2017-05-07 00:07:39 (edited by Caccio72 2017-05-08 00:19:23)

Greetings!

I have read, actually listened to a few audio-books of Lovecraft's Discworld lately, which inspired me to start playing the Discworld MUD.
I do find it very interesting, mostly due its realism, (meaning the resemblance to Lovecraft's books), diversity, and huge, active, ever-changing world, plus the over 60 regular players online, who provide lots of opportunities of both IC, and OOC interactions. (inside the game, or in its chatrooms)

However, I need some quite urgent assistence regarding the MUD!

As 1st, in such a vast game-world, orientation is pretty hard for me, especially without maps of towns, actually cities, which could direct me to special places, shops, stores, buildings, etc.
There was such a helpful map in the tutorial area, which served me just fine, and I do hope, that there are such maps for every town/city in the game, which can be bought somewhere inside each of them...but where???
I am hopelessly wandering around in Ankh-Morpork atm, (according the tutorial it's the largest city, most suitable for newbies to start in), keep searching for the proper shop or store, which actually sells the city-map...and since the city is indeed huge, I do need some clues or directions to finally find it!
Normally I will need to find some job-center type place as next, to start earning some money, since I have (foolishly) died due a hasty action,, and lost all my starting cash after it...but that comes only secondary, and once I have the city-map, it probably won't be a too hard task.
In the game, there is a so called "helpful street urchin" NPC, which is supposed to help players finding directions to certain, more important places, but despite strictly following the help instructions regarding it, I just cannot make it telling me a single direction to any place...at least so far.
I noticed, that the "speedwalk" feature is included both in the Discworld MUD, and my VIP client v2.0 as well, so telling me its exact command, and explaining how it actually works, would also be very helpful, since it would spare much time wasted by randomly wandering around, when searching for certain, targeted places in those huge cities.

Furthermore, a working soundpack for the MUD would also be nice, those are always of great importance to me when playing MUDs, in order to make them feel much more "alive and kicking".
I did find a wiki-result, and even a forum-topic, with a few posts regarding the matter, it's about the newest versions of certain TTS Discworld soundpack for VIP client, which would suit me just fine...it's just that the links mentioned there result in a "404 error", and those were the only ones I could find so far.

So fellow Discworld players, I know some of You are visiting this forum, (thanks to my topic started about our top 5 MUDs), PLEASE provide me some support, or assistence regarding my above mentioned problems!
The name of my character in the MUD is: Ishtarr
(in case You prefer assisting me within the game itself)


My best regards,
Caccio
from Hungary

2017-05-07 11:29:39 (edited by snow 2017-05-07 11:32:05)

just don't what to do,just change to a not human thing.by my bad english,i can not understand what's this .and i lost my started cash too.the map too large,so,i can not find how to work.

2017-05-07 12:12:12

Well as far as directions go, the good news is the diskworld mud wiki used to have a very good set of accessible text directions which let you know the layout of Ankh Morpork and other the major cities.
The bad news is when I go to https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/Accessibility where it used to be, I get "this page cannot be displayed" which is obviously not so helpful.

As for where to go, find jobs, activities to do  etc, to be honest that was why I gave up with the game.
The tutorial was great, then when I got to ankh morpork I found myself wandering around with literally nothing to do accept slay random wild life  and scavenge the streets.
I asksed other players and all they said was "yes it's hard as a newbie" I tried the quests command but the list it gave was so general it was of no use at all, especially since I liked the look of crafting and other activities in the game.

I was also disappointed with npcs in the game. I have read literally all the diskworld books, many several times (especially because there was a point that they were some of the only fantasy the Rnib audio library here in the Uk had). I loved the idea of being able to wander around diskworld and see some of my favourite characters, however what I got was just plane disappointing, since it seemed all the npcs, even colourful ones like corporal  knobs or moist von lipwig were impossible to interact with.
I couldn't talk to them, do quests for them, join them in activities etc.

All in all I can say I was not impressed with diskworld mud over all.
A lot of promise,  nothing delivered, and players who, while not exactly rude were almost categorically unhelpful.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-08 00:34:45 (edited by Caccio72 2017-05-08 06:45:26)

Well, the mentioned link is working just fine for me, and has hopefully provided me with enough important informations, to give the MUD an another try, so thanks a lot!

However, I would still be greatful for some instructions, or an explanation about how the "speedwalk" command works in VIP client v2, and an eventual link to a soundpack for Discworld MUD as well!

Edit:
True, the MUD definitely has its downsides, like the quite large, but indeed not too helpful community, and the so called "steep learning curve", (especially for us blind players), but I still starting to like it, mostly due its wide limit of imagination, which features many strange, original, often totally unexpected commands and activities, like in following examples:
1, I died, mostly due my own foolishness, and started wandering around Ankh-Morpork city as a ghost.
Just out of sheer fun, (while being sure such a command will by no means work), I tried out haunting players I ran into: And you know what? The command did actually work, not only I could "ghost around" haunting people on my way, but was informed, that I can even get rewarded for it with some bonus or boost! (forgot the exact name of the benefit by now)
2. After I logged in next time, 36 hours later, and got brought back to life, all my equipment and money was normally lost, so I just thought of a funny thing: I shall just sit down to the stairs of the starting bar, and start begging, since I did need the cash to buy food urgently, in order to avoid starvation until I find the job-center, and finally start working "for a living"..
Normally, I didn't even hope it will work...but 1st, I could indeed sit down to the stairs, (without actually listening the room description), and I could indeed use the "beg" command, adding such a convincing plea to it, that in only 15 minutes of time, I did get some cash even from 2 players passing by!

These examples also demonstrate, how large number of active players, resulting in frequent IC interactions, can often make an online-game much more fun to play.

2017-05-08 06:48:26

Ah, glad the accessibility link is back, I tried yesterday and couldn't get to it through the wiki since I kept getting errors, so used google and got the same errors  which wasn't good.

Let me know if you get more into the game. It did strike me as having a lot of promise but again having no way to get into things and the community being actively unhelpful on where to actually do! anything in the game was pretty offputting, quite aside from the uninteractable npcs.

Death is cool though, I do remember that especially the way he's actually written.

With the good information on the accessibility wiki and the high standard of writing I did want to give the game a db page, but without actually being able to get anywhere or start any activities or really know what to do in the game I couldn't say much.

As to speedwalks, if I remember rightly basically speedwalks in vip just auto paste a lot of directions as you walk, you create them and save them.
to be honest I never actually use them myself, though I have used in built navigation commands in other games like aardwolf and avalon.

I'll say personally I didn't specifically have problems finding my way around ankh morpork since between the explanation on the wiki and the fact that all the rooms with streets are named so you can know what street goes off where, I found I could always know where I was provided I remembered where I'd been, then again, since I couldn't find anything to do, I equally couldn't find anywhere I needed to go, so it is entirely possible the situation might  become more difficult had I actually had to find! anything in the city big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-08 14:48:56 (edited by Caccio72 2017-05-08 22:10:54)

Well I am glad I made you interested in Discworld again Dark, by using the screen-reader friendly settings, offered at the very start of the tutorial, orientation is the only major issue for me, especially in huge cities like Ankh-Morpork.

What I like the most about that MUD so far, are its previously mentioned, original, ever-changing events, where "life goes on", interesting things keep happening everywhere, so you can never get bored, even when you merely stand, or sit idle in the same room, actions keep happening around you, and it's only up to you, wether you react to them, in which way, or just ignore them totally.
This is making the game interesting not only while performing an activity, but even while randomly wandering around in a city.
Furthermore, if we pay more thorough attention to room descriptions, along with thee objects which can be found in them, meaning especially those we spot lying on the ground, we can just "aquire", that is claim lots of, often pretty useful stuff, left behind by other players, either due their carelessness, rush, or their death even.
So it is often worth to look carefully around in rooms, a careful enough survey can pay out quite nicely, which also adds an additional motivation for players, especially vip gamers using screen-readers.

As for the accessability Wiki-page about the MUD, quite strangely, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, (due some updates or maintainence I presume), but its link to that certain TTS soundpack is of no use, since the only download link it contains, always results in a "404 error", totally regardless of the wiki-page functioning or not at that moment.
Or maybe I have to be registered, and logged in in order to be allowed accessing it???

2017-05-08 17:10:11

Hmm, I don't know about the soundpack, I never heard there was one for diskworld.

if you ever find some actual activities or dare I say it quest sand a way to go and do them let me know.
I love exploring, especially in richly described environments, but when that is literally all! there is to do in a game without any activity start, goal to find or hell even just ability to do more besides wander, scavenge and fight random wildlife I find the game grows rather frustrating after a while since I just feel like I@m not part of the game or impacting on the world.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-08 22:23:24 (edited by Caccio72 2017-05-09 04:16:29)

Exactly due the above mentioned, ever-changing enviroment of the MUD, wich I can always influence with my chosen actions, reactions, or even with the lack of them, I do feel myself an active part of the game, even when not performing any specific activity.
But sure, as we have determined by now, the 2 of us have slightly different taste and expectations regarding games, so I will definitely let you know, when I find out more about the list, and types of available activities in Discworld!

Oh yeah, here is the link to the forum topic regarding that, accordingly stable and working TTS soundpack for Discworld MUD, and for VIP client v2 even, but contains no working links to download it from:
https://sites.google.com/site/blindjame … 61released

Edit:
And you can find the list of jobs, along with their short descriptions, sorted by their difficulty here:
https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/Ankh-Morpork_Job_Market

2017-05-09 06:32:27

Explore away.  DIscworld's quests are hidden all over the place.  try buying a tin of beer a couple west, then north, then east from the mended drum and shaking it up.

DIscworld quests are things you stumble on by walking around, looking at things and an ocational hint, but most of them are stumbled on.  There's a wiki link of spoilers/quest descriptions on the discworld wiki somewhere.

2017-05-09 12:50:15

In diskworld, it wasn't specifically the lack of quests, as just the fact that I felt like I was getting no where with no activities, I was basically just wandering around at random looking at things with very little to do.

The writing was lovely, but if I want to just read lovely writing in a world I can't interact with I'll go and read a book big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-09 17:17:40 (edited by Caccio72 2017-05-11 00:13:34)

There are activities in Discworld too, check the "Edit" addition in my previous post, I linked them all there.
The actual problem with those activities is, at least for me, whose orientation sucks even in real life, (always sucked in my sighted period too), that I run out of time limit set for some of the activities, due being unable to find my destination in the city on time, even when using that map-help tool for pathfinding, which is included in the accessability Wiki page.
This however shouldn't be such a serious problem for You guys, or at least the most of You, who can, or have learned to find your way much better around in real life, and probably in games as well.

Btw, the job-center, or job-market, whatever, is on God street, which is quite close to the south from the Mended Drum bar, so even I could find it relatively easily, unlike the King street, which I still keep searching for, in order to buy a pet for myself there.
According to that accessable destination-finder map, it is supposed to be not too far from the center to the north, (I do hope that the actual center of that map is The Mended Drum, after all that's where all new players start in Ankh-Morpork), but even after many hours of searching, and locating/findingdozens of streets, still haven't managed to reach, or even to spot it so far!

Edit:
Managed to finally find King's Way, and order a cat-pet for myself, so that matter is solved.
What still bothers me is that soundpack, which I can find no way to download, I really wish someone could assist me regarding it!