Understanding MUDs

by Deborah L. Snead

1. Introduction - What are MUDs

The Tiny- and Teeny-family of MUDs are usually more 'social' in orientation; the players on those MUDs gather, chat, meet friends, make jokes, and discuss things.

The LP- family of MUDs are based on roleplaying adventure games. In these, your character runs around killing monsters, finding money, and making experience in the quest to become a wizard.

DikuMUDs and AberMUDs are a bit like LPMUDs, except that LPMUD wizards have access to a very powerful programming language with which they can add more sections to the database.

MUCKs or MUSHes extend the TinyMUD programs by including a usable programming language.

MOOs have an object-oriented programming language, and are more 'social' in nature.

UnterMUDs can connect to each other directly, and have both a scripting language and a programming language.

BSXMUDs are LPMUDs with simple graphics.

In order to play a MUD you can use the 'telnet' command to connect to a server running the game on some Internet port, but it is more user friendly to use a client program like say BSXMUD, MUD.el, TinyTalk, or TinyFugue. Each MUD client offers different features but in general a MUD client will allow you to do some of the following and more (taken from the MUD FAQ at rudolf.ethz.ch/pub/mud):

Hilite - place some text in bold letters to make them stand out

Logging - records MUD dialogue and saves it to a file

Gag - allows some text to be suppressed

Triggers - Supports events which happen when certain actions on the MUD occur (e.g. waving when a player enters the room).

The basic commands needed in a MUD are movement and speech. There are several commands for speaking like say 'msg', shout 'msg', tell 'player' 'msg', converse and so on. Other variations exist like whisper 'player' 'message', and page 'player' 'message' and quite a few aliases and shorthand commands. 'Converse' is a convenient command for holding long conversations because you stay in conversation mode until stopped by the '**' symbols.

Movement commands vary as well. Each room in a MUD has a list of exits which are normally directions (north, south, east, west). One can either move in that direction by typing 'east', for example, or use a series of commands like move 'direction', goto 'direction', enter 'object', leave 'object'.

Once you master movement and speech, you may then move on to more creative commands like emotions. Some MUDS have a defined 'soul' for your character which has many predefined emotions like blush, cry, and laugh, or you can use the emit 'msg' command and express your own.

2. Building Features into MUDs

Here are three basic commands (DIG, CREATE, and DESCRIBE) and their syntax taken from the UglyMug (UM), TinyTIM (TT), and TinyMUSH (TM) manuals. Note their similarity. (UglyMug is a derivative of TinyMUD and TinyMUCK).

UM Syntax: "@create 'name' [ = 'description' ]" Creates a thing with the specified name and specified description.

TT @CREATE 'Name of Object' [= 'Value'] Example @CREATE Large Ice Cream Sundae

TM @create 'name' [='cost'] Creates a thing with the specified name. (and creation cost)

UM Syntax: "@dig 'name'" Creates a new room with the specified name and displays its ID number @dig Kitchen=This is a labroratory for breeding new life forms @dig Living Room=Judging by the organic matter on the floor...

TT @DIG 'Name of Room' [= 'Exit' [,'Return Exit']] Creates a new Room in the TinyTIM world, with 'Exit' linking to it from your current location. 'Exit' is given in the syntax exit1;exit2;exit3;...etc.

TM @dig[/'switches'] 'name' [= 'exitlist' [, 'exitlist'] ] Creates a new room with the specified name and displays its number. Example: @dig Kitchen = Kitchen;k;north;n,south;s : will dig a room called Kitchen, and open an exit called 'Kitchen' in your current room. The ; symbol means that you may enter the exit by typing 'k', 'north' or 'n' also. This command also opens the exit 'south;s' from 'Kitchen' back to where you are.

UM Syntax: "@desc[ribe] 'object' [ = 'description' ]" "'object'" can be a thing, player, exit, room, command, or variable specified as "'name'" or "#'number'" or "me" or "here". This sets the description a player sees when they use the command "look 'object'". Without a description argument, it clears the message. For an exit this is the message a player sees when they try to look through the exit.

TT @DESCRIBE 'Object' = 'Description' @DESCRIBE will set the DESC Attribute on an Object. @DESCRIBE sets the Description of Rooms, Players, Exits, and Things. The Description of an Object is what a Player or Thing will see when it LOOKs at that object. Example: @DESC Rock=It is a cold, heartless mineral.

TM @describe 'object' = 'description' Sets the description for 'object', which others see when they look at the object. Examples: 'object' @desc vase = You see a delicate Ming vase. 'exit' @desc elevator = There is an elevator to the east.

So, as you can see, once you learn a vocabulary set of commands, it is not very difficult to jump from one MUDdom to the next.

3. Bottlenecks

The 'help' screens on a MUD are very important. In fact, if not properly orchestrated 'help' can actually be a hindrence to the enjoyment of the experience. In too many instances have I found that a command was listed as a a topic to get help on but when the 'help command' was initiated the response was something like 'command not found' etc. This type of negative interaction can be a big deterrent for the average newbie or new MUD-user. A related frustration in the learning process is the inaccessibility of certain commands. It is understandable that a MUD has to have some kind of order or at least have someone to manage or maintain it like a 'wizard' or 'god' but it is also exasperating to read about a particular command in the help menu and not be allowed to use it because of your 'level' or 'score' or simply because the fascist powers that be won't allow you to.

Movement through the MUD can be difficult as well. It is not uncommon to find a MUD that does not have obvious exits. Sometimes the description of a room is quite long with its exit points buried deep inside the text. This is tedious at best when one is trying to move quickly through each room. In addition to this, not all MUDS have a map you can follow so it's easy to get lost especially if the layout of the MUD is rather complexed.

4. Graphical MUDs

BSX-MUD is a graphical LP-MUD written by Bram Stolk for X-windows, hence the name. You need a client program in order to run it which can be found at

ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/lpmud/bsx filename: bsxclient.tar.gz

and the World Wide Web home page for it is located at

http://www.lysator.liu.se:7500/mud/bsxmud.html

The client will connect you to the one and only server at robin.lysator.liu.se 7475 in Sweden. There are also client programs for the Amiga, Machintosh, and MS-DOS, PC platforms. One could also use 'telnet', but not all the details of the MUD are described in the text.

The MUD itself works quite well and allows you to move your character around using both the typical movement commands of textual based MUDS and by allowing movement around your viewing screen with the arrow keys. There can be about a half second lag but with practice one can orient themselves to this delay. It also uses the other commands which are familiar to us such as for communication (say, tell, shout, converse, and so on). In essence it is similar to a textual based MUD except it uses graphics in a separate window while you type in commands in another window.

For more information you may contact the author at stolk@fwi.uva.nl.

According to the manual page Crossfire is a 'multiplayer graphical arcade and adventure game made for the X-Windows environment'. The game's original author was Frank Tore Johansen and the current maintainer is Mark Wedel, but has a host of contributors to the program source. The source code can be found at the following FTP site:

ftp.ifi.uio.no:/pub/crossfire (129.240.82.2)

and a couple World Wide Web home pages for it are located at

http://www.ifi.uio.no/~frankj/crossfire/index.html http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Crossfire

There is also a mailing list one can subscribe to by sending mail to the address that follows. In the subject header type 'subscribe'.

crossfire-request@ifi.uio.no

According to Mark Wedel (master@rahul.net), here are a few servers that are currently running Crossfire:

sonja.math.virginia.edu 13326 running version: 0.90.5 corpse.ecst.csuchico.edu 13326 running version: 0.90.5 scotch.berkeley.edu 13326 running version: 0.90.5 fermat.dartmouth.edu 13326 running version: 0.90.5

Connecting to the game is a little complicated unless you use the cross client. If using telnet, Peter Mardahl (peterm@soda.Berkeley.EDU) describes this method for connecting to the game:

>xhost coke.csua.berkeley.edu

>xset +fp tcp/coke.csua.berkeley.edu:13325

>telnet coke.csua.berkeley.edu 13326

Trying 128.32.131.73 ...

Connected to coke.csua.berkeley.edu.

Escape character is '^]'.

set font

add alfven.eecs.berkeley.edu (you use YOUR machine here)

Crossfire is a much more complicated game to learn to play than BSX or other MUDS. Movement around the MUD varies depending on your personal choice. This can include a series of keystrokes (Ctrl/Shift keys), use of the arrow keys, or using the mouse buttons. It's also difficult to get help on certain commands. In fact it is easier to download the documentation on run time commands than it is to use the help menus. Some commands are familiar like 'shout' and 'tell' but the execution of some commands are different if using the game window versus the command window, etc. However, Crossfire does allow you to 'bind' commands to certain keys for fast execution. Other than those few initial difficulties, Crossfire works very well and has very good animation.

The University of Central Florida -- Cyberspace Campus

by Belinda Asbell and Grant Simmons

I. UCFC's Purpose

UCFC is running on a Sparcstation running SunOS 4.1.3, using TinyMUSH 2.0.10 p6 as the MUSE server software.

II. Connecting to UCFC