The simplest and most common way to connect to a MUD is to use TELNET. Since TELNET is a generic Internet tool, however, it can provide only basic screen formatting and text editing. There are connection tools called “clients” (described later) that provide much neater interfaces to MUDs, but TELNET provides usable access that’s easy to learn. Depending on where you are coming from, you will have to use slightly different connection procedures: UNIX, DOS, and Windows all have slightly different TELN ET applications. If you are familiar with the telnet application of your internet service provider, simply point it to "watarts.uwaterloo.ca 7777". Otherwise, use one of the following methods to connect to VUW.

TASK 1 (a): CONNECT TO VUW MOO via UNIX TELNET

1) Login to your UNIX shell account: if you are using windows, you connect to your account with the LAN workplace application called "Host Presenter". Double click on the icon, then when it asks for "hostname", type in "watarts". You will then be presented with the WATARTS login screen. Type your userid at the "login:" prompt, and then type your password. Alternately, directly from your DOS prompt, you can type "telnet watarts" to get to the WATARTS login screen.
2) At the prompt (%), type “telnet watarts.uwaterloo.ca 7777”. You must have a space between “ca” and “7777”. All MUD addresses will have either four or five components: a series of either three or four words separated by periods, and a four digit “port number,” in this case “8888”. Sometimes your computer won’t be able to convert the words to numbers. If your TELNET can’t locate the host, you can try giving it the actual numeric address. The numeric address for VUW MOO is “129.97.42.10 77 77”. Notice that you still need the port number.

TASK 1 (b): CONNECT TO VUW MOO via DOS TELNET

1) Login to your WATSTAR account.
2) At the "n\:>" prompt, type "telnet" and hit enter.
3) Once the telnet application loads, type "ALT+A" to begin session.
4) When you see "telnet>" type "watarts.uwaterloo.ca 7777".

TIP: If you mistype even one digit in an entire MUD address, you will be sent to an unknown machine and asked to login. If you ever see: “login:” when you try to connect to a MUD, you’ve typed the address wrong. Type “CTRL- C” to end the TELNET session, and then check that you have all required parts of the address, including the port number. You might try using the numeric address instead.

Once you complete TASK 1 (a) or TASK 1 (b), your should get the following on your screen:
telnet watarts.uwaterloo.ca 7777
Trying 129.97.42.10...
Connected to watarts.uwaterloo.ca.
Escape character is '^]'.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<*> VIRTUAL CAMPUS AT UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO <*>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You have arrived at the Virtual Campus at University of Waterloo (VUW). The Interactive Forum for English 210e will be held here during the fall term.

User creation is currently disabled. Please login as guest (type 'connect guest') and send mail to Colin if you would like admission to VUW.

If you are here to learn about the VUW project, please read the pamphlet in the first room after you connect. To connect, type 'connect' followed by the name of your user, followed by your password (eg. 'connect Chris mypassword'). For a list of login commands type '?'

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

TASK 2: ENTER VUW

You are now at the VUW site, but you are still not connected to the MOO. You are only looking at what is called the “welcome page”.Though this may be the first time you are visiting VUW, if you are a student of English 210e, your account is ready and waiting for you to connect. Your user name is YOUR LAST NAME. Your password is your STUDENT ID NUMBER. Below you'll find what one student sees when they connect. Your display will be similar, but of course you have your own room in your own house in your own area of the MOO. To connect you type "connect" followed by your name, followed by your password. In this case, the name of the student connecting is Jeremy Auger, and his student id number is 94233890. His user name is, hence, "Auger". His password is "94233890". To enter VUW, then, he types "connect Auger 94233890".

IMPORTANT NOTE: In several cases, more than one student has the same last name. These students have special user names which combine their initials with their last name. In the case above, if there were also a Tim Auger, Jeremy's user name would be "J._Auger", and Tim's would be "T._Auger". Both the period and the underscore ("_") are required.

Below is a demonstration of what Jeremy Auger would see on connecting to VUW:

connect Jeremy_Auger 94233890
*** Connected ***
______< Jeremy Auger's Room >_______________
A comfortable if small and rather sparse room. Apparently, its owner hasn't had the time to do much in the way of interior decoration. A white framed window provides a view to the west and a white door leads out to the east.
There's a simple single bed against the west wall.

---Contents: Objects and People---
You see VUW Student Bulletin Board here.

---Available Exits---
to Residence Hallway
Last connected Thu Jul 13 01:58:35 1995 EDT from watarts.uwaterloo.ca
There is new news. Type `news' to read all news or `news new' to read just new news.

Your room will be similar to the one above, and will be located in a student house in the off-campus section of VUW. The student housing area provides you with a more informal setting for less course-related conversations (should you choose to have th em). The main building on campus, Hagey Hall, is intended for more serious course-related interaction.

TIP: Up until this point, everything has probably looked pretty smooth and coherent. However, you’re in now: DO NOT PANIC! Things will scroll by before you can read them; commands may get mixed up with other text; lines ma y be truncated. You can fix all this. Remain calm.

TASK 3: FIXING YOUR SCREEN DISPLAY

The online tutorial does a good job of teaching you to adjust your screen display. To take it, type "@tutorial" once you're on VUW MOO. However, for a general guide to fixing your display, follow these steps. Note that your specific set up may require slightly different parameters. The following are, however, fairly typical.
1) Type “@linelength 75”. This prevents lines from getting cut off.
2) Type “@wrap on”. This enables word wrapping.
3) Type “@pagelength 22”. This will prevent text from scrolling by before you can read it. There’s a catch, however. You will need to type “@more” every time the scrolling pauses. The “@more” command will bring up the next page of text.
4) Type "@more on". WARNING: This enables the MOO's automatic page pausing, which REQUIRES that you type "@more" every time the page pauses. In some cases this can be annoying, and in others unnecessary. Type "@more off" to stop screen pausi ng.

Better connection tools than TELNET: MOO Clients

If you’ve simply had enough of the TELNET interface, you might consider getting a “client”. You’ll have to have a decent knowledge of the operating system you’re running on, but if you manage to set a client up, you’ll love the difference. Clients autoatically adjust your screen display, allow you to connect to several MUDs at once, and can separate your input from the MUD output, thus eliminating the jumbled look of TELNET. The following links will help you find a client. You'll have to download it and install it once you've decided which one you want to run.

The most popular UNIX client for Tiny MUDs is TinyFugue. You can learn more about setting up TinyFugue (aka TF) at the WWW site: http://www.tcp.com/hawkeye/tf.html

WINDOWS USERS will want to try these two clients:
1) MUTT
http://www.graphcomp.com/mutt/mutt.html
This one is very compact. Requires very little memory or hard disk space to run.
2) MUDWin
http://www.microserve.net:80/~server/mudwin

There are clients for nearly every operating system (including Windows, Mac, and DOS), and for nearly every type of MUD. The client FAQ will get you started on setting one up for your system. Visit: http://www.math.okstate.edu/~jds/mudfaq-p2.html

To get a free copy of nearly any client by anonymous FTP, check out: ftp://ftp.math.okstate.edu/pub/muds/clients/