2012-06-21 04:32:05

Hello.   I am an admin for a mud game called Aardwolf.  We have several players who are VI and have taken the time to create helpfiles specifically for VI players.  One of our clans created a map database of all of our areas that makes the map features readable through a screen reader.

We are an old mud and have been around since 1996.  We average around 374 players most days from all over the world.  Recently, a VI player of our suggested we contact you to let you know some of our VI features. It is my understanding that some VI players like to use a client called VIP but we also have our client if someone just wants to try it. 

We welcome all new players. We have a full time staff of helpers and advisors who assist players through their first 200 levels.  I honestly don't know who is VI and who is not, unless someone tells me so.  If anyone wants to give us a try, more information can be found at [http://www.aardwolf.com]

My admin or immortal name on the game is Justme.  Feel free to reach out and say hello.

2012-06-21 08:03:19

I have to say this is a good mud especially for those who really like hack and slash. They have a pretty large playerbase, although people tend to leave you alone, I always found it hard to meet people there. In addition, you can only group with people up to fifteen levels lower or higher than yourself. You can remort at level 201, and you can do that seven times, getting all the skills and spells from every class, while your primary is still the most powerful. Once you hit your seventh remort you can tier which means you can wear/wield higher level equipment at lower levels, I think at tier 1 it's a ten level differential. They have automated quests from questmasters and area goals for those who like puzzles.

their client by the way is a form of mushclient so it does work with screen readers, and you can get plugins to do diffferent things (i.e. spell you up, quaf potions, etc). Basically, there are very few areas where you even need to group, so it's more for the solo players. they do update pretty often.

I enjoied playing for a while, it got repetitive though and I got b ored. I still probably might pop in every so often, do a few quests, see what's new and whatnot, if you're new to mudding or like solo play it's probably a good choice.

thanks,
Michael

2012-06-21 08:34:47

Hi.
Sounds interesting that the games mud client does work with screenreaders. I'm missing an accessible mud client for Mac.
The very huge leveling system sounds great, but I would like to know more about the quests:
What kind of quests are there in the mud? Are they time based? Does quests unlocks anything, maybe other quests like in a storyline?

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2012-06-21 10:22:29

Hi justme and welcome.

I've actually heard about ardwolf before from various people, so it's good you joined the forum.

As a couple of questions on the access front, are there any low spam or vi set commands? does the mushclient ardwolf pack come with the mush plugins for jfw, sapi etc or do you need to install them? (a sapi one would be particularly useful for myself).

As to areas, I'm also interested in the quests and exploration side of things, being very much a solo player who doesn't really go in for grouping by preference.

I'll check out the website and quite likely the mud and let you know.

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.)

2012-06-21 13:52:17

how do i make nvda work with it? i put in the plugins from mushZ but cant get nvda to talk or use the output. any help will be apretiated

:D happy to help out with games and the like... maybe :D

2012-06-21 16:52:17

Hi - In regards to low VI settings, I asked some of our VI players for tips.  So from the people who know it best, here are a few tips from some of our current VI players.

- Screenreaders are happiest when they can read in black and white, not color.

- Running with punctuation off in your screenreader makes a world of difference so you don't hear "dash dash dash" or "equals equals equals" in MUD output.

- Reduce spam immediately! Read 'help spamreduce' file. This includes turning off damage spam by typing nospam, battlespam, and groupspam.

- Use 'brief 1' to set your character to only read descriptions when first entering a new room rather than every time you enter a room.

- Keep channels to a minimum. Keep newbie and question channels on. The rest are nice, but not necessary. Turn them on as you get used to the MUD.

- Make sure you are using Aardwolf's tell catching system- type 'catchtell' to turn it on. It will save your tells and allow you to replay them at your leisure rather than displaying them right away.

- When in a room, use the glance command to see quick information about the room without having to read the entire room description again. More information can be found in 'help glance'.

- Channels have a history. You can replay what you may have missed on a channel by typing channelname dash h. If you want to limit it further, put a number like 5 or 10 after the h to only replay the last 5 or 10 things said on that channel.

- Turn off automap and maprun. It's a lot of extra info that only confuses screen readers.

- Use audio Triggers. You will quickly learn (and can ask) what output is used when something happens. For example, you can set an audio trigger on the message that you are able to quest again, or when double experience starts.

- Once comfortable with Aardwolf and your client, tags can be very useful in filtering out only the data you want. The helpfile 'help tags' has more information.

If you have a suggestion we might have missed, don't hesitate to tell a Helper or post a note to Imm on the personal board, and we'll gladly add it here and on the in game helps.


All VI Helpfiles can be found on our wiki which is our email address/ wiki

I also spoke with the creator (Lasher) last night.  He is happy to make coding changes if needed to make the game more accessible to VI players as well as to the client.  We just need to know what those changes would be.

I will check on jfw, sapi, nvda information - I am not techie enough to answer it but I know a few people who may be able to answer.

2012-06-21 17:00:45

In regards to questing and theme -

Most of our players are OOC - out of character.  I know some people look for role playing but it just never took off with our player base.  If you are looking for a mud that is heavily thematic, we might not be the best choice. 

Lasher designed our academy as a goal.  We are up to 138 goals in areas which are option for people to do.  They are like area puzzles - for example, in Olde Carnivale, you have to join the crew of the Carnivale and run through steps to play the game for an additional prize.  It can be fun but if you are not into long puzzles, it can also be easily skipped.  My mortal player has done the academy and that's it.  And that is fine.

Quests are done every thirty minutes or so.  A quest is to kill a mob in specific room in a specific area.  You earn quest points which can be used to buy more elite equipment.

So what do you do between the 30 minutes?  Hack, slash, and level.  You can add the quest timer to your prompt if you would like (help prompt in game) and then use the mobdeaths command (help mobdeaths in game) to find what other people are killing in your level range.

For your first remort, you have access to helpers and other new players on the newbie channel.  After your first remort, there is a Boot Camp clan you can join, or hopefully, you will have found other players on the newbie channel to "friend" and group up with.   Different clans have different level requirements - some of them are thematic and stick to their theme.  Watchmen are known to always help others.  Daoine sees themselves as faeries and they like to play jokes.  Gaardian considers themselves to be investigative reporters.  Boot camp was designed as a clan to give new players a chance of getting to experience clan life.

I hope that information helps.  I will follow up on the techie questions and report back this evening. 

Thank you for your interest and time.

Justme

2012-06-21 18:26:45

you know, i've finally! got the summer free, so intend to get back to this one at some point, however i'm currently concentrating on finally becoming a commando with my noghrie character on another game and i don't want to restart my character again due to forgetting where i progressed to and therefore lose motivation.
although, aardwolf would definitely break the monotony, so i'll definitely check in.

2012-06-21 19:04:22

Could you perhaps provide a quick list of classes that are in the game? Thanks.

2012-06-21 20:15:13

I used to play Aardwolf a lot, and I still have some friends who do.  However, I eventually left for a number of reasons.  I'll start with the good stuff on Aardwolf.  The world is large, and new areas open often.  I didn't find any stock areas on Aardwolf, and most of the room descriptions are well written.  When you're levelling, you always have something to do: between campaigns, quests, global quests, and goals, you always have something you're trying to achieve.  Accessibility support is top notch, especially if you're competent enough to use spelltags and GMCP.  Note that you shouldn't use vipmud on this mud, as it does not support mud client compression protocol, so you will receive penalties every time you complete a quest. 

Ok, these good things said, Aardwolf has some serious, serious problems.  First off, the goals. Some of them are interesting and fun, but the vast majority of them have solutions along the lines of: go through the hidden exit that is never described in any room of the area and you can only find out about by asking another player, say the exact right thing to three NPCs without any prompting from them, guess the verb to use the custom object, and then kill the exact right NPC to get the key to go through a door even though you have no idea what NPC is the correct one and killing the correct NPC will only result in your getting the key about 20% of the time.  When you quit, of course, all of your keys are lost. But unfortunately, the autoquests can require you to go through this procedure easily 30 or 40 times while you're trying to gather quest points.  I am a lover of interactive fiction and Infocom text adventures, so it isn't that I'm afraid of puzzles, or particularly bad at solving them.  It's that many area builders seem to want to make area goals that are extremely hard to solve, and seem proud of the fact that players have inordinate difficulty with them.  While chasing after difficulty, it feels like all attention to appropriate levels of hinting, fair descriptions, alternate commands (you have to enter hum, not sing, typing read flames doesn't work to read the message in the flames, only read message does, and changing this would apparently make things too easy), and fun, has been lost.  If you complain about this, or ask for public solutions to goals, you will be flamed. Hard.  If you ask for directions, you will be told to consult maps. Unfortunately, the maps that are accessible are only a tiny fraction of the area maps available.  If you point this out, you will also be flamed.  Sharing solutions to goals publicly is against the Aardwolf rules, and Lasher will request any website with public information about goals be taken down. What this means in practice is that all clans have private websites where they post goal walkthroughs.  Completing the goals gives an advantage of faster travel that is so huge, in regular and global quests, that these secret goal solutions are heavily protected, and used to keep new players from advancing or having the same ability to win global quests as clan players.  I suspect this is why the entrenched playerbase will resist anything at all that could risk making goals fair, as they don't want to lose the massive advantage they have from their secret walkthroughs. 

If you do want to play on aardwolf, you should contact helpful players like rejbear and TwinkleTwinkle, if either of them are still around.  They have access to much of the information you will need, and befriending them and getting a hand up is the only way you will be able to play on an equal playing field with established players. 

Added to this problem, at least when I was actively playing a year or so ago, Aardwolf had huge class balance problems.  I believe work was progressing towards fixing some of these issues, but it was causing massive amounts of player whining, and lots of skill changes.  Also, unless you're a t3 or so, you can probably forget about getting any wins in the pk arena. The fact that you're a new player means you will be so overpowered it isn't even worth trying.  I do know admins were aware of the balance problems though, so perhaps something has been done since I was on. 

Lastly, Aardwolf doesn't seem to have anything like the bot thwacker on Alter Aeon, or if they do, it doesn't seem to work.  When global quests are announced, scripted players, using a combination of grey area scripts, portals they got from following secret goal walkthroughs, NPC databases, and customized fastwalks, will have won the global quest before you've even found the first target, sometimes before you've even finished reading the list of targets required.  This is another area where, as a new player, you might as well not even bother. 

Please don't take me wrong. I want to love Aardwolf, I really, really do!  A lot of players, perhaps even the majority, are nice people.  Lasher is a friendly, approachable mud admin, and I've enjoyed all of the few conversations I've ever had with him.  But either he doesn't see the problems I pointed out above as problems, or his vision of Aardwolf and what I want from a mud are not well aligned.  So, after six or so months of playing, I got busy with real life, and then I never came back to Aardwolf, as the frustration was just too much.  I found I would start an Aardwolf session having fun, and end my session frustrated and stressed out, with strong feelings that the goal I had just solved by asking was unfair, or that I had just done something where I had no chance of success, so what was the point.  But that may be just me.  If you have a higher frustration threshold, and a thicker skin, than I do, there is a lot of fun to be found on Aardwolf.

As an aside to an already massive post, I've recently been casually mudding on Alter Aeon again.  At least on the newbie Islands, this mud gets everything right that Aardwolf gets so wrong in goals. Even when I get stumped by a goal on Alter Aeon and have to ask for help, my reaction is generally "Oh, of course! I should have thought of that!"  After getting a solution to a goal on Aardwolf, my reaction is almost always "How in the hell was I ever supposed to have any chance of figuring that out?"

2012-06-21 22:12:35

That pretty well somes Aardwolf up. Let's see if I can remember all the classes. they are, psionicist, mage, cleric, thief, ranger, warrior, and druid? I forget if there are any others. also, you can subclass in your primary class which gives you a couple additional spells/skills.

I do have to say that Fastfinge is right on about the goals, I almost stopped doing them because trying to figure them out was almost impossible, and when you do find out how to do them it's like, "Huh? How does that work?" that being said, if you like hack and slash it's a good mud.

thanks,
Michael

2012-06-21 22:23:53

The seven classes and brief descriptions are below.

Mage     : High powered spellcasting class. Many offensive spells but weak  in unarmed and weapon based combat.
Warrior  : Pure fighting machine. Warriors thrive on combat but cannot master the subtlety of thieves or the magical talents of mages.
Thief    : Masters of poison and treachery the thieves are a secretive class. The thieves' mastery of darker magics makes them a deadly enemy.
Ranger   : The protectors of the realm. Excellent fighters that can also draw magical powers from the forces of nature.
Psi      : Mystical spellcasting class about which little is known. A psionicist's magical ability comes from within.
Paladin  : Noble warriors that pride honor and justice above all else. Skilled in combat and holy magic but completely master neither.
Cleric   : Spellcasting class more based upon defensive and healing magics.  Combat skill more effective than mages but weaker combat spells.

Thank you for all your questions and feedback.

2012-06-21 22:42:51

Hello, I am an ex-immortal from Aardwolf and a friend of Justme.  I was asked to pop in to see if I could address some of the technical concerns of connecting.  I am as of yet unfamiliar with jfw, sapi, and nvda, but I will look into them and determine what would need to be done to get them working with Mushclient.

If there's anyone who's already managed to get this working, please share your wisdom, as it will take me some time to decipher all the technical documentation to an extent where I can offer helpful information.

To add to what's already been said with regard to Aardwolf, I wanted to say that it's also quite a social mud.  While you're certainly not required to interact with others, there's a good community between clans and activities outside of the hack-and-slash that you can enjoy.  I know one of my close friends enjoyed learning how to play Texas Hold'em Poker, and she helped me code the game such that it would be VI-friendly.

There are certainly areas in the game that could use improvement in accessibility, but you'll find that the immortal staff is very open to listening to concerns, and Lasher especially wants to make Aardwolf a place where everyone can enjoy playing.

2012-06-21 22:57:52 (edited by hadi.gsf 2012-06-21 23:01:48)

hello Justme.

thanks for sparing your time and putting up a topic for this mud, and for those tips and stuff.

i should try aardwolf again and get onto it.


thank you Xantcha and Justme.

twitter: @hadirezae3
discord: Hadi

2012-06-22 08:58:29

Hi.
wow, thanks for all that information regarding this mud.
I find some of the things described in post 6 really awesome and useful, and I find some of the races which I read about just amazing! Sounds fun to be a shaddow, or any kind of weird fantasy creature with lots of spells.
Do yu have your own client for Mac? It would be awesome to have an accessible client for Mac which would make lots of gamers happy!

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2012-06-22 10:14:34

hi i like aardwolf i played a few weeks and its cool if anyone want a group and fun send me a tell my name is escunar i am lvl 6 smile

2012-06-22 16:58:26

Back when I was on Aardwolf, I took a serious look at getting the Aardwolf distribution of Mushclient to be accessible out of the box.  Unfortunately, it didn't look particularly doable.  The best solution, IMHO, is to create a different mushclient package for blind people.  The mapper works fine, if the mapper window is turned off; the window does not work for screen readers, but all of the mapper goto and similar aliases are just fine.  The spellup scripts will work, but again, the spellup window needs to be turned off.  If you want an accessible aardwolf distribution of mushclient, a brief overview of the steps to be taken are as follows:

1.  Configure a stock mushclient world with the Aardwolf connection info.  Set mushclient to print a new line when it receives a telnet goahead. Other than that, no special settings are needed in the mushclient world.

2.  Add the plugin to cause mushclient to send text to screen readers. You can get it at:
http://allinaccess.com/mc/mushReader.zip
Place the included dll files in the main mushclient folder, and the plugin in worlds\plugins.  Once the plugin has been added to the Aardwolf world created in step 1, it does not require any more configuration to begin reading incoming text.

3.  Disable line info, as this causes problems with some screen readers. You can do that by adding the following plugin to the Aardwolf world:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18413495/disable_line_info.xml

4.  Add the Aardwolf GMCP plugins, and set up the mapper. Make sure the mapper is configured not to show a graphical map window by default.

5.  Add the output review plugins to the Aardwolf world.  These plugins allow screen readers to easily review previous Aardwolf output.  The first one is output functions, and it allows screen readers to read the last 1 through 10 lines of output, read through the output by line, log snapshots of mud output to a notepad window, and keep a realtime output log in a notepad window.  You can grab it from:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18413495/output_functions.xml
The second one is called channel history.  It provides a quick method for blind people to review categorized portions of output, in the same way sighted players sort different types of output into different windows. The documentation for the plugin is as follows:
<blockquote>
The only alias you should need is history_add. Its syntax is:
history_add category=message
Accelerator keys:
alt+right and alt+left = next and previous category
shift+alt+right and left move category.
alt+delete delete a category.
alt+1 through alt+0 - read message 1 through 10. pressing
one of these keys twice within 0.5 seconds will copy the message to the clipboard, and 3 times will paste it into the command window.
</blockquote>
You can get it from:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18413495/channel_history.xml

6.  Using GMCP, as documented at:
http://www.aardwolf.com/wiki/index.php/Clients/GMCP
and the history_add alias provided by channel_history, sort all of the comm.channels messages into appropriate categories.  A category for comm.quest messages should probably also be used. 

7.  Modify any spellup scripts and autoquaffers to output messages in appropriate categories, also via the history_add alias.  Then modify these scripts not to create a separate window. 

8.  Create a plugin that makes available aliases to output the contents of all of the variables provided by the char.* modules.  For example, typing hp should output the contents of char.vitals.hp.  mhp could be used for char.maxstats.maxhp, and so on.  This will allow blind players to quickly query character stats, without having to have the screen reader say the entire lengthy score output, or listen to a constantly repeating prompt after every single command.  You can output this stuff with the standard mushclient print methods, and the mushreader script should automatically read it. 

Once all this has been created and packaged up, it should put blind players on a nearly equal footing with sighted counterparts.  The only remaining problem will be the hundreds of inaccessible area maps, but I don't see any solution for that. 

Those instructions are a little sketchy, as I don't play Aardwolf any longer, so I might have missed one or two things, or misstated something along the way.  However, they should be at least a place to start.  Note that I haven't discussed extra, nice to have, things like sounds.  I've just stuck to what I think would be the minimum requirements for an accessible Aardwolf client.

2012-06-22 19:26:26

Wow.

Thank you for that amazingly comprehensive post.

I'm still learning the ins and outs of programming mush plugins, but I'll see what I can do get a VI-friendly plugin set built, then I can get it placed on the site for download.

2012-06-23 20:11:18

I've been playing Aard off and on for years. I have a few chars there. and I've also been donating for quite some time too.

As everyone mentions, its a great hack and slash mud, and there's rarely a shortage for something to do.

I've found it tough to find folks I'd like to group with because my style of play is pretty different from most.
I like to pick and choose my targets, (always evil mobs) and take my time spelling up without killing mob after mob with hardly a pause. So I'm a bit slower then most. I dig the room descriptions, and enjoy the atmosphere.
If you wanna group up, and you like this style of play, send a note to Delq.
I've already remorted once, and I'm a primary ranger, now mage. Imo, killer combo!
smile

I've died a very few times, and found players really helpful with (CR) corpse retreavels.

As far as VipMud not being viable for Aardwolf, in my experience there's no reason why you can't.
I'm useing VipMud with Aardwolf just fine, I've downloaded an MCCP proxy client from the Aardwolf site.
I found it on the mud resources \ mud client page. the link for the windows version followes.
http://www.aardwolf.com/download/mccp_pc.zip

Point this zip files so it will extract into your VipMud folder on your C drive. Providing that's where vip is installed.
It'll create a folder in your VipMud directory called MCCPCompression.
Run the Mcclient.exe file, and set up Aardwolf's info.
Aardwolf hoast:
aardmud.org
Port 4010

Heh, at least I'm pretty sure that's the port.

It helps to create a shortcut of Mcclient.exe on your desktop because you'll need to run this before opening up VipMud. Once the MCCP proxy is running, open VipMud and connect to Aardwolf.

You get a couple of bonus quest points every time you complete a quest because you're running mccp compression.
Believe me, it really adds up. Plus, you're helping the mud to run quicker or more streamlined. lol I'm not sure of the techy details.

HTh

2012-06-25 15:35:12

well, i'm starting over, as i have no idea what to do at the moment due to being away for so long. smile

2012-07-01 22:04:56

Ok I need some help.
When I enter mush client I go to quick connect, type the information in the required fields, then hit space to connect. It says connecting. Then I can't read anything on the screen I don't know how to create a new character, or anything. Jaws cursor will read some stuff, but it says a bunch of numbers and dashes in between. Any help on connecting or knowing when I'm connected pluss creating a character would be great thanks

Audio game king

2012-07-02 06:12:53

@wp85:
Do you want help with creating a character only for Mush client? Or for Aardwolf also.

I'm currently using VipMud, and I'm super happy with it. I realize vip is a client you have to purchase, but to each their own. I just never used mush before. and changing now would be a pain. lol

@Dan_C:
I was away from Aard for a while myself Dan. But it didn't take long at all to get back where I left off. I looked over my alias from my AardAlias set file. and was off and running.
smile

2012-07-02 09:34:37

I need help with two things:
1 knowing when I've successfully connected to the mud, since nothing seems to be anounced when I'm connected. Sure I can sort of use the Jaws cursor, but if their's an easier way I'll take it.
Second I need help with what to click on in order to create a new character for Aardwolf since again, Jaws doesn't seem to anounce it unless I use the Jaws cursor. Even then the Jaws cursor is tricky since when I arrow down I get a bunch of numbers and stuff before any text.

Audio game king

2012-07-02 13:00:27

WP85, have you tried using vipmud to connect? I know that vipmud isn't free, but it is exstreamly easy to set up. Of corse mush has more features take a little more to set up. As for knowing what to click on to create a new char, you don't click on anything. This maybe different in Aardwolf, but just about every mud I have played, you type new to create a new char. Most of, if not all, of the muds talked about on the form will be text based. This means that you type in a command and the char you are controling in the game does what you typed in. As for knowing when you are connected, text will scroll across the screen. It will usually be an interduction or something... Maybe I should try this mud out? HTH.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2012-07-02 13:47:22

ahoy there.
@wp85 give a look to post 17,and you should be good to go.
I've tryed this one before,but as with all the other muds,I have problems with directions.anything which gives one a text map is awsome,which unfortunatly few muds have.
but then again, I may give this a go a bit later.
grryf.

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
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