Hello from the n00b side and a few humble questions

[SchroedingersCat]

Greetings,

I just took my first staggering steps in Allanak, and my first staggering step in any MUD at all (and with MUSHclient). I feel like a newborn baby in RL must feel: half-deaf, almost totally blind, and having a hard time to articulate myself. But I am willing to learn. I think Armageddon might just be the thing for me.

That's probably normal, and I am reading a lot on your website to get a hang on things. Here are a few questions, that I am having troubles to figure out. I would be very grateful for either straight answers, or pointers to keywords, articles or resources where to get smart on that.

1. Hemote. What exactly does it mean, that only those people that are "paying close attention" will notice them (in terms of game-mechanics)? Only those who are very near? Only those that have me targetted in some way? Is the text decorated differently?

2. MUSHclient woes. I am running the beast in mostly standard mode, I think. I already figured out how to get a font that I can actually read, and how to tinker with the general background color and text-color, so that my eyes don't bleed anymore... but I feel this beast has more to offer. What I would really like to know is...

• Text-Colors: Are the different kinds of information (e.g. room description, "says", "emotes", listings, etc... targettable somehow, so that I can use different colors for each of these logically different information?
• MUSHclient / multiple windows: Is it possible to have multiple windows of the same "game world" in MUSHclient, for example to have different kinds of information (see prior item) pasted to different windows? It would be much easier for me to follow things, if, for example all spoken and emoted stuff would be in a seperate window.

I have really high hopes that this thing called Armageddon will get me interested long-term. I had a great first session and encounter today.

I also really like online roleplaying games, with a focus on RP and with a serious setting. I had my first experiences with this genres with a game called "Neverwinter Nights", which really stands out from the shallow mainstream MMORPGs, because there existed many hundreds (thousands?) custom servers and worlds. It was easy to tweak nearly all aspects of game mechanics, so that there were a few very good and very "real" worlds, with harsh death-settings and heavy focus on RP, as in creative, interactive and cooperative story telling.
Unfortunately I can't find anything like this in the modern host of MMORPGs. While some are beautiful in graphics, and there *should* be endless possibilities and creativity - they all appear to be dumbed-down time-sinks. I couldn't get myself interested in more than a few hours in any of the recent MMORPGs.
Do I want to have everything handed to me on a golden spoon, get a medal of honor and riches beyond imagination for killing ten rats or kissing seven green-glowing mushrooms over and over again?
I play this stuff to get lost in a shared dream, to try and unleash some creativity, to have a sense of adventure - which for me comes with the threat of bad luck, bad decisions and death having real and tangible consequences beyond hitting a respawn button.

So, kudos to the creators and community of Armageddon! I hope my first character will live long enough to see some more of this world and I am looking forward to get a better grip on MUSHclient and the specifics of Armageddon.

Cheers!

[QuillDipper]

Consider HEmote in a DnD type setting.

hemote rolls her eyes at ~sarge

(The snobby ass kid rolls her eyes at the grizzled sergeant.)

Now, imagine that just got a number. Everyone in the room then rolls without knowing, and if they hit that number...

You notice: The snobby ass kid rolls her eyes at the grizzled sergeant.

If they don't, no message appears. So they either hit that threshold or its just invisible.

This roll from everyone can be affected by various skills/situations. Obviously someone who is WATCHing you will notice more, whereas if its pitch black in a cave somewhere no one will notice your REGULAR emotes. Hemote is subtle things that you would have to be paying attention to catch. Like you wouldn't put....

hemote screams at the top of his lungs

but you might put

hemote squeaks quietly as they watch the badass templar toss a dwarf.

Everyone has a chance to notice, for better or for worse. Its great for underlings, and is always fun to notice.

[Delusion]

Hey. Good luck with your first character - some people hold that first characters only last a matter of days or even hours on average, while others can make them last for months on end.

A hemote is a 'hidden emote', essentially, that won't be echoed to other players, unless they are perceptive enough to notice it. They will almost certainly see it if they are actively watching you, using the watch command, but otherwise, it will often pass entirely unnoticed. Appropriate things to do with a hemote might be for small thing in their expression or body language which may not be particularly obvious, or subtle movement, or perhaps even such things as kicking somebody under a table (suitable if you know they're watching you and so won't miss it, which you can find out with the 'assess' command).

[Lizzie]

Multi-view isn't really an appropriate method of viewing Arm for a lot of reasons. The RPed stuff (communication and emotes) can have coded consequences. For example, if you're looking at the left side of the screen, examining a potential raider's description, and on the right side of the screen he's telling you that if you don't give him your pack by the count of three he's going to stab you in the face.  Or sitting at the bar having a conversation, which can get pretty hectic - and all of a sudden, a scene breaks out when a red-robed templar walks in. But you're busy watching the side of your MUSHclient window that has the conversation, and don't even notice that someone just walked in that you really NEED to pay attention to immediately.

Some folks have tried configuring Zmud to display multi-view but it never ends well. The old Gemstone Wizard used to be configurable, but none of the windows or tools worked other than the main game window.

You can use MUSHclient to trigger highlights and colors though, and there's a thing called *PROMPT*... you can use the game-side system to create your prompt, or you can use one that one of the players here created just for MUSHclient called Infobar:

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,34979.msg439267.html#msg439267

You could put your infobar in a seperate window I guess, so you wouldn't need a pre-set prompt. I wouldn't try for anything more than that though. And I don't know how to do it with MUSHclient. I used to know with Zmud but that was back when people were using Win95.

[CodeMaster]

Hello! Here are some things I target with color triggers (I would love to know what other players are doing as well, sometimes it can help with the deluge):

• 
  "knocks" (this word shows up in some important combat messages so I make it red)
  
• 
  "foreign presence" (psionic connect and disconnect)
  
• 
  " your?[ \,.]" (catches you, your, you, you. -- something happened to ME)
  
• 
  My character's name
  
• 
  The names of some different spoken languages in different colors
  
• 
  "Very far to the"/"Far to the"/"To the [a-z]+:" (things in the next room are dimmer)
  

[SchroedingersCat]

Hellos,

many thanks for the replies. They shed some light on a few of the many mysteries of Armageddon and MUDs in general. Hemotes are completely clear to me now.

The multiple window thing is reassuring too. I was worried that I was chanceless (by using a mostly "standard" view), while all other cats around me have spiffy and sophisticated, colorful and L337 views with a host of added functionality. I am more confident now, knowing that it is more a matter of getting accustomed to the MUD-way of presenting things, rather than me hacking away on stone-plates with a chisel while all others use natural language processing tools and semantic technologies for interaction with this world.

Cheers and thanks!

[Daar]

Hello! Here are some things I target with color triggers (I would love to know what other players are doing as well, sometimes it can help with the deluge):

• 
  "knocks" (this word shows up in some important combat messages so I make it red)
  
• 
  "foreign presence" (psionic connect and disconnect)
  
• 
  " your?[ \,.]" (catches you, your, you, you. -- something happened to ME)
  
• 
  My character's name
  
• 
  The names of some different spoken languages in different colors
  
• 
  "Very far to the"/"Far to the"/"To the [a-z]+:" (things in the next room are dimmer)
  

uhh. That helped. Thanks!