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Games Entertainment

What is a Good Free MUD Client? 485

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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What is a Good Free MUD Client? More

What is a Good Free MUD Client?

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  • You are in a dark room. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:00PM (#7081989)
    And you have been eaten by a first post.

    ~~~

  • Telnet (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:02PM (#7082006)
    Back in my day we used telnet on 1200 baud modems, and we liked it.
    • 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...

    • Yeah, for about a minute (Score:4, Funny)

      by geekoid ( 135745 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {dnaltropnidad}> on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:49PM (#7082250) Homepage Journal
      Went from 300 to 1200, I remember it like it was yesterday:
      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)

      by raehl ( 609729 ) * <raehl311.yahoo@com> on Monday September 29, 2003 @12:08AM (#7082343) Homepage
      Comes in 3D with integrated surround sound and both voice and tactile command recognition.

      • Re:Try Real Life. (Score:5, Funny)

        by j3110 ( 193209 ) <samterrell @ g m a i l.com> on Monday September 29, 2003 @01:03AM (#7082488) Homepage
        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.

      • Re:Try Real Life. (Score:4, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 29, 2003 @02:04AM (#7082660)
        I like Real Life, but some script kiddie named "Neo" keeps fucking with the server.

        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!
    • It really didn't matter much how fast my modem was. I still had to wait for the damned Selectric to type out each "screen."

      KFG
    • Back in my day, I used to dial up the school mainframe with a 110 baud acoustically coupled modem with a teletype.

      "clackety, clackety, clack" for hours on end.

    • Re:Telnet (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      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?

      • Re:Telnet (Score:3, Informative)

        by Kysh ( 16242 )
        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

  • tintin++? (Score:4, Informative)

    by SweetAndSourJesus ( 555410 ) <JesusAndTheRobot&yahoo,com> on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:03PM (#7082009)
    All my friends seem to like it.

    check it out [stud.ntnu.no].

    • Re:tintin++? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Kaladis Nefarian ( 655671 )
      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].
  • Use TELNET with 'hotkeys', Use those keybinds for something.
  • I saw it in the Debian list and it looks okay to me. Then again, I'm a telnet kind of guy.

  • TinyFugue (Score:5, Informative)

    by noda132 ( 531521 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:04PM (#7082025) Homepage
    Tinyfugue.

    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 don't know of any ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by dzym ( 544085 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:05PM (#7082029) Homepage Journal
    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". :(

    tintin(++) is the old standby, of course.

    • http://www.andreasen.org/ [andreasen.org]. Still up.

    • 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

    • I still use mcl.

      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)

      by Erwin-42 ( 117944 ) * on Monday September 29, 2003 @08:01AM (#7083813) Homepage
      Err, I'm not dead yet.

      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)

    by Adam Wiggins ( 349 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:05PM (#7082030) Homepage
    Bah, who needs clients? This one was designed to be completely playable with raw telnet:

    Blood Dusk MUD [dusk.org]

    'course it's mine, so I might be a little biased. :)

  • MudMaster (Score:5, Informative)

    by sjorgnsn ( 514708 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:06PM (#7082035)
    MudMaster [mud-master.com] and it's GUI-oriented counterpart MudMaster 2000 [mmgui.com] are good MUD clients for Windows.

    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)

    by Vrallis ( 33290 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:06PM (#7082038) Homepage
    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.
    • Hah!

      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.

  • Zoc (Score:2)

    by Remik ( 412425 )
    Use Zoc [emtec.com].

    It's not just for muds, but it's great.
  • 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.

  • Not sure about Multi-User (Score:4, Informative)

    by dupper ( 470576 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:09PM (#7082062) Journal
    But for non-graphical RPGs, just stick to the rogue [nethack.org]-likes [adom.de], and you'll be happy.
    • > 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..

  • tkMOO-light (Score:3, Informative)

    by hpa ( 7948 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:10PM (#7082067) Homepage
    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.

  • MUD clients (Score:4, Insightful)

    by E_elven ( 600520 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:12PM (#7082081) Journal
    Win: MUSHClient.
    -- 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.
    • 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),

    • Re:MUD clients (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Repton ( 60818 ) on Monday September 29, 2003 @01:16AM (#7082521) Homepage

      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>

      )
      • 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

  • Pay for zMUD (Score:5, Informative)

    by useosx ( 693652 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:12PM (#7082084)
    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.

    • Re:Pay for zMUD (Score:2, Informative)

      by polaughlin ( 92146 )
      zMUD is a mere $25 and it is the best Windows client you will find.

    • Re:Pay for zMUD (Score:4, Informative)

      by pdbogen ( 596723 ) <tricia-slashdot@@@cernu...us> on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:49PM (#7082251)
      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.

      GF.

  • gMud (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

    Exaurdon!

  • ask google, not slashdot? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bn557 ( 183935 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:14PM (#7082090) Homepage Journal
    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.

    P

  • Trebucket TK (Score:4, Informative)

    by strredwolf ( 532 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:15PM (#7082097) Homepage Journal
    Requires Tcl/TK, but has ANSI color, supports MPI, and is well supported. Also has web update.

    Main page here [belfry.com].

  • TF (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Llywelyn ( 531070 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:17PM (#7082110) Homepage
    TinyFuge. If you are using Linux (or MacOS X) it is the best of the breed.

  • Why? (Score:3, Troll)

    by Shadwell ( 709447 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:17PM (#7082111)
    Why is this even on the front page? Why not try Google [google.com], Freshmeat [freshmeat.net], Tucows [tucows.com] or Versiontracker [versiontracker.com]?
    • Because slashdot feels the need to prove their oldskool worth enough to ignore the other "searchforityourselfyoufreakinidiot" alternatives, I suspect.
    • Slow Sunday night? *shrug*

      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)

      by J23SE ( 107309 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:44PM (#7082233)
      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.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by br00tus ( 528477 ) on Monday September 29, 2003 @12:06AM (#7082328)
      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]
    • As a side note, though you can use MUSHclient for free, you have to wait about 30 seconds when you start it up.

      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.
  • I've heard of them.
    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)

      by pdbogen ( 596723 ) <tricia-slashdot@@@cernu...us> on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:46PM (#7082239)
      Technically? Multi-User-Dungeon.. Text-based Everquest. (Don't flame me)

      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.

  • The only client I'll use (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kindgott ( 165758 ) <(soulwound) (at) (godisdead.com)> on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:42PM (#7082223) Journal
    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]

    Hope you find them to your liking.
  • 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.

  • gnome_mud (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ashcrow ( 469400 )
    Check out gnome_mud [sf.net] for Linux/Unix. It's very similar to gMud.
  • 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

  • Obviously, the best MUD client is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tmark ( 230091 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @11:59PM (#7082293)
    Emacs !!
  • 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.

    any suggestions?
  • A friend of mine swears by Gmud32 for windows, and Gmudix for linux. They seem to have pretty powerful scripting capabilities.

  • 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)

    by Anm ( 18575 ) on Monday September 29, 2003 @12:34AM (#7082415)

    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
  • 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

  • Yeah, but what is the best MUD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by peripatetic_bum ( 211859 ) on Monday September 29, 2003 @01:37AM (#7082582) Homepage Journal
    this isn't as simple to google and I would like to hear your reponses.


    Thanks!

  • It's not a MUD client. It's AI programming language disguised as one...

    For all mare lovers out there, feel free to test it on telnet://lintilla.df.lth.se:5010 - talker about zoophilia :)
  • 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).
    • If you are interrested in the windows version i have it plus many script I did myself which you might find interressant (triggers , macro, etc...).
  • 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"

  • TinyFugue, PowWow, PowTTY... (Score:4, Informative)

    by skaya ( 71294 ) on Monday September 29, 2003 @03:35AM (#7082964) Homepage
    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.

  • Mud client review page (Score:5, Informative)

    by plett ( 30224 ) on Monday September 29, 2003 @05:13AM (#7083143)
    Why not look at our MUD Client reviews [cryosphere.net] page?
    Pick one that has lots of YESs in its line, like Crystal [evilmagic.org] for example.

  • CLIO (Score:3, Informative)

    by SLot ( 82781 ) on Monday September 29, 2003 @08:04AM (#7083830) Homepage Journal
    Clio [wabe.org.uk].

    Can't believe noone mentioned that yet.

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