to the MUD with just one line of input), bindings (possibility to send one or many lines of commands pressing a single key)
variables (possibility to use things like $target in your aliases, and setting $target with a single keypress, for instance)
highlights or marking (possibility to make any line containing the word "critical" in bold red ; or marking in bold a given list of names - which could be the names of your online friends, for instance)
Any decent client should support this (IMHO).
I also ask a few more things from my client (and here is why I wrote mine) : be able to handle random socket connections (to connect to an IRC server or to a group communication server), be able to load images and pan them (to view and scroll the maps from the client, with single keypresses - note that you can also be clever and use Eterm backgrounds for that : Eterm has support for escape sequences to load/scroll backgrounds!), and powerful scripting (I use Python).
Last thing : I don't know what people call "powerful scripting", but for me, it's the possibility to do basically anything and without much hassle;-) for instance looking up name of people you meet in a SQL database, or storing the list of your equipment in internal variables and popup windows, or analyzing your XP rate or the average amount of damage you do with each different weapon versus each different monster, etc.
I mean seriously, the guy asks a stupid question, the editor even seems to think theres a simple answer. I mean come on people.
Unless of couse the whole thing is just some kind of in joke then of course I feel like a complete idiot for not getting it.
Geeks that run tech sites don't get a lot of opportunities to mention MUDs. By their very nature, they tend not to innovate in very extravagant and news worthy ways, but they're still a lot of fun and many of them are much deeper and fairer than the average
You are in a dark room. (Score:5, Funny)
~~~
You light your torch (Score:2, Funny)
Telnet (Score:5, Funny)
in my day (Score:2)
Granted "my day" wasn't that long ago and everyone else have 486 and pentium desktops that cost less than my transcontinental phone bills in my pursuit of 20 y/o MUDs...
Yeah, for about a minute (Score:4, Funny)
Look at this new 1200 baud modem we got.
Cool.
~hooks it up~
Wow its fast
yep
~1 minute later~
I can't wait for one that goes faster.
Me too.
Try Real Life. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Try Real Life. (Score:5, Funny)
Now, do you really want us role playing geeks to invade real life? You know these people that role play are usually the ones that right your software. Next time you check your X11 log for the last error to see if it's complaining about the mouse or display modes and all you see is runes, you'll learn to appreciate the fact there is a time and place for these fantasies. I personally don't want to have to describe my problem on the mailing lists using Quenya.
Re:Try Real Life. (Score:2)
Re:Try Real Life. (Score:4, Funny)
And the last LAN party I went to, half the systems were infected with Agent Smith virus.
Real Life 1.0 was actually pretty good, but some of the noobs couldn't handle it, so the Architect nerfed it.
I'm not giving up, though. I heard that the server is going to get upgraded any day now with bitching new features, maybe even tonight or tomorrow!
Re:Telnet (Score:2)
KFG
That's nothing... (Score:2)
"clackety, clackety, clack" for hours on end.
Re:Telnet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Telnet (Score:3, Informative)
You have toGrue slashes you for 10 points of damage!
nYou attempt to bash Grue, but miss!ote that
JohnMary tells you: "woot, ding 14!"trying to type
amid the output of a MU* is an exercise in frustration.
Also, frankly, TinyFugue totally rocks. It manages multiple connections gracefully, it handles all sorts of input and output, it rocks for searching.
It just works really well. It has all the features anyone could want from a MU* program, and it's fre
Telnet and TinyFugue (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Telnet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Telnet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Telnet (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Telnet (Score:3, Funny)
Not bongo drums [slashdot.org]?
tintin++? (Score:4, Informative)
check it out [stud.ntnu.no].
Re:tintin++? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah. (Score:2)
mmucl (Score:2)
TinyFugue (Score:5, Informative)
And if you have trouble at first: It uses Emacs keybindings -- that means Ctrl-P to go to the last line typed, Ctrl-U to clear the current line, etc.
I use VI! (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know of any ... (Score:5, Informative)
I really liked mcl on *nix, by Erwin Andreasen, but he stopped maintaining it a while ago and I'm not even able to access his homepage right now. A cursory whois on the domain seems to suggest that he has abandoned his former "life". :(
tintin(++) is the old standby, of course.
Re:I don't know of any ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't know of any ... (Score:2)
I've got a really ancient version of Zmud... let me run over to the windows machine and check... 4.62 16 bit hahah. It works really well though, a great showcase for what you can do with objpascal/Delphi. When I was reduced to one box for awhile I tried to convert to tintin++, but even with a friend that was expert at it a lot of the things I did with Zmud using triggers and functions and the like just couldn't be replicated. Wound up running it under WINE. I agree about the newer versions though - and not
Re:I don't know of any ... (Score:2)
Mcl development was stopped, and someone else took over a fork called "dirt", which I don't believe is in a working state yet.
Re:I don't know of any ... (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, prompted by mention of this topic on Slashdot I finally got around in releasing a maintenane release of mcl, 0.53.00. It basically fixes all the ancient C++ code that only compiled with 2.95, and also makes the code work with Perl 5.8.0 etc.
Get it from http://www.andreasen.org/mcl/ [andreasen.org] as usual.
For a more modern MUD, non-text-only client, check out Papaya [gtk-papaya.org].
Shameless plug (Score:3, Interesting)
Blood Dusk MUD [dusk.org]
'course it's mine, so I might be a little biased.
MudMaster (Score:5, Informative)
As for *nix, TinTin++ and TinyFugue are excellent, though the sites for those two escape me at the moment.
TF -- Definitely TinyFugue (Score:3, Interesting)
I used it for...far too many years. Try your best to avoid the black hole that is MUD addiction. It just about drummed me out of college. I still fight the urge to go back (I was a long-time player on Duris, as well as some GodWars muds), as the primary MUD I played on is still alive and kicking...as far as I know, at least. Fortunately I haven't checked in on it in almost a year.
Re:TF -- Definitely TinyFugue (Score:2)
I played the original Sojourn like in 1992. I tried Duris after they split (bad move?), but it wasn't the same (and neither was Toril).
I was "Warony". Cleric.
FYI, the lead designer of EQ, Brad McQuaid, played Sojourn aka "Aradune" or something such. Ranger. EQ felt exactly like Sojourn...making it highly successful and extremely boring for someone who played the real thing.
Re:TF -- Definitely TinyFugue (Score:2)
I never did play on Toril or Sojourn. I started probably a couple months after Duris started up, brought in by a friend who had played on both Toril and Sojourn before that.
Re:TF -- Definitely TinyFugue (Score:2)
Zoc (Score:2)
It's not just for muds, but it's great.
VT100 term with ansi color (ala Putty) (Score:2)
Plain color Ansi, was pretty fun. TradeWars was also ansi, we would chat in game also. Now its all IRC, which works for me, when Im playing a game, Im too busy to chat.
Not sure about Multi-User (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not sure about Multi-User (Score:3, Informative)
Er... rogue-a-likes and MUDs are very different styles of games, with MUDs being closer to chatrooms set in a fantasy world.
MUD is NOT MSN-Chat (tm)! (Score:3, Informative)
rogue-a-likes and MUDs are very different styles of games, with MUDs being closer to chatrooms set in a fantasy world.
Man.. Don't even dare to similate MUD with chatrooms. To the parent poster (and anyone else, ocourse), I'd rather explain that MUDs are very similar to the Zork/Infocom games.
Yes, I know, it's still not quite the same, but closer than a chatroom..
Note; I had no intent to flame your post, but this is how I see it..
tkMOO-light (Score:3, Informative)
MUD clients (Score:4, Insightful)
-- The only relevant client. XML storage,
full scripting in multiple languages,
triggers, macros, aliases.
www.gammon.com.au
Lin: TinTin++.
-- Only if you're too much of a pansy for
telnet.
Re:MUD clients (Score:2)
Re:MUD clients (Score:5, Insightful)
E_elven wrote: Only if you're too much of a pansy for telnet.
I've never understood this "Real men use crappy tools" philosophy. It is perfectly possible to MUD with telnet --- I recommend turning "scroll to bottom on TTY output" OFF in your xterm --- but anyone with two brain cells to rub together should be able to realise that MUD clients are better. Even if you just use TinyFugue out of the box, you still get basically the same interface as with telnet, but with a couple of lines separated off for text entry and better scrollback support.
(I get these same emotions whenever I see someone proudly claiming that they make their web pages in notepad... I want to go up to them and beat them with a stick until they realise that notepad is complete crap. Just because Microsoft doesn't give you a good text editor doesn't mean you can't go and find one yourself! Use gvim or emacs or ultraedit or just about _anything_ else...
Ahem.
Sorry.</rant>
)Re:MUD clients (Score:2)
Re:MUD clients (Score:3, Insightful)
Pay for zMUD (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pay for zMUD (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Pay for zMUD (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Pay for zMUD (Score:2)
GF.
Here it is (Score:3, Informative)
It's free. You can't lose by trying it out. If you hate it, try something else.
GF.
Re:Pay for zMUD - Mud Admin's Perspective (Score:3, Informative)
I personally mud in ZMud 5.55. I abhor 6.66 (er, 6.62) like the devil. I used 4.62 for years until it crashed enough to drive me to upgrade. 4.62 may be "free", but your odds of getting the automapper to work without crashing are roughly 50/50. That's one of the troubles with ZMud--the hit-and-miss nature of upgrading.
The mud I code for/play on (riftsmud.net 4000 [riftsmud.net]) has MSP support (Mud Sound Protocol). At least from what I've seen, MSP requires the player to separately download the sound files (.wav usu
gMud (Score:2, Insightful)
Exaurdon!
ask google, not slashdot? (Score:5, Interesting)
P
Re:ask google, not slashdot? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ask google, not slashdot? (Score:2)
Trebucket TK (Score:4, Informative)
Main page here [belfry.com].
TF (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? (Score:3, Troll)
that's why... (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
You're right, though. Despite what people say, there is very much such a thing as a stupid question. I'd define it as one that could be easily answered with a minimum of thought and/or effort on the part of the questioner.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Theoretically, I could have downloaded 30 MUD clients, many wanting me to download PERL for Windows, or TCL/TK for Windows, or GNOME for Windows, or whatever, just to look at it, but I figured I would ask here. Have people here rallied around a Windows MUD client that is free as in beer and as in speech, that doesn't need a normal user to download Cygwin, TCL/TK, PERL and so forth for Windows, compile it and so forth, that is still actively updated? If so, I haven't seen it. That confirms my suspicion - that there is no good, free (as in beer and speech) MUD client for Windows, or at least one that you can download that doesn't require you to transmogrify your Windows box into a UNIX - I'm better off just using a UNIX then anyway.
You're assuming that anyone using Google or Freshmeat will find what they're looking for. I didn't. So now I'm asking as a last resort, before I possibly even begin writing one (that is beer and speech free) myself, if I have the spare time to do such a thing.
MUSHclient (Score:2)
Re:MUSHclient (Score:2)
Alternatively, you could cough up $20 to avoid the wait. Plus, the $20 goes to someone who has developed a kick ass alternative to zmud and gmud.
MUSHclient supports tons of scripting, triggers, aliases, macros, etc. I highly recommend it.
What's a MUD? (Score:2)
With all the slashdotting and urpmi'ing I just don't get around as much as I used to..
Re:What's a MUD? (Score:5, Informative)
More complete answer? It varies. As someone above pointed out, they range from Role-Play Only (I.e., no code.. glorified (if even that) chat room) to Hack-N'-Slash (Everquest without pretty pictures). Also, a lot of times the word "MUD" includes MUSHs (Multi-User-Shared-Hallucination/-Simulated-Hell)
Re:What's a MUD? (Score:2)
Sounds like many years ago we played a text based star trek game over 300buad modems, it was like two people playing battleship.
20 something years ago it was fun..
Re:What's a MUD? (Score:2)
The only client I'll use (Score:3, Informative)
They're not low on features, as you can easily add triggers, variables, aliases, and such.
Here's a link for each client:
tintin++ [stud.ntnu.no]
Wintin95 [wintin.org]
Hope you find them to your liking.
powwow (Score:2)
Re:powwow (Score:2)
gnome_mud (Score:2, Informative)
maybe before that question... (Score:2)
Telix Memories (Score:2)
Obviously, the best MUD client is... (Score:3, Funny)
EQ database? (Score:2)
any suggestions?
GMudix (Score:2)
KDE Mud Client (Score:2)
If it's a graphical MUD client and you're using KDE or Windows, might I suggest XPertMUD [sourceforge.net]. It can be extended using Python or Perl, with multiple windows, triggers, macros and so forth.
Google knows not. (Score:5, Insightful)
To all those recommending google, since when does google have a good-ometer? It gives you hints, and might even come up with a list of all MUD clients available, but usually it is the product/project pages and not reviews.
As for freshmeat and version tracker, yes they have ratings, and for that they are good place to start. But when you get to niche software like this, the best place is to ask the community surrounding the niche.
While slashdot readers do overlap, you best answers will be from more focused mailing list (or, in this case, those you meet in the MUDs). The same could be said of most Ask Slashdot questions. But, then again, if we did that, we'd never ask slashdot dot.
If you're going to reply "ask google" to every "ask slashdot", then please just edit your slashdot profile to ignore the section. We don't need your comments or your moderations.
Anm
JMC r0x0rs my s0x0rs (Score:2)
Shameless plug time:
Everwar [everwar.net] is quite simply the best PK mud out there. Check it out if you like alignment-based playerkilling with an emphasis on teamwork. Immortal staff is friendly and helpful, and usually online. And it works great with Jaba. See for yourself. [everwar.net]
Zmud, and Anomaly (Score:2)
As for games, there are quite a few popular ones out there. Sure nowhere near Everquest amounts of players. But since when is Everquest about actual RolePlay? With advances in coding, a lot today's Mu* are much closer to the tabletop RPG experience.
A great example is for anyone who has ever played Last Unicorn Games version of the Star Trek: The Ne
Yeah, but what is the best MUD (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks!
TF rulez. (Score:2)
For all mare lovers out there, feel free to test it on telnet://lintilla.df.lth.se:5010 - talker about zoophilia
There was wintin (Score:2)
Forgot to say (Score:2)
MuckClient (Score:2)
Spell checker
case sensitive help
Hyperlink detection
Clickable hyperlinks
Option to conceal program while at work
Option to disable URL detection - (useful if mucking from work)
Option to disable ansi colours in game - (useful if mucking from work)
Macros
Highlights
Gags
Complete colour customisation
Advanced Command History
Save complete session text
Load from file
Record partial session
Auto login for sessions using the "Connect name password"
TinyFugue, PowWow, PowTTY... (Score:4, Informative)
If you use only Windows, Zmud is (1) not free (2) quite slow compared to other alternatives. You might then go for JMC (which is lightning fast, has built-in simple scripting, and can use VBscript and other nasty things with plugins).
If you want to MUD from UNIX and Windows, you could try PowWow when using UNIX and PowTTY when using Windows (PowTTY is really the PowWow engine combined with PuTTY, the famous SSH client).
Finally, I noticed that the most important things in a client are (from my point of view) :
I also ask a few more things from my client (and here is why I wrote mine) : be able to handle random socket connections (to connect to an IRC server or to a group communication server), be able to load images and pan them (to view and scroll the maps from the client, with single keypresses - note that you can also be clever and use Eterm backgrounds for that : Eterm has support for escape sequences to load/scroll backgrounds!), and powerful scripting (I use Python).
Last thing : I don't know what people call "powerful scripting", but for me, it's the possibility to do basically anything and without much hassle ;-) for instance looking up name of people you meet in a SQL database, or storing the list of your equipment in internal variables and popup windows, or analyzing your XP rate or the average amount of damage you do with each different weapon versus each different monster, etc.
Mud client review page (Score:5, Informative)
Pick one that has lots of YESs in its line, like Crystal [evilmagic.org] for example.
CLIO (Score:3, Informative)
Can't believe noone mentioned that yet.
Re:Answered in post (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Slow day today? (Score:2)
Re:MegaMUD (Score:2)
-R
Um... Everquest? (Score:2)
Re:This is about the dumbest slashdot news item ev (Score:2)
It's "Ask Slashdot", not a news item.
Do you want to play again? [N/n]
Re:This is about the dumbest slashdot news item ev (Score:2)
Unless of couse the whole thing is just some kind of in joke then of course I feel like a complete idiot for not getting it.
Geeks that run tech sites don't get a lot of opportunities to mention MUDs. By their very nature, they tend not to innovate in very extravagant and news worthy ways, but they're still a lot of fun and many of them are much deeper and fairer than the average
Re:If it's all that dumb (Score:3)
Your search -- someone who cares what I think -- does not match any documents.
No one was found who cares what you think.
Suggestions:
Re:What was that game? (Score:2)
graspee
Re:MUDs? (Score:2)
Wow! That's an excellent question! I suggest you submit it as a story for "Ask Slashdot"!
graspee
Re:Telnet (Score:2)