Wheel of Time
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The wheel of time

ARGH! TOO MUCH SCREEN SPAM. HELP!

Your first journey into a the Wheel of Time MUD will deluge you with a what seems to be a torrent of text at times drowning your commands and screen with non stop action. Chats, narrates, room descriptions, people talking to you (even non-player characters!) will quickly fill your display and you might find yourself quickly losing sight of what your trying to do. Don’t fear, there are many weapons at your disposal to help combat this incessant spam!

When using some of the browser based clients the text you input will be broken up by the prompts the mud displays to you. You will find that when you enter a room, quickly the description and roomname will scroll up replaced by chats, narrates, your own commands you're entering as well as a host of others. There are a few commands that will help you with some of this spam and clean up your screen, don’t worry you will be able to toggle them if you wish at a later time to see what your missing out on. All commands are just as they appear, all you have to do is type them and hit enter.

A few commands to help with object based spam

Change spam 1
Change spam 1 stacks multiple same items into a single stack of items in a room, or a container. If for example there are 50 slabs of meat in a container or room, your screen would quickly fill with 50 prompts of A large slab of meat. With change spam 1 you will instead see this: [50] A large slab of meat. Much cleaner wouldn’t you say? Change spam 1 is something I turn on as soon as I start a new character and never regret.
Brief on
Turning brief mode on will hide room descriptions, showing only the roomname, exit and the mobs and objects in the room instead. This can help you focus on tracking as well as running around quickly and often people turn brief mode on during PK (player killing). Room descriptions are mainly for exploration and add an extra texture to the world, but you can usually safely turn them off without fear of missing too much, and may help you focus on killing that trolloc or seanchan you are chasing! To view a room description while brief mode is on, all you have to do is type LOOK, and it will refresh the room with the description intact.
Listen none
The listen none command is the opposite of the listen all command, it will disable chats and narrates from being displayed in your screen. This is sometimes helpful if your roleplaying or just wishing to explore and XP in peace and quiet. Chats can quickly fill your screen, and narrates are usually surrounding PK in far off lands that at a lower level you shouldn’t be too concerned with. One drawback however is that both channels serve as a quick notice if there are enemies that may wish you harm around your area, people will usually narrate if they find enemies and by listening you can find out if they are in your area as well. To toggle your chats and narrates you can use the LISTEN ALL, LISTEN NONE, LISTEN CHATS, and LISTEN NARR commands. A prompt will tell you if you have toggled them on or off.
Echo on
To help see what you are typing you can use the command ECHO ON. This will display what you have written on your screen after you hit enter instead of the default ‘Ok.’ message. This is helpful if you are using telnet or some of the browser based clients in which your text is segmented and chopped up by the scrolling of the screen.

Still having problems?

If you are still having problems with seeing what you have written and inputting commands you might want to switch to the beginner client. The free beginner client on the Wheel of Time MUD website boasts a text box that you can input your commands into instead of just onscreen and helps immensely. There are also few non browser based clients available as well that have input boxes akin to the text box in the beginner client as well as a few other options helpful to MUDing.

One client you can use is called Zmud (or its newest version Cmud) which has an input box as well as a host of other options to make your mud life easier. You can download or create scripts, make program based aliases (the mud itself only allows a certain number of aliases, but with this program you can create as many as you wish) and there is also in most versions an auto-mapper utility that helps you create maps of the mud as you explore. You can also download fully completed maps that others have create as well. Zmud is free to try for 30 days but is well worth the $34.95 US for a serious mudder. You will also for a limited time receive Cmud free when you purchase Zmud. You can find Zmud here.

There is also a free client available called Wintin which has program based aliases and an input box as well as script functionality, however lacks the auto-mapper feature of Zmud. You can download Wintin for free here.

There! Your screen should be much less cluttered, and your objects and mobs stacked in neat little piles. Now where did those cute brown deer go?

Styve, 2008

 

Page last updated: March 11 2008.