Zmud
Contributed by Nemori
Zmud is one of the most popular and user-friendly mud clients in existence. It is available for download and purchase at the Zugg Software site here. The latest version of Zmud has a 30-day free trial period, and costs approximately $30 for a registration code. With a little bit of effort, some older, public versions of Zmud can be found on the internet, though they tend to offer less features and less support. Many MM players, pleased with the layout and functions of Zmud, choose to buy a registration code and find it is a good investment for many years.
Aliases
Triggers
Tick Timer
Miscellaneous
Aliases are pretty straightforward in most versions of Zmud. There is a row of buttons on the top part of the application. Click the alias button and you are presented with a new window. Click the "new" button, then enter a "Name" for your alias. Its name is what you will type when you want to set off your alias. Try to make it something you won't normally type by accident.
In the commands box you can list the command or commands that you want the alias to perform. If you want it to perform a series of actions, you can just separate them by hitting the return key as in:
get dec from trunk
drink dec
drink dec
put dec in trunk
Client aliases are handy because while MM offers in game aliases, they are only one-command aliases and you can only have a maximum of 25. This is difficult for many bards especially, or even druids and mage classes that like to use abbreviations for quickly casting spells.
Triggers are for the most part illegal in Materia Magica, but there are a few instances where they are legal and can be very helpful. For the even semi-social or semi-busy Alyrian, capture windows can be nearly essential. It is very handy to keep track of clan talk, tells, and any other channels you would like to track as you may go speedwalking across the ocean. Zmud also has the advantage of capturing all this information in a very easy to set up manner and in alternate tabs that will display the original colors of the logged data.
To set up a capture log, click the Triggers button from the menu bar. In the same way you set up an alias, click the "New" button to set up a new one. For the pattern you will write in some text that will trigger the capture. For instance, in setting up something to capture incoming tells, you would write:
* tells you
In the Pattern line. The * serves as a substitution for anything that might be different every time, as in * says or * heard you say. You do not need to lay out the whole line of text that might appear, only the beginning to capture. Then, in Commands box you will put #CAP followed by the name of your log window. Your log window will be displayed in tabs above your game window, and you can click back and forth between the two. So if for instance you wanted to name your window tells, you would write:
#CAP tells
In the Commands box and similarly have the same Commands text if you wanted to capture outgoing tells as well.
You can also do a really simple sound trigger, by similarly putting your trigger text in the Pattern line and then typing #BEEP in the Command box. This will play the windows beep sound whenever that event occurs
Tick Timers in Materia Magica are of a questionable legality. Anything that occurs without you physically triggering it is technically illegal, and using a tick timer along with triggers to keep your character connected to the game when you are not actually typing anything is definitely illegal. As a general rule, make sure to disable any kind of trigger or tick timer when you are at all away from your PC. If you use common sense, you won't get into trouble but it's best not to push the envelope.
The Tick Timer in Zmud is in different places for different versions, but should be in the "Actions" menu item. Click the "Time Timer..." item and it will pull up a new window. Here you can set the timer interval(how long you want your ticker to occur basically, or to what number it is counting to) and then the Timeout Command, which would be the action or message you would like it to display or activate. You can put the name of an alias in that box, and at the timer intervals it will perform the actions of that particular alias.
Zmud has many other features. While it is not as customizable or as easy to use homegrown scripts as many other programming intensive clients are, it tends to be very easy to use in a way that if employed properly will be hardly noticeable in facilitating your MM play. I suggest you visit Zugg Software's site and explore the numerous forum posts, help files, and knowledge base documents on your version of zmud so that you can use it to its full advantage. Also, Zmud is so user friendly that very often you can click a button of a feature you'd like to use and merely play around with it for a while until you have taught yourself competency with that item.
We hope this guide has assisted you in learning Zmud. If you have any suggestions or corrections please send them our way, either in game or through our feedback function. Happy adventuring!
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