Setting up the Chat Interface
A Brief Background to Caer Falken Chat
The following has been transcribed and reformatted from the initial Hostboard tutorials used when we first changed over to this format. Prior to the MUSH system, we used a commercially available chat room by Parachat, which changed into a format incompatible with our needs. Prior to that, we used Be Seen Chat Rooms, which were lovely, but went out of business. We owe public thanks to one of our oldest players. She goes by many names, but you will know who she is when she helps set you up!
The Basics
Below you will find directions on how to set up the chat interface used at The Caer Faken Inn. It is not java, so everyone should be able to use it. It uses less than three and a half MB of memory, downloads in an instant and installs in under a minute.
It gives us the ability to transcript, cut and paste, send private messages without the need for ICQ or AOL, has some role playing text options (like colorizing emotions and whispers that players notice but don't hear), has no ads, is quick, private and gives the players each the capability of having their own rooms for their own purposes.
The first thing you must do is download the SimpleMU client, which can be found here, and can also be found in the main link menu on our home page.
After you download it, install it. At the end you will have the option for a shortcut to be placed on your desktop, and it will ask if you want to open it. Do that.
Next go to the FILE pull down menu and select NEW CONNECTION WIZARD. Move along following the setup directions and insert the following at the prompts:
Site address: dune.net
Port: 4560
Type: Talker
Name: Shadowcorp
Then hit the FINISH button
See. Wasn't that easy?
Next comes the account setup phase, and you may have some trouble here. If you are new to Caer Falken, you can get assistance through one of our players, who is also a moderator at the site we use.
You must choose a name and password, and while ideally you should have one for every character, for starters, just pick one until you are sure about the workings of it all.
You will see a bunch of type forming the large words SHADOWCORP, the way we used to do it in typing class (for those of you who are old enough to remember manual typewriters). You will have to hit enter until it asks for your name, a password, gender and stuff like that. At the end of this process you will have an account.
To get to my room, you
will need to type:
Visit Starshadow
Then you will be in my room. The only two things you MUST know right away, are the two main ways to post.
The first way is to say what you want to say outright. To do this, you must type either say or "
For example:
I can type in
say Have you found the key yet?
or
" Have you found the key yet?
and it will reveal onscreen as:
Starshadow asks "Have you found the key yet?"
If you end the sentence with a period, then it will show that you say something, and if you end with a !, it will actually state that you exclaim it. I found that rather cool from a role play and literary aspect.
The other way to present type is to emote, in which case you will preface the sentence with either a colon or the word emote.
For example:
I type...
emote wishes you were here
OR
: wishes you were here
and it will display:
Starshadow wishes you were here
This is cool for those who like to post that they are thinking something, or other similar circumstances.
There is a LOT more that can be done here, and other ways to post, such as
Shouting and Whispering and such, but I won't go into the intermediate commands
yet, and I have yet to learn the advanced stuff. There is likely far more
available to us than we will ever need.
Getting Fancy
Shadowcorp, where we're playing, has 103 commands available for players to use. That might seem a lot, but bear in mind that many of those are specific to the Shadowrun game that's normally held there such as online character sheet creation and management, dice rolling of d6's, and news postings; of those that remain, a considerable number are on/off preference toggles that are seldom used. Aliases are also counted in that number, so the actual number of commands we will use on a regular basis is rather small.
Always prefix the command or shortcut/alias as the first thing you type, then the target if there is one, and finally your message. This is true of all commands.
Communication commands are the most commonly used, and so I'll discuss them first.
say or " - Normal
speech. Displays to everyone in the room.
say hello
will show as: Allie says, "Hello" to everyone in the room. If proper punctuation
is used, then "says" will change to "asks" or "exclaims" as appropriate.
emote or : - Action.
Same as say above, but is used for movement. Emote tends to be the most often
used of all the commands.
: waves.
displays as: Allie waves.
pemote or :: -
Possessive emote. Adds the 's to your name.
pemote deft fingers slip unfelt into the rich merchant's coin purse.
displays: Allie's deft fingers slip unfelt into the rich merchant's coin purse.
think or ~ - Displays
what your character thinks. This is for IC flavor, and generally thinks are not
replied upon directly unless someone has the ability to read minds.
think this is a bad idea.
displays: Allie thinks this is a bad idea.
whisper or = - A semi
private form of communication between two or more people. Only the targets of a
whisper actually see the message, but others will see a message that "A whispers
something to B." More than one person can be specified by putting the names
together unspaced with a comma. This is an IC form of communication, so asking
one or the other about what was said is fine.
whisper Einkil,Starshadow There's an ambush around that corner.
displays: Gwylln whispers to Einkil and Starshadow, "There's an ambush around
that corner." TO Einkil and Starshadow, but everyone else sees: Gwylln whispers
something to Einkil and Starshadow.
Tell or > - Private
conversation, normally OOC, between two or more people. Unlike whisper, tells
are completely silent to all but the parties involved. Most common uses of tell
are to relay dice roll results to the DM, or getting info from the DM that only
the one character might see or hear. Multiple recipients can be targetted with
tell as well in the same fashion as whisper.
tell starshadow 15 to hit for 5 damage.
displays your name and message to Starshadow only.
All the above commands, except tell, show only within the room. If you're outside the room, you cannot target a whisper, nor will you see emotes or says.
There's also the z-channel, which allows for OOC info to be passed publicly between all members of the channel. This separates IC and OOC, and also allows those who wish to leave the channel and not see it at all.
The commands have the same uses as those above so don't need to be discussed in much detail.
zc cfi - joins you to the cfi channel. Typing zc again will disconnect you from the channel.
zu - channel say.
ze - channel emote.
zw - shows who else is listening on the channel.
Each character created is a fixed entity. When you are granted residency, you are prompted to enter a valid email address and to select a password to protect the account. You can then describe yourself and the articles you're carrying.
To write up a description of what your character looks like, there's the desc command. It allows for a paragraph of information to be stored so it can be seen by others. After you've completed the command, the info as it is seen by others is echoed back to you. If you've typed too long an entry, you will see where it truncated.
To create a description:
desc (type your paragraph here) and then press enter.
vdesc works the same as desc but it is for describing your gear, clothing and armor. Since this is IC info, normally only items that are actually visible on your person are listed and described. You likewise only have a small paragraph of space, and like desc will echo back to you what others will see, so if you've typed too much you can alter it.
To create an equipment
list:
vdesc (your info goes here) and then return.
Note that vdesc can only be set while you are set ooc, but can only be seen by others while you are set ic.
Other useful commands
ic - sets your status to IC.
ooc - sets your status to OOC.
ghome - toggles you between logging in on the front room or inside your own home room.
home - sends you to your home room.
visit - sends you into another character's home. For example: visit starshadow
gender - sets your gender for the program's internal grammer (his/hers/its). Normally this won't be changed unless something unexpected happens.
prompt - by itself this command will eliminate the Shadowcorp> promt which indicates where you'll type. Putting a value after the prompt command changes the prompt for yourself to whatever you want. Only your own prompt is changed in this fashion.
echo or + - This is a form of emote that allows you to put something other than your name as the first word of an entry. Normally this is used for mood setting statements, or other informational statements that aren't said by anyone in particular.
echo The full moon shines down through the dense foliage of the trees.
Others see:
Players can use this if they want more control over the sentence structure of their poses as well.
cname - Cname is a method of masking your identity temporarily to those in the room. A nickname is an example of this. Others will see the cname instead of the character's real name in most emotes and says, but commands targetted at the aliased player need to use the player's real name. Starshadow used the cname command to change his name to Cattalinia and then Dungeonmaster.
quit - cleanly exits the game and saves your character. This command will then signal your client to close the connection. Typing quit as your last command is preferable over closing the client; the server periodically makes backups in the event of a crash, and properly quitted characters have a somewhat better chance of being recovered.
Your Own Room
Using "home" is the same as "visit"-ing yourself.
Rooms can be desced, yes, but you can only do so in a room you own. Normally I work out the description in a program such as Notepad first, and then copy/paste the paragraphs.
While standing inside the room you want to work with, type: room edit
This will bring up a basic line editor. Each enter key use is treated as a paragraph break, so multiple paragraphs can be created.
Typing is treated as text entry, unless your first character typed on a new line is a period (.) and then the entire line's a command.
To delete that 3 line default description in a room, type this from within the editor:
.d 1-3 and press enter. (delete lines 1 through 3.)
Your current location is indicated by a * after the line number displayed, so 1* indicates you'll type on line 1 next. After you've erased the default description, just copy and paste a paragraph (or type it manually) and press enter. The editor will fill up, and position the cursor symbol at the next line where you can continue.
Typing a return by itself puts a blank line.
When you're finished, type: .end on a new line to exit the editor and save the changes.
Other editor commands - use these FIRST to affect all your entries. They go into effect after entered but do not alter what's already input:
.para correct - sets the editor to place a tab before the new paragraph.
.pretty on - Does some basic formatting of the text for you, such as word wrapping and justification.
.quit - exits the editor without saving changes.
There are other changes you can make to your rooms as well. If you want to see the whole list, type: room help.
Color
Two more topics I'll cover before ending this thread are color and mail.
The talker allows color. When you first create a character, you're asked a number of questions, three of which are about your preferences concerning color. If you answered them incorrectly, or change your mind there are commands available which will alter your settings.
To test whether you can see colors, type:
fingerpaint on a line by itself. If you can see colors, then the palatte of available colors will display as you'll see them along with what to type to use the colors.
If you cannot see colors, and want them, type:
hitells ansi
color
syscolor
on lines by themselves. If successful, you will see messages indicating you can now see colors and that technicolor mode is activated. These are toggles, so if you don't see those messages just type color and syscolor again until you do.
colorize - allows you to
change the default colors you see that are associated with different forms of
communication. Tell messages are viewed as bright white by default. If you want
to see
others' tells in bright cyan, you would then type:
colorize tells ^C
The command by itself displays all the settings and the currently associated colors.
colorize default - restores all the colors to the system default.
You can use the colors listed in fingerpaint to add color to your room description, your desc/vdesc, or add the entries to your emotes and says. Be aware though that if used in descriptions, that the characters needed will count toward the character total before cutoff.
Example:
say ^y^KTest.
displays to others, "Clementine says, "Test." but the word "Test." will show as
blinking brown.
Shadowcorp has an internal mail system that allows for sending messages back and forth between players in the database. Your recipient need not be online to be able to send mail.
One way this feature can be used is to communicate to our players about no shows, tardies, no game, etc. I doubt we'll need this aspect since we already have the hostboard and Yahoo group for that.
Another use is an IC purpose. Written correspondence of an IC nature can be "passed" using the mailer. Another such use would be if someone found a parchment with writing on it, or we encounter script on a wall that not everyone can read. The message as interpreted could be mailed, and it'd be up to the recipient to "translate" or not to the others.
Here are the basic mail commands. You will find them quite similar to the room edit commands discussed earlier:
check mail - Displays a list of any mail you have in your inbox. A number will precede the info.
mail read x - Reads the mail message indicated, whether read already or not, so mail read 1 will display the contents of mail message 1.
mail post name1,name2 subject - sets the list of recipients, which can be one person or more. No spaces between the commas if sending to multiple players. This will put you into the editor where you type your text.
.end will exit the editor and send the message.
There are other commands
that aren't used as often. If you want to see the entire list, you can:
help mail.
This has only touched upon the basic commands that I believe we will use most of the time. There are many others. To see the entire list available:
commands all - displays all the talker commands in alphabetical order. If you want to see the help file of a specific command, type:
help commandname.