Following a long history of client abuse and of the apparent disbalance
provided by even legitimate client use, we have come to the following decision:
It is now illegal to use any MUD client for playing MUME.
The only exception: you may use clients as a god, since we recognise that
these provide the (so far) necessary capability of local editing.
This decision goes into effect in 24 hours from the time of this post. At this
time the JMC link on fire.pvv.org's homepage will be disabled. Players whose
accounts haven't been logged on within 23 hours from the time of this post
have 1 hour from their first login to switch to using telnet.
To clarify the definition of a MUD client: it is any program which transforms
the input you transmit to the MUD or the output you get from the MUD in a
manner different from plain telnet so that you (or the MUD) will perceive it
differently than the data coming through plain telnet. Therefore, not only
designated MUD clients like powwow and JMC are illegal, but also a variety of
other ways in which you could achieve similar results - such as, programming
or using smart editors, using your shell in creative ways, etc.
Every major operating system comes with a telnet application. If your telnet
application is unsatisfactory, among the others you may want to try out one of
the following:
- TeraTerm, a free (and originally open-source) telnet and ssh for Windows,
available at:
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002416/teraterm.html
http://www.ayera.com/teraterm/
- PuTTY, another free open-source Win32 telnet and ssh client:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
If you have doubts as to whether your telnet application provides only normal
functionality, please contact a V+ for an explanation.
To compensate for the loss of legitimate client functionality, the following
features will soon be implemented in MUME:
- Variables (in a limited number of slots)
- The ability to use variables in commands and aliases
- The ability to submit multiple commands separated by semi-colons at once
(of course, the game will execute each of them after the appropriate delay)
- Possibly more
We hope that this measure will let us make MUME a better place by banning
certain kinds of abuse and making it easier for people to compete with each
other even if they do not have access to a well-programmed MUD client.
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