- First things first: what do I need to know already
for this tutorial?
- Who are you, and what is this
MUD thing I hear you rambling about?
- Sounds cool, but how do I get on?
- Now you didn't find this all by yourself, now did you?
- And why are you making thistutorial?
- Ok, you got me warmed up and I just connected to
your MUD. Now what's this shit here? In other words, how do I create a character?
- How do I get started?
- I've been through that newbie school thingie and
still don't get it! Help me!
- What does the 'score' window tell me?
1. First things first: what do I need to know already
for this tutorial?
This is a complete beginners tutorial, so feel free to be completely
ignorant. But if you are familiar with MUDs already, I advise you shouldstart
with question #8. From there, I'm going to talk about DuneMUD in specific.
The questions prior to that one could be rather boring otherwise.
2. Who are you, and what is this MUD thing
I hear you rambling about?
I am... umm... Snowman. You can call me Snowie :P. I'm a player on
DuneMUD. MUD stands for Multi User Dimension (or Dialogue, or Dungeon). It's
a computer program where multiple users can log on in the form of characters.
You can compare it with roleplaying. You play a certain character walking
around in a certain world with a certain theme. Apart from just walking around,
you can solve different quests, kill some nasty creatures and while you are
doing this you can chat with the other users online. If you are familiarwith
old text adventures ("Colossal Caves", the "Zork" series,...) you mightget
an idea of what I am talking about. The difference is that it's a realonline
game, with real time human users. And there's a lot more killing involved;
quests and puzzles are side-issue.
There are literally hundreds and hundreds of different MUDs. DuneMUD
is one based on the novels by Frank Herbert.
3. Sounds cool, but how do I get on?
The easiest way is telnet. You have to know the network address
and the port number of the MUD you want to get on, and you can use telnet
to connect. But you will soon find it's not exactly practical. So there are
different mud clients for you to use. The one client I have to mention here
would be zMUD, which can be found
here
. Personally I think it's the best one. But there are also others, I advise
a good search. They're not hard to find.
Now, DuneMUD... address: dune.servint.com and port: 8888.
You can check it out already
with
this link.
4. Now you didn't find this all by yourself, now
did you?
I plead guilty. The sites I'm referring to are
The Mudconnector and our very own
official DuneMUD page.
5. And why are you making this tutorial?
I was bored and felt like it. I like tutorials just because of the
way they explain things. You can learn something by doing it step for step.
I thought: "I want to write a tutorial about something to put on the net"
and yeah, well, this seems to be the only thing I'm good at.
Actually, I just think it might attract new players to our MUD. Just
read on now :-).
6. Ok, you got me warmed up and I just
connected to your MUD. Now what's this shit here? In otherwords,
how do I create a character?
This "shit" you're referring to is our welcome screen. Looks a bit
like this:
A few words of explanation may be in order now.
"Please enter your name:" Here you can enter the name you would like
to use. A lot of MUDs require fantasy names, and sometimes when you havecreated
a character, you have to delete it again because the name isn't suitablefor
the theme. Well that's a load of crap, so enter any name you like whenyou
connect to our MUD.
You probably noticed the "Login as 'Guest' to look around." feature.
If you enter 'Guest' as name, you log on to the MUD without creating an actual
character, so you can look around a bit. But no need for that, since yougot
your guide right here! So we are going to enter a real name and createa character
right away. Pick any name you like. If it starts welcoming youand askingfor
a password, you picked a name that already exists in DuneMUD.Just reconnect
and pick another.
Then you will be asked if you want to create a new character. We do,
so hit Y. You have to choose and confirm a password after that. Sounds pretty
familiar until now ;-) Choose a password. This will prevent other peoplefrom
logging on with your character.
After that, answer some questions. Do you want a male or female character?
Also, you will be asked for a real name, an email addy, and a plan for all
to see. You don't have to give in your real name if you don't want to, or
your email, type whatever the hell you want to type there. And what's a plan
for all to see? Well, on Dune, players can retrieve this information about
each other... A plan could be a quote that you like, or song lyrics, or whatever
you want. But don't pay too much attention to it, since you can change it
later... Another question is whether you want your character to be left-or
righthanded, or ambidextrous? This really doesn't have any affect on gameplay,
so don't bother too much.
Ok, you're done! You enter the world of Dune now...
7. How do I get started?
Dune is your normal kind of MUD, which means it's a game based onkilling.
You navigate through rooms, area's, and kill npc's (Non Player Characters)
to get experience. With that experience you gain levels. That's basically
all there is to it.
The first command you will learn is
look. Oh, I forget to say.
To make it easier, I will underline the commands you can actually type. You
will see, just type
look and you will see that you are on CaladanAstroport.
Caladan is one of the planets in the world of Dune. The Astroportis its spaceport.
This is what it looks like:
Caladan Spacing Guild Astroport. You are in the center of a ring
of buildings. Major roads lead in all directions from here, and
you can see many buildings lining them. People are being herded
left and right all around you, desperatly attempting to reach
their destination. A large sign above the northern road says:
'Welcome to Caladonia - Metropolis by the Sea'. An important-
looking display is right next to you. A ticket booth stands here
for buying Tram tickets to the far side of Caladan.
NEWBIES USE THE PORTAL EXIT TO ACCESS NEWBIE AREAS.
Six obvious exits: east, west, south, north, up and portal.
A list of the top 40 ranked players.
An automatic bank teller machine.
|
Rooms in Dune
--> This is the room description.You can also look at specific
items in the description. Try typing look at buildings, for instance.
--> These are the exits. Where can I go from here?
--> What's in the room?
|
A few other commands I can give you already are
who (gives
a list of all players currently online),
chat <blah> (sendsa
message to the chat channel, for everyone to see),
tell <name><blah>
(sends a message to a specific player only), say <blah> (sends a message
only to the room you're in). Oh well, don't worry too much about that ;-)
In the room above (Caladan AP) we see "NEWBIES USE THE PORTAL EXIT
TO ACCESS NEWBIE AREAS". Well, since you're a newbie, you should do
that. Now how do I use an exit? Well, you use an exit by typing the nameof
the specific exit. So if you type
portal you will go there. Youare
now in another room. If you read the description carefully, you can seethat
there's a newbie training center to the east. So just type
east or
e to get there. In every room there will be an npc to help you.This
area is made for utter MUD newbies, so everything should become quiteclear.