More MUD Client Uses

Your MUD client is one of the greatest tools you have while playing Dartmud, or any mud for that matter. It can help you organize and sort the text in front of you and segregate what is really important. Through the use of aliases, triggers and windows we can color, manipulate and simplify what you see.

(Unless noted, this pertains to Cmud V3)

Aliases
Dartmud has a built in Alias system that works pretty well but we can use the one in Cmud for a bit more. A few things I do with my aliases are :

• Go through gates, doors, innrooms or any place where I have to open and close with keys.
• Rig wagons to beasts of burden
• Strip a corpse of everything useful
• Open and close bins
• Change combat allocations
• Wake up and sleep (stow gear and such)

In all cases it is a set of commands that must be completed sequentially. It saves on how much I type and allows some flexibility. I have one alias called "openbins" let's see how it looks below.

Alias : openbins

command list :
wear shield
retire knife
open bin 1
open bin 2 (and on to 9)
open cabinet
rem shield
hold shield in right hand

Nothing too crazy here right? It is simplifying your typing is all. Open the alias tab, enter in the alias, and type the commands you are interested in.

Of possible use is wildcards with the alias too. What if I wanted to open bins 5, 7 and 9? I could do this instead.

Alias : obins

command list:

open bin %1
open bin %2
open bin %3

I would type obins 5 7 9 and it would open whatever bins I specified.

Triggers

Most people think of a trigger as "IF task A then perform command B" and this can work. A trigger to announce improves is like this. Triggers can also help us highlight useful things, or put them into a new window entirely or allow us to ignore them.

Colors

Want to highlight an ore, an item, or a name? I use this to highlight phrases when mining, or to determine success of a spell. It's really easy to do. Simply highlight the text you are interested in, right click, and select make trigger. Now you can use the wizard, select "Color text from mud" and "Add New Step". It will change the wizard view and you can select the color that you would like.

Window

Want to know when an SZ is sent your way? I would always miss them when running through the hexes, or crafting so I set this up to capture them. It places them into a new window entirely. I highlighted the text "A voice seems to say" and in the wizard selected "Capture matched line to another window" It then asks what the window name is. Save it and you're good to go! You can get more elaborate here and sort various things into categorized windows.

Gag

Sick of listening to Ambrosius give you casting advice? Do the same as above, highlight and make a trigger of his text. Select "remove matching line from the screen." Be aware that doing this for individual works will remove the entire sentence so it is best to save this one for full lines.

Putting it together
 
You can combine some steps too. One example is that I track my improves in a separate window. If I change a variable that will impact my learning it would be nice to know it. So I add a line like this :

#window imps %ansi(white) %time changed to  %1

What is happening here?

• #window  is defining the action. 
• imps defines the window name.  
• %ansi(white) defines the text color.  
• %time will shoot out the time that the command is run 
• %1 is the thing I entered into the alias as noted above. 

Lets use the bin example above.

Alias :openbins

Command:

open bin %1
open bin %2
open bin %3
#window Bins %ansi(white) at %time I opened bins %1, %2, and %3

Now I have it organized of what I did and when in a place that might be useful. 


Check out the helpfiles in Cmud, they are pretty detailed. Build your trigger one step at a time! Get one thing to work, then move on to the next task.