when i played muds i was use jmc with small utility i written myself for sounds and tts. however, now jmc supports active scripting, so you can write your scripts to play sounds etc. another gread mud client is mmc, who knows perl - it is really better solution.

I prefer telnet or monkey term.

For a step up from GMud, which I used myself for some time, I would have two suggestions since I found the configuration of Monkeyterm quite awkward to work out... mostly because I couldn't be bothered to learn it when I can use other clients which have the options more immediately apparent.

MushClient can work quite well, its one major limit being it can only play one sound at once without tweaking. It is however free and is available from www.mushclient.com, and the plugins from www.randylaptop.com are highly recommended. I actually added this to the game list on the main ag.net site so you can also look there for more precise links for the randylaptop scripts.

Easier to use right away is the new VIP Mud from GMA at www.gmagames.com, with not just multiple sounds support but the ability to play them in stereo. It will work straight away with several speech systems, or sapi built into windows if you don't have one of the ones it directly supports. It isn't quite as flexible but is a little more user friendly, though after the first 30 days expire you can only use it for 2 hours at a time unless you pay for it or use it on Valhalla mud.

I would really, really not recommend anyone to use telnet even an experienced mudder. Even GMud is more advanced than that, and I found a lot easier to handle.

Hope that helps.

Glad to help. You do get 30 days for free, but as you say indeed VIP mud does only last two hours after that. It is probably the easiest to transition to and has better built in sound to Mush Client or probably most other clients out there since you can position the sounds in the stereo field. Monkey term I found a bit of a mess and it is out of development, but mush client is a mainstream client which is still being supported at least.

Let us know how it goes.

What's wrong with telnet?

Personally I find it difficult to correct typos in telnet too, or if a situation changes you can't do a shift plus home and delete the whole input line at once.

As to keeping up, it depends on the mud in question. Some muds you'll want to have certain not very useful types of output hidden, which VIP mush and monkeyterm can handle. Other muds it might just be the mud runs too fast for us to effectively keep up, which is more an issue that the mud isn't really practical for us rather than a client issue.

It can sometimes take a little work to despam a mud, but you only have to do it once.

what do you mean for saying it is not installed correctly? what error message do you see?

hi, i not completely understood, do you have an system message box  with the error (e.g. some library not found) or inside the client last line is #can not load file ... ? i have downloaded jmc from that link, and started it from archive succesfully. however, try to create batch file in folder with jmc and put following commands in it:
%WinDir%\system\regsvr32.exe ttcoreex.dll
%WinDir%\system32\regsvr32.exe ttcoreex.dll
after run the batch file, and press  "yes" and "ok" buttons in appearing dialogs. try now to run jmc.exe

Have you tried the easy script builder option in VIP mud?

Hello all.  Okay, I had major success with VIP today!!!  I was just putting in the trigger text wrong, so now I am looking forward to at least, giving VIP a really good go.  I will keep you all up to date how I get on with it though.  I also have kept the messages about JMC and Mush as well, so thank you all for that.
Kirstan.

Hello again.  Funnily enough, I have now reconsidered everything.  VIP is too much work for me, to get simple things done, so I am not going to try with it any more.  I will look at some of the other suggested clients, but right now, it looks like I am sticking to good old Gmud.  Has anyone any tips for me on how to run Gmud a bit better perhaps?  I know there are scripts somewhere, but have never run them and am not sure how to really  do that anyhow?
Thanks a heap.
Kirstan.

Thank you so much for suggesting it.  I definitely will try it out, but right now am just not trying anything new for a day or two.  I feel as though my brain needs a huge break after trying to get round VIP!  Thanks though, will definitely let you know what I think of Mush Client when I download it.
Kirstan.