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AweMUD itself isn't a game that you play. It is a server, that allows people to host their own games on-line, using a powerful MUD infrastructure. If you know of a game being run on an AweMUD server, you simply need to connect to that game with a telnet client. The game's homepage should have more information on using telnet to connect.
We are developing Thelharin, though it is not an actual part of AweMUD. If you wish to run an AweMUD server, you are encouraged to develop your own world. Not all of Thelharin will be released to public in AweMUD data-file format.
Not even close! The game is currently considered alpha code. That means it is only useful to developers and very brave end-users. The server is usable, i.e. you can connect and play, although there are many features that need to be implemented. Once we hit beta, you should be able to play excellent games over the AweMUD server.
For information on current features, see the ChangeLog for the current release. The following features must be completed before version 1.0 can be released:
Yes, there is. The temporary server page has more information.
AweMUD is in need of all sorts of different help - testers, builders, programmers, and so on.
If you want to test AweMUD, see the Temporary Server page. There you can log into a test server that is sometimes up. If you encounter any problems, bugs, typos, or weird behaviour, then please submit a bug report at the AweMUD Project Page.
AweMUD could really use some nifty worlds! If you wish, see Thelharin, and ask Dave if you can help out. You may also wish to develop your own setting, and run it on your own AweMUD server. There is perhaps no better way to test AweMUD that doing that.
There is plenty of work to be done by programmers! Ask on the awemud-devel mailing list for some pointers on what needs to be done. AweMUD also needs to assistance of anyone interested in porting to new platforms. The only tested platform for AweMUD is Linux. I'd love to see it running on *BSD, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, other UN*X's, Win32, BeOS, MacOS X, and all the other wonderful systems out there! AweMUD will also probably need some work to get it running on non 32-bit systems.
In order to build AweMUD, you need very little external software. Your standard build tools (compiler, make tool, UNIX shell tools, etc.) are a necessity. Specifically, you need a GNU Make compatible make program, and a GCC compatible C++ compiler, with an up-to-code STL implementation.
The only external libraries required by AweMUD are libxml2 and Scriptix.
In order to build the documentation, you will need a properly installed xsltproc with a full set of DocBook XML stylesheets.
If you want to work on AweMUD as a coder, you'll likely also need the GNU autotools, specifically automake and autoconf.
Many of these packages come standard with popular GNU/Linux and UNIX operating systems.
Neither version 2.96 nor version 2.97 of GCC are supported by the GCC development. We also will not support these compilers. If you are unfortunate enough to be stuck with a broken distribution of GNU/Linux, I suggest you contact your vendor for information on using the older stable GCC 2.95.x series, or the newer GCC 3.x series.
There should be little trouble building on 2.96/2.95, however. These compilers are used a lot, unfortunately, and various fixes have made their way into AweMUD. If you have a fix for compiling AweMUD with these experimental GCC versions, we will be happy to include them in AweMUD. Please do not ask us to spend our time modifying AweMUD to compile on unsupported compilers.
It is true that Magick is not in AweMUD yet. Coding a powerful, versatile, satisfying Magick system is no easy task. We want to ensure that it is done right the first time. For this reason, we will not start working on Magick until we are sure the base framework is ready for it.
AweMUD versions previous to 0.6.2 had a loadable extension feature. Unfortunately, this was relied on for "dynamic" behaviour, instead of a real scripting engine. However, AweMUD now makes (currently limited) use of the Scriptix script system. Scriptix was more or less designed for this purpose.
Currently, each entity is given a simple name, such as "long sword." This is inadequate in many cases. For example, if you pick up a longsword, it will read:
User picks up long sword.
Ideally, it should say something along the lines of "User picks up a long sword." However, there are then issues with Proper Nouns: "User picks up a The Unique Artifact." Since we haven't found an easy way to deal with this yet, we are leaving things the way they are. Do not doubt that we wish to fix the ugliness of entity names, however.
Starting with version 0.6.4, AweMUD uses a text parsing based on the [ character. Commands, such as [color exit], will alter the output of text display, or provide in-game information. In order to prevent players from abusing this text parsing, all incoming [ characters are stripped. This way, no player can alter the output of or leak information to themselves, or another player.