irssi plugin for accessing The Lands of Evermore

Thanks to Jonas Kramer, you can access The Lands of Evermore through irssi, though it might be a bit tedious. You can download it either from scripts.irssi.org or from local copy here.

The contents of the script describes the use, problems and how to play. It is given here for convinience:

Installing

• copy it into ~/.irssi/scripts/
• In rare cases, the Telnet-modul is missing: In that case enter
  perl -MCPAN -e 'install "Net::Telnet"'
• start irssi: irrsi
• enter /script load access_evermore.pl, often /load access_evermore.pl does it.
• switch to the newly opened window (e.g. Alt+2), follow instructions on the screen. Note: Character generation is somewhat irritating within this plugin, though possible. You might use
  telnet mud.evermore.org
  or a real client for that, if you're really confused in the menu.
• it might be that the Telnet-modul is missing,in that case enter:
  perl -MCPAN -e 'install "Net::Telnet'

Known Bugs/Issues

Evermore Introduction Dialog screens consist of an explanation and explain the choices (assigned to numbers). As lines are send to IRSSI only when telnet sends an End-of-Line, the plugin does not show the Menu prompt, which asks for the choice you made. You will miss things like:

Playing Evermore - for IRCers

First of all, similar to IRC, you have commands and messages. There are two modes:

• commands are unescaped, messages are sent using special commands (standard),
• commands are escaped, everything else is a message.

Commands are used to control your avatar, messages are to communicate with other players or non-player characters.

You do not see your avatar. Instead, you look through its eyes. The text received describes what your avatar is seeing (better think: 'what you are seeing'). Your starting point is a room. Rooms correspond to channels, thus, channel hopping is explicitely desired.To get a rough description of the room, type:

(or 'l' for short. We omit the Evermore-prompt from now.)

The output will be like this (in case you chose to be human, attention >80chars/line):

Left beside the description, you have a mini-map, but ignore it for now. First comes a summary, then the description, followed by a list of exits. From each room, you can access one or more other rooms using exits, typing

(or 'w') and similar to choose this direction. Last line gives those players and non-player characters (NPCs, or bots one would say in IRC), who are standing right beside you. In this case, it is Cassandro. (Typing 'who' gives a list of all (visible) players currently online.)

You can investigate things in more detail, e.g.

(or 'x chapel'):

The detail is dependend on how much the coder has invested (every player can become coder).

Your character can communicate and express feelings, e.g. 'say Hi' (short: ' ' Hi' (a quote)), and 'bow deep cass':

Erinn is your native tongue in this case. The computer takes care, that commands for feelings are adapted. E.g. Cassandro sees:

Note, a third player would see:

You might try 'lol', 'rotfl'. ('help soul' shows even more).

Messages said can be heard only by players beside you. If you want to send a question on the game or chat globally, you use the command

, resulting in

Note the brackets to mark it as a message on a channel (which can be switched off, btw.).

Maybe it is time now to set colour on to improve presentation of different information. Note, if you have black background, you also need to type set colour scheme black. This gives a different colour, if you see messages on a channel or some living around.

The next things you should do is to list your inventory with 'inventory', and 'examine <everthing>' you find.

If you 'read sheet', you get 100 experience points (besides of some information). You can see them with 'score stats':

As you might see in the score table, levels are formed not only from Experience points received by killing innocent rabbits, but also by

• Monster points, identifying how many different monsters you have found already,
• Prizes, which are given sparsely for deep examining areas and doing things not necessarily necessary to reach a goal, and
• 1 Quests, adventures of different sizes.

This allows to level up to a certain points, without being forced only to kill or only to quest.

Besides, in Evermore, player killing is forbidden, as we have a socially and friendly atmosphere.

Before we give some commands in a list, we shortly show, how fighting is done here. Let's assume, you have managed to find the newbie area, which is usually sort of a park (depending on your starting town, see 'help races', and check the small town maps on this site.). First, 'wear all' and 'wield all', then 'look':

Use 'estimate rat' to see, whether you have a real chance to win a fight:

Ok, it looks as we might have a chance. Note, that in the beginning, the avatar is weak, and has not developed powerful skills yet, not to speak of the poor weapons. Therefore, the rat might have a real chance, if you try to 'kill rat':

While the fight is going on, the messages are thrown on the screen, and soon you will develop a sense for action... especially, when you see your life points going down. You relax faster, if you eat and drink. Now, 'examine corpse':

and 'get all from corpse':

(Yes, it is possible to define aliases). Sometimes your get furs, or nothing. Furs you can sell, to buy you a beer and have a chat with some friends.

Ok, this should suffice for the very first steps. Do not hesitate to ask on the global channel, if you have questions, using 'chat newbie How can I do this and that...'. However, hints for quests, of course, are not topic of such channels.

Finally, here some of the most interesting commands for the beginning:

• help, help basics, help professions, help score, help trader
  • Help system, sort of man pages, with lots of information about how to play and how certain things work.
• score, score skills, score health, score equipment, score colour, ...
  • Several kinds of information. Note, that the skills are just the basic set. You will learn more depending on race, profession and level. Skills increase by doing.
• inventory, i
  • shows your inventory (you might try 'read sheet', 'wear all')
• n, s, w, enter, etc.
  • Move around to different rooms.
• who, say 'msg', tell Cassandro 'msg', chat 'msg'
  • shows available players, says something to the room, long distance-tell, global chat-channel message
• finger 'name'
  • gives some extra information about some player
• alias 'shortcut' 'long version'
  • defines a shortcut to be used instead of a long version. Note, never use s, n, or other direction names, or you wont be able to walk around.
• me 'some emote', : 'some emote'
  • adds the emote string to your name, but remember, we have the soul, which is better!

The interesting thing is, that every place can define new actions, thus, you can find much more commands than already given in the 'help' section.

Problems playing

• It is too dark to see anything.
  
  • You probably have normal (daylight) vision, and an oil lamp in your inventory. 'light lamp' might help.
• It is much too bright to see anything.
  • You probably have infra (night) vision, and probably a blindfold in your inventory. 'wear blindfold' should help
• Could not find any help for you....
  • maybe you have mistyped the keyword or try plural/singular form.
• Nobody reacts on my 'say'ing
  • Probably, you stand alone (check with 'look'). To talk globally, use 'chat newbie msg'. Others might be away or idle, check with 'who'. Some might even work besides, in the MUD or in RL.
• Do not know how to 'cha' right now.
  • Maybe you mistyped the command?