VIPMud

Category: Accessible Games

Post 1 by BrailleNote Nut (the Zone BBS remains forever my home page) on Wednesday, 21-May-2008 21:50:38

Hi guys, http://www.gmagames.com has released VIPMud about a month ago. It's basically an accessible MUD client. Hope you find it useful.

After your trial period times out, there's a free version, which can be played after the trial expires, for 2 hours. Then you need to restart the application (not the computer. Well, you can if you want.)

Post 2 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Wednesday, 21-May-2008 21:59:28

If u want a demostration of this check out

enjoy. Theirs a link a bit down the page that is called "vip Mud".

Post 3 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Wednesday, 21-May-2008 22:00:23

crap it didn't work. y? I was trying to insert a hyperlink, but I guess my HTML messed up. O well, its www.blindcooltech.com.

Post 4 by rat (star trek rules!) on Thursday, 22-May-2008 13:17:49

i think that it's a little too much money for a client like that myself, but all to their own i guess.

Post 5 by mysticrain (Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.) on Thursday, 22-May-2008 19:16:29

I've got a friend whose using it right now, and she's really liking it. I might use it eventually. <smile>

Post 6 by Coldshadow (supreme commander of the shadow fleet) on Friday, 23-May-2008 0:23:31

I use it now, and I like it

Post 7 by rat (star trek rules!) on Friday, 23-May-2008 5:16:52

never said i didn't like it, just think it's a bit much.

Post 8 by Ryan Smith (Veteran Zoner) on Monday, 26-May-2008 9:51:11

I have to say, I was very impressed with it.

Post 9 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Monday, 26-May-2008 10:06:10

from what heard on blindcooltech it sounds great, but I just would rather tick with a free client like monkey for now.

Post 10 by BrailleNote Nut (the Zone BBS remains forever my home page) on Tuesday, 27-May-2008 16:40:55

Well, VipMud is free--after your trial expires there's still the free version.

Post 11 by battle star queen (I just keep on posting!) on Wednesday, 28-May-2008 13:08:46

does it work with windw eyes?

Post 12 by jessmonsilva (Taking over the boards, one topic at a time.) on Wednesday, 28-May-2008 23:30:52

I like it as well but I don't like the fact that it's $30. Other than that, I think it's all right for a mud client.

Post 13 by Wraith (Prince of Chaos) on Monday, 02-Jun-2008 0:44:27



VIP Mud hasn't really endeared itself to me as yet. While I'm sure it's a great client, it lacks a few things that I've grown used to. Namely: It (so far as I'm aware) lacks support for regular expressions. Many triggers and filters I write depend heavily on regular expressions and, given the power I've discovered with this kind of text-matching, I'd never go back to the old way of using simple wildcards to substitute for variable text.



With regular expressions, I can specify exact "or" statements, allowing my client to react on very specific events. The strings of text I match are much less ambiguous, and therefore less prone to another's tampering (whether in jest or with malicious intent).



I assume most people are familiar with Miriani, so I'll show some examples, straight from my sound pack development days:



Pattern:

     ^You (mute|unmute) the w+ channels?.$



In the example above, the regular expression restricts the trigger to only match if the text I'm looking for starts at the beginning of the line. A message like "Bob Hope says, "You mute the general channel" wouldn't work. Furthermore, the trigger is searching for a period at the very end of the line, which automatically disqualifies say statements, since a quotation mark is the last character on such strings of text. The trigger is also searching for either the word "mute" or "unmute" to show up immediately after the word "you", which has to be the first phrase on the line. It then searches for a string of consecutive alphabetical characters surrounded by spaces immediately before the word channel. The word channel has an "s", followed by a question mark. Explanation: If an "s" appears between the characters "channel" and the period "." at the end of the line, then it is still a match.



In the kind of triggers supported by VIP Mud (unless my ignorance proves me wrong), the above pattern might look like this:

You * the * channel?.



This kind of pattern leaves a lot of room for erroneous matching. For example:

You blip the spoon channel.

You destroy the fishing channels.

You consume the Disney channell.

You asdfkjsdkfdsfoixcuvh the asdfxcvhvudwefuio channel2.



As you can see, this kind of trigger implementation leaves too much to chance. Regular expressions give you full control over how things are matched, which parts of the strings are variable, how those variables should be tested, matched, stored, and so on.



Here's another example pattern (which I'm quite sure couldn't be handled by one single trigger via VIP Mud):

     ^(Starship Status:|Charge Readout:|Total Cargo:s+d+|There is nothing in the cargo hold. Available weight capacity is d+ units.|Starship Weapon Information|Weapon Configuration:|Starship Damage:|There are no damaged components.|Starship Security Status:|You input some commands into a console and access the starship's service record.|You instruct the computer to calculate the distance between your current galactic coordinates and the last known location of the standard navigational beacons.)$



This trigger may look long and complicated, but it's really just a combination of multiple strings of text, for which I wish to have the same script respond to. (Namely, the playing of a sound describing an informational display popping up on a ship's console).



I haven't given VIP Mud's scripting language a fair shot yet, so I won't attempt to criticize this aspect of the program, but since Monkey Term and MUSH Client both do everything I need for muding and more, I believe I'll be sticking to them. I applaud the VIP Mud for its efforts, as well as its out-of-the-box accessibility, but my kind of needs for data-matching are as yet unmet by this application.



Furthermore, Monkey Term and MUSH Client are both free, and Monkey Term has made its source available, allowing anyone to modify it, should they wish to do so.



Ultimately, the choice of muding clients comes down to personal preference, but for a client with raw data-matching potential, stick to one that supports regular expressions.

Kai

Post 14 by rat (star trek rules!) on Saturday, 14-Jun-2008 16:27:00

well unless people start making soundpacks for monkeyTerm, or refining them, i'll have to use VIP mud i guess. which brings me to a question. how in the heck do you get soundpacks to work in the crazy thing? i extracted a soundpack, and it keeps saying file not found and stuff like that. very annoying to do since it freezes the client everytime.

Post 15 by Unreleased Secrets (Zone BBS Addict) on Monday, 16-Jun-2008 15:03:37

I like mush client, personally. it also supports regular expressions, and it can be scripted in several languajes. Vip mud, in my opinion, is like a more advanced and commercial version of GMud. I'm sorry mr. Greenwood.

Post 16 by Texas Shawn (The cute, cuddley, little furr ball) on Tuesday, 17-Jun-2008 11:14:40

I'm very old school but I still use tintin++ that I compiled under cygwin. It was the first mud client I ever used, and I am not interested in all the sound effects. It reads just as well as my old PcPlus from a dos shell with asap or master touch and keynote..

when I am mudding, I want it to be fast and responsive. tintin meets all those needs for me.

Post 17 by hamster (Zone BBS Addict) on Saturday, 21-Jun-2008 10:55:01

I have a question. How is it done, that windoweyes reads all text, which appears in the monkey term client? It's done in soundpack for miriani.
It's pitty, that it's done only for miriani and not for alter aeon.

Post 18 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Sunday, 22-Jun-2008 1:54:03

I think i got this one. U have the monkeylib.exe file right? well, if u want it to read with windows eyes, run it, and tell it that your default speech will be window eyes. That should fix it. That will get window eyes to read all text in the monkeyterm window for all muds.

Post 19 by lelia (Zone BBS Addict) on Friday, 12-Dec-2008 20:44:38

what is monkey and how do I get it?

lelia

Post 20 by jeffreyshockley (the Zone BBS remains forever my home page) on Friday, 12-Dec-2008 22:54:26

It's a free Mud client. You can just Google Monkey Term or go to
http://www.conradshome.com/monkeyterm/About.html
to grab it.
HtH,
Jeff

Post 21 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Saturday, 13-Dec-2008 11:57:27

Its really old, and is no longer being supported, so I say go with VIP. But its your decision.