Hi.
Think of your mud client, that would be mush z in your case, could be
gMud, zMud, monkey term, vip mud, tintin, wintin, telnet, hyper
terminal, putty, and a whole host of other ones, as sort of the web
browser. When you go to a web page, you connect to a central server that
serves up the content to your web browser, this is more or less the same
concept. Once you get a client actually working, you'll connect to the
mud in question, create a character and start learning to play. Alter
Aeon for instance has a really big newbie area with lots of pretty safe
things to do, if you get stuck you can ask newbie questions on the
newbie channel by typing something like newbie can anybody tell me where
this staff I'm supposed to be finding can be found? and hit enter.
As per your surrounding characters, most of them are non player
characters (npcs), also known as mobiles or mobs for short. Computer
controlled characters that gives you quests, sell you things, try to
kill you, etc. The rest are player characters or (pcs) players just like
you. On average Alter aeon has more than 60 players on at any given
time. It is possible to complete against other players trying to kill
them, but unless you enter the player killing arena using the specific
command or turn on the temporary pk ok player killing is ok flag for
your character, you're safe from being killed by other players. You'll
probably find muds especially popular ones to be an unexpectedly vibrant
and lively community. Think of a big game, now make it about 5 times
bigger than that and then wonder if that's even big enough. Alter aeon
for instance is freeking huge. We're talking thousands and thousands of
rooms. We're talking I've been playing for about 13 years and there's a
lot I don't know about. It's a whole new world that basically provides
endless replay ability not just better replayability. If you've been
playing as long as me sometimes you tend to just want to use it for a
social platform, just log on and say hi to your very real friends that
you've made on there through the years and the like, but I do still gain
levels every now and then.
Once you work out your mud client difficulties and log in and have a
setup where the mud is making your screen reader speak automatically and
the like, the rest is likely smooth sailing. The help files,
descriptions on areas and quest descriptions gets you most of the way
to knowing enough about what you're doing, and there's no problem asking
other players via the newbie channel for instance how to do something.
Every popular mud has its fare share of buttheads who cause more
trouble than they help, but for the most part everyone will be friendly
and happy to help where they can.
Cheers:
Aaron Spears, A.K.A. valiant8086. General Partner - Valiant Galaxy Associates "We
make Very Good Audiogames for the blind community - http://valiantGalaxy.com";
<Sent with Thunderbird 52.1.0 portable>
On 12/6/2017 3:01 PM, Damien Sykes wrote:
Hi,
UAC is disabled. When I installed MushZ, it ran two installers, one
which wasn’t even relevant to me (JAWS scripts I believe), then it ran
some kind of updater program. Then when I launch it, I get such as the
following:
Run-time error
Plugin: AlterAeon (called from world: alter aeon)
Function/Sub: OnPluginInstall called by Plugin AlterAeon
Reason: Executing plugin AlterAeon sub OnPluginInstall
[string "Plugin"]:3178: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
[string "Plugin"]:3178: in function 'recastdefault_single_spell'
[string "Plugin"]:3227: in function 'recastdefaults'
[string "Plugin"]:2997: in function 'sanity_check_recast_vars'
[string "Plugin"]:6585: in function <[string "Plugin"]:6530>
Error context in script:
3174 : return t2
3175 : end
3176 :
3177 : function recastdefault_single_spell(setname, spellname)
3178*: if recast[setname][spellname] == nil then
3179 : recast[setname][spellname]=false
3180 : end
3181 : end
3182 :
Cannot open error log file: .\logs\script_error_log.txt
WARNING - referencing uninitialized config variable 'randomambience'.
WARNING - referencing uninitialized config variable 'enterinterrupt'.
WARNING - referencing uninitialized config variable 'tts'.
I got no errors during installation to say that files couldn’t be written.
Cheers.
Damien.
*From:* john <mailto:jpcarnemo...@gmail.com>
*Sent:* Wednesday, December 06, 2017 7:08 PM
*To:* blind-gamers@groups.io <mailto:blind-gamers@groups.io>
*Subject:* Re: [blind-gamers] MUDs
Hi Damien,
Alright, let's take this from the top.
Your class (or class structure, in AA) is sort of like professions or
skills in real life. You can be a mage - an academic magic user with a
lot of elemental power (think fireballs, lightning bolts, etc), you
can be a warrior (think big, burly person with a giant axe or sword),
a necromancer (think your own personal army of undead) among others.
Your proficiency in each of the six classes is determined by your
level, so a high level warrior will be really good at bashing things
to pieces, but maybe not so at throwing fireballs. Which class you
choose will be determined by what kind of character you fancy yourself as.
The person you spoke too was only partially correct. At its core, a
mud is a terminal connection to a server, but instead of sending OS
commands you're saying what you want your character to do in-game.
There are some very, very advanced telnet clients, though. They
support aliases (similar to bash), triggers (doing something such as
playing a sound when a certain line of text arrives) and even
scripting. Mushclient in particular comes bundled with Lua, so
anything you can do in that language you can do with the client, plus
additional features. Thus, we have something like:
You type:
>c fir ant
(this expands out to "cast fireball ant" after server-side processing)
You see:
You conjure and throw a bright yellow fireball at A tiny black ant!
Because of Mushclient's features, there's a whole bunch of sounds for
offensive spells. Thus, you hear your character yell a challenge to
the left, and then the explosion of your fireball obliterating the ant.
The concern with the documents folder is UAC; if you have it disabled,
then you're good to go. The program needs to be able to write to its
installation directory.
My advice to you would be to re-download the program (mush-z.com),
uninstall your current copy completely, install the new one and just
try playing. There should be no errors out of the box.
Alter Aeon has a really, really good introductory setup, and the help
system is exceptional.
I hope this clarified some of the confusion.
Best,
John
*From:* Damien Sykes <mailto:dam...@dcpendleton.plus.com>
*Sent:* Wednesday, December 06, 2017 11:37
*To:* blind-gamers@groups.io <mailto:blind-gamers@groups.io>
*Subject:* Re: [blind-gamers] MUDs
Hi John,
Nope, I’m not familiar with Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve heard of it but
never played it. So in essence, the classes (are those the character
types?) deal with stats rather than game play?
Yes, I did think that MUDs (or Muds?) were text-based, but someone
told me that they have become more advanced and can provide the
realism that an audio game could. You yourself mentioned sounds...How
does this work if it is still purely text based?
Telnet: I thought that was for commanding operating systems, a bit
like SSH? So let me get this straight...Alter Aeon is built on Telnet,
connected to by MushZ, built on MushClient? Sounds like it could be
part of a never ending chain to me.
I don’t run Windows 10, I’m on 7. However it did want to install to
the documents folder. I never ever use that folder, and it’s not
exactly a conventional place to install something. To me, that’d be
like saying a user application should be installed in
windows/system32. The first place I look when I want to use a program
is Program Files (I know I know, call me nerdy, but I don’t use
shortcuts either. Bite me. Lol). Is there a reason why it works better
in the documents folder rather than program files? Is there something
I could perhaps change? Or is the documents folder pretty much hardcoded?
Also there is the reality factor. I’m guessing if it is still text
based that won’t happen. For instance I won’t be using arrow keys to
walk, space bar to shoot and hear enemies chasing me getting ready to
fire, or in the space of a heart pounding moment with an intense
ambience wondering if the security code you’re going to enter will let
you pass or electrocute you...Besides the command issue, that’s
another reason why I could never really get into text adventures.
Again, it’s such a shame since it seems a lot of these types of games
are a lot more replayable than standard audio games. Especially since
they also seem to be able to be updated a lot more regularly than
audio games as well.
Cheers.
Damien.
*From:* john <mailto:jpcarnemo...@gmail.com>
*Sent:* Wednesday, December 06, 2017 11:59 AM
*To:* blind-gamers@groups.io <mailto:blind-gamers@groups.io>
*Subject:* Re: [blind-gamers] MUDs
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 <mailto:dam...@dcpendleton.plus.com>
*Sent:* Tuesday, December 05, 2017 21:39
*To:* blind-gamers@groups.io <mailto: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.
