hello James.
Mud stands for multi user dungeon (or dimention). The basic principle bares
some resemblance to interactive fiction games, sinse you have a character
with a room description, objects to pickup, monsters to fight etc, and
commands such as inventory, get x etc will all work.
the difference however is that where an if game workss everytime you type
something in, muds are real time. So for instance if you are fighting a
monster, you and the monster will continue to attack each other with turns
happening automatically every 30 or so seconds with new text appearing on
the screen and if you want to do something else like cast a spell, retreat
etc you type a command and it will be used on the next turn.
Same goes for communicating with others, it's sort of like a chat system.
You don't download a mud onto your computer, rather like a chat program, you
have a client that connects to the mud, you just add the host name and port.
your mud client program can also do some helpfull things in terms of
displaying textand abbreviating commands, which is particularly helpfull for
a screen reader. In addition, some mud games have soundpacks which you can
download, these make sounds play everytime certain text is sent from the
mud's server to your client, some of which can be quite extensive.
Muds also range extensively in theme. some such as alteraeon are full on
online rpgs, with character classes, stats, fantasy settings etc. aOthers
have a scifi setting. Some have pvp elements, others do not. Some muds have
n o mechanics at all and work far more like a roleplay game where you write
descriptions of everything, some muds are even based upon business and
trading.
the best way to get into mudding however is to do it. vipmud from
www.gmagamees.com is a really great mud client made especially for screen
readers, and outputs tuoamtically to several including sapi, jaws, window
eyes and system access. The client costs money but the free version is
virtually unrestricted, and it's highly worth it for the extensive
useability and easy to use interface, also it comes with connections to
some of the most popular muds.
see http://audiogames.net/db.php?id=VIP+MUD for more info.
Alteraeon is the mud I would personally reccommend starting with, see
http://audiogames.net/db.php?id=Alter+Aeon for details. this is a mud that
has more customizations for vi players than any other, including it's own
unique client by oriol gomez that has such an extensive soundpack it's
virtually an audio rpg in it's entirity. I'd strongly recommend giving alter
a try, it has a great class system, lots of places to exxplore and options
to group with other players or go solo, and will teach you everything there
is to know about muds, and that's apart from Oriol's client.
hth.
All the best,
Dark.
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