When you initially get your character, it's going to be relatively blank. You've got a name, and that's about it. No appearance, no species, none of the things set up that let various MUCK programs and commands work right. One of the first things you need to do is to correct that. Actually, the second. The first is find a quiet spot to work. When you are created you will have your home set to Under The Bandstand, and will pop out in the West Corner of the Park when you connect. Unless you have been on a MUCK before and/or like being spammed, you should immediately type 'around' to go behind the bulletin board. There's some info there for newcomers, which you should read. Don't run the 'setup' program, though, we'll take care of everything it does. From there, go west as far as you can, to the Dancing Unicorn Inn. You shouldn't be disturbed there, and there's a guest room that you can go into and then type '@link me=here' to set your home there temporarily until you acquire a permanent home later. This will also keep you from falling prey to the dreaded Bandstand purge, where characters who have been living under there too long are @toaded and deleted from the MUCK. Once you're at this point, you can begin the process of setting up all the details of your character.
The first things you'll need to do are administrivia. #1, select a new password and
set it. Use the same criteria for selecting one that you would use for any computer
account, ie. 6 or more characters long, not an obvious word and not shared with any
other account. Mixing one or two digits in with the letters is a good idea. Once you
have a password, set it via:
@password old-password=new-passwordIf you don't like your original name, you can reset it to something new via:
@name me=new-name passwordNote that names can't contain spaces.
Once that's done, make it so people can't rob you and insure nobody can @force your character to do anything via:
@lock me=me @fail me=message person trying to rob you sees @ofail me=message everyone else in the room sees @flock me= @set me=!X @set me=J @set me=!KNote that the ofail message will have the name of the person who tried to rob you tacked onto the front of it, so if you want everyone else to see "Xyzzy tried to rob MyName and got caught.", you would set the ofail message to "tried to rob MyName and got caught.". The @flock may seem strange, since it appears to leave the force-lock on you unlocked, but the MUCK server software fails the force-lock if it is not set specifically succeed so set like this nobody can force your character, not even you. The Jump flag is useful and doesn't cause any harm when set, so it's set by default. The Kill_OK flag is usually not a good idea, so make sure it's reset unless you know you really want people to be able to kill you.
Next, you need to give yourself a gender and species. The most common genders are "male"
and "female", although "neuter", "herm" and others aren't unknown. The MUCK can do pronoun
substitution if you stick to the standard male and female genders, otherwise there's more
setup to do. Once you know what you are, set them via:
@set me=sex:gender @set me=gender:gender @set me=species:species
Next, you need to set up a description so people who look at you can see what you look
like. There's two ways to do this. The one I'll describe here is the standard way to
do it if you intend to use the MUCK's morph program ( morph #help
for more information on it ) to change your appearance. First, use the command:
lsedit me=redescThis will put you into a basic line editor and let you create and edit the standard description property on your character. You can use .h in the editor for help on it's commands. Non-command text will be added to your description. Once you've entered the text itself, the .indent and .format commands will probably be the most useful in indenting paragraphs and wrapping and filling the text to a standard width ( many people can only see 80 columns of text ). Try not to make your description longer than about 20 lines or so, or it will overflow some people's screens. Try to keep the prose from being flowery and overblown, and for a start keep it clean and within the PG-13 rating for public areas. If you want more detail than comfortably fits, try asking some of the helpstaff for help setting up look-traps and details on yourself. You can essentially make pseudo-objects on yourself that people can look at, so instead of describing that ornate belt in your description you can mention an ornate belt and when people look at your belt instead of just you they can see the detailed description of just the belt.
Once you have the description to your satisfaction, use the .end command to exit the editor and save the description. Then set your character's description to use what you just created by doing:
@desc me={look-notify:{list:redesc}}
To check, do a look me and see what you look like. One other trick is to
be told when people look at you. To set this up, do the following:
@set me=_desc_notify_looked:+++++ {name:me} (%n) just looked at you!
@set me=_desc_notify_looker:%S sees you looking at %o.
You will see the first string when someone looks at you, and the person looking at you
will see the second. The characters marked with a percent sign are pronoun substitutions
( see help pronouns for more information on these ) and the
MUCK will substitute appropriate when displaying the strings. In the first string the
{name:me} will display the MUCK's name for the looker while the following
substitution in parentheses will display the nickname they've set for themselves. The
five plus signs in the first string are a trick I use. I tag messages generated by the
MUCK when people do things to me with five plus signs, and then have a string of five
plus signs highlighted in a special way by my client so I notice them.
Next thing is to set up how you speak. This means configuring the standard say
program properly for yourself. First step is to decide on a verb or short phrase to
use for your speech. The MUCK ordinarily displays:
Myname says, "what you said"when you speak. The 'says' there is what you can change. I would stick to simple verbs or adjective/verb combinations, because there is a low limit on how long a string you can use for this. Then use the following commands:
sayset def verbs, sayset +def verb,The first will set what others see, the second will set what you yourself see when you speak. As a concrete example, if you want to growl instead of just saying you would use
sayset def growls, sayset +def growl,Notice that you use the plural form of the verb in the string others see. Then set a couple of useful say options with:
sayset query sayset adhocDon't be afraid to ask helpstaff to double-check what others see for you. For more help on the say program use the sayhelp command. Be warned, while the basics are simple there's a lot of more exotic stuff in there too.
The MUCK lets you set up a scent on yourself. This is probably an optional step
for most people, but if you want you can set up:
@set me=_scent:message
@set me=_smell_notify:+++++ {name:me} (%n) just smelled you!
The first setting sets a message people will see when they smell you. The second
sets up a notification string so you know when people smell you, similar to the
one for when people look at you. You can do a smell me to test this
out.
Next, set things up so people can hand you objects. Do this via
hand #ok hand #msgok throw #ok @set me=target?:yesYou can set it so people cannot hand or throw things to you via
hand #!ok throw #!ok @set me=target?:noYou can use throw #ignore to keep specific people from throwing things to you, or you can use @conlock on yourself to prevent specific people from handing things to you. These get somewhat more complex, so check with a helpstaffer for more details on these options. The throw #help and hand #help screens give more information as well.
Next comes configuring paging and whispering. Whispering is a way for other players
in the same room to talk to you without anyone else hearing. Paging allows other
players to send you messages when they're not near you. Initially you probably
want to see your own pages, be informed if someone tried to page you and could not,
and want pages flagged with a special string which you can highlight in your client.
So, do:
page #echo page #inform page #prepend ##page> page #formattedThe page #help screens give more information on the options. Two useful ones are page #away message to flag you as away from the keyboard and set a message for people who page you to see, and page #ignore player to ignore all pages from a specific player ( or page #ignore #all to ignore all pages ).
Whisper is configured similarly via:
whisper #on whisper #prepend ##whisper>It has the same sort of #ignore option as page, and you can use whisper #off to turn whispers to you off. whisper #help gives more information.
It's nice to have your character automatically sent home after you disconnect. It'd
also be nice to have a delay, so if you get bumped off-line and reconnect quickly you'll
still be where you were. You can do this via:
autosweep #on autosweep #delay=secondsThe seconds specified in the #delay option indicate how long it will be after you disconnect before you are sent home.
Some characters on the MUCK use psionics instead of speech. You can set yourself up to
hear them via:
@set me=_psi:activeYou can do a think help to get more information on the think command used to send psi messages.
To move long distances it's probably easiest to teleport using the tport command.
Just tport alone will give you detailed help. tport destination code
teleports you to a destination. tdests will give you a list of all the groups of
destinations, and tsearch string will search for destinations containing a given string.
You may want to fly. If your character can fly for whatever reason, you need to set
@set me=flight?:yeson your character to tell the MUCK software to let you use flight-locked exits and the aerial rooms.
Now you want to set up some things controlling how and when people can find you or
see where you are on the MUCK. The basic decision is whether you want to be openly
visible or normally invisible. The options affect the whereis and
whereare programs ( use whereis #help and whereare #help
for more details on these ). Then do
whereis #okif you want to be normally findable, or
whereis #!okif you want to be normally invisible, and then do
whereis #message unfind=message whereare #whereiswhich will set a message people will see if they try to find you when you aren't findable and make your whereare visibility follow your whereis visibility. If you registered as an adult, you can also do
whereare #adultto make the adult areas show up in your whereare listing.
If you do a ws you will see a list of everyone in the room, their gender and species
and some other information. One option you can set with this is
ws #doingto see the Doing messages for each person, or
ws #!doingto suppress them.
You'll find people who seem to know when other people connect or disconnect. The
watchfor program is what they're using to do this. wf #help
gives details. The most useful options are:
wf #on - enable use of wf wf player - watch for a given player wf !player - stop watching for a given player wf #hidefrom player - keep a player from seeing you in wf wf #hidefrom !player - stop hiding from a player wf #hidefrom #all - hide from everyone wf #hidefrom !#all - stop hiding from everyoneYou'll probably accumulate a large list over time. You'll also notice from time to time that names disappear from the list or that names you don't recognize suddenly appear. The two most common causes of this are that a player has changed their name ( wf keeps track of people by their database reference number, not their name, so they don't drop off the list merely by changing their name ) or they had themselves @toaded and their database reference number was reused by a new player. Don't be alarmed, just clean out your list from time to time. You'll also notice that some players don't appear even when they're on-line and on your list. This can be because they're hiding from you or from everyone, or because they haven't turned on wf. Do not pester them about it. A polite query to someone you know is OK, but pestering someone who's hiding from you or everyone is a good way to generate a complaint about you to the wizzes.
There is a whatis program on the MUCK that allows you to set various flags
to concisely describe things about your character. The most useful commands for this
are:
wi #help - general help on whatis wi #list - to list flags you can set/clear wi #setMost of the flags are self-explanatory, and helpstaff can help you with the rest of them. If you just do wi in a room you will see a list of the flags for everyone in the room, or wi player will tell you the flags for a specific person.- set to exact list of flags wi #mod
- add/remove flags
There is a parallel called wixxx for adults-only flags. If you registered as an adult you can set this up. Again, the most useful forms of wixxx are
wixxx #help - for help wixxx #flags - show list of flags wixxx #setYou can do wixxx alone or wixxx player to see the flags for other people. Note that most of these flags are sexual in nature. Setting them may cause people you don't want to deal with to start hitting on you or otherwise being somewhat annoying. If you don't want to deal with sex I would advice that you not set these flags or set the uninterested flag and avoid the adults-only, age-locked rooms. You should also be prepared to firmly tell people "No.", or otherwise thwap them with the virtual equivalent of a rolled-up newspaper if they don't get the hint.- set to exact list of flags wixxx #add
- add some flags wixxx #clear
- clear some flags
I've only covered the basics here. There are a lot more things you can set up on your character. Check globals #list for a more extensive listing of the commands available. You can also do a programs #list for a list of installed programs on the MUCK, and then use the documentation commands listed for each one to get more information on them. You should also take advantage of the helpstaff on the MUCK for answers to questions you might have. The helpstaff command will list the members of the helpstaff available at any given time and their areas of expertise. If in doubt, ask one of them who would be the appropriate person for a particular question.
I use a custom method for setting up multiple descriptions on a character. Unlike the morph program this allows for an unlimited number of descriptions and makes it easier to have similar descriptions with just things like the clothes you're wearing change. It's more complex, though, using custom MPI to change the description instead of using a pre-made program.
Under construction.
tknarr@silverglass.org