Hi Damien, There's a lot to cover here, so I'll try to answer a few of your questions and see where to go from there. Muds are, yes, somewhat similar to text adventures. In this case though, there's no "guess the verb" issue, since you can type help <command> and get a description of what it does. On alter Aeon, you play as a combination of the six classes, picking one to be your primary. Which class you choose will determine what style of character you end up with - a mage is going to have a lot of offensive spells but not a lot of health, whereas a warrior will focus on physical skills and be more sturdy. You can apply a bit of Dungeons and Dragons-esc logic to your choice, if you're familiar with that. As for the connection bit, its worth pointing out that this is not an audiogame. Its purely text-based. Muds, in their simplest form, are telnet applications. The reason people recommend mush-z is because MushClient, the program that runs it, is a really, really powerful telnet client. Its where most of the work happens: processing the text you receive from the mud and acting on it, for example to play a sound or tell you that you're injured. If you're running on windows 10, it'd probably be worthwhile for you to install mush-z to your documents folder, rather than program files. This may resolve some of the technical difficulties. I know this hasn't covered all your questions, so let me know what else you need to know, and I'll see if I can help you get up and running.
Best, John From: Damien Sykes Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2017 21:39 To: blind-gamers@groups.io Subject: [blind-gamers] MUDs Hi there. You know, I wasn’t sure if Alter Aeon was discussed on here much any more. Given that updates are still posted here that sends me a clear message that it is still popular. I have been hesitant to try MUDs for a while due to the fact that I always knew them to be mainly textual, leading to a lot of confusion and frustration for beginners of the text gaming world, and a slight sense of anticlimax for those more used to real-time gaming such as myself. However I was recently informed that MUDs have now become more than just the traditional text adventure style game and can now include audio, action hotkeys etc, like any other audio game might. To that end, I have been recommended to, and trying to get into, AA. However so far I have found the whole concept confusing and almost advanced. I know something like Crazy Party is no comparison to something like AA, but this is how clueless I am in that I’ll have to use it to try and conceptualise things in my head, as it is the closest thing I’m aware of. 1. To connect to a Crazy Party server you use Crazy Party and wait for players to connect. With AA, it seems there are various applications that will support it and there are people there all the time. Is this because AA is centrally rather than individually hosted? What are people doing and what would I be expected to do? Last thing I want is to find myself logged in, clueless as to what to do and have someone say, “what are you doing just sat there?” or even worse getting killed. 2. In Crazy Party you simply choose a username and host a server or choose one to connect to. AA seems to want character types, skill levels etc, which goes way over my head. Seems like AA is taking real life concepts like priests and crafters and fighters and the like, none of which I’m good at in real life...Are these just game related? What is expected from each profession and how do you learn it? Is this specific to AA or are all MUDs like this? 3. Despite the fact I was told that it was like a regular audio game, I’m still being asked to type in text commands. I always found this a little daunting in offline text adventures, given you have to know all the commands, what you can do with each command etc. Whereas an adventure game like Chillingham gives you a set list, a text adventure could have a whole host of relevant options. While I suppose this gives more replay value to those who are used to such systems, to those who have had little, if any, experience with this form of gaming it can be very confusing. Especially if you don’t know how movement works. To give an example, “Forward is not recognised as a valid exit”? I didn’t get that message on AA, but a text adventure I tried to see if I could get used to the system before deciding whether to try out MUDs. 4. Now for the software...AA seems to guide blind players to something called “MushZ”, which I believe is some derivative of another gaming system that is designed in such a way as to make it easier for us to play. Problem is, I’m getting tons of errors regarding TTS and sounds, and even more warnings about uninitialised variables. There’s nothing in the docs regarding this leading me to assume that I’m one of a few, if not alone, in having these errors. Needless to say. MUDs still seem like a whole planet away from audio gaming and so I feel something a bit more is needed for beginners than, here’s the software, get playing. During the short spell I actually played MUDs several years ago, someone was practically holding my hand and guiding me every step of the way, so that when I lost contact with this person I pretty much had to stop because I still didn’t know what I was doing. Is there something I am missing? Are there thoughts from other beginners in this area? Or is it one of these merky areas where it’s hard for people to get into it unless you were practically brought up with it, kind of thing? Cheers. Damien.
