- the binaries for the AmigaMUD server and utilities:
MUD-Binaries.zip (199K)
- the AmigaMUD database files for the standard scenario:
DataBase.zip (230K)
- the effects (sounds, images, etc.) used in that scenario:
Effects.zip (251K)
If you are curious, want to cheat, or want to try fixing problems, AmMudSrc.zip (256K) contains the AmigaMUD source to the sample scenario. Documents under the parent AmigaMUD web page will be needed to understand both AmigaMUD programming, and programming within the scenario.
First, get UAE running on your system. To do this, you will need UAE itself (on some Linux distributions it is directly available through the package manager). A simple web-search will find it for you. The emulator emulates various varieties of the Amiga computer hardware. To run anything, you need the system software (called "Kickstart", for historical reasons), along with an OS release and tools. These are available for a very small fee from the Amiga Forever website. You can also download their "Amiga Forever Essentials" app from the Android app store. That gives you the needed Kickstart ROMs and Workbench disks, which you then transfer to your Windows or Linux computer.
You will be getting UAE to emulate a hard drive for your Amiga. Pick a location on your real hard drive where you want it (you will only need a few megabytes of space). Create a folder/directory called, say, "AmigaHardDrive". Download the above ZIP archives and unpack them into that folder/directory. It should then contain folders/directories: Binaries, DataBase and Effects (and maybe "Src" if you decided to get the scenario sources).
Start UAE, and give it the location of a a Kickstart (I use the "amiga-os-300-a1200.rom" one) under the ROM tab. Then, under floppies, point DF0: to a Workbench disk (I use "amiga-os-134-workbench.adf"). Go under the Harddisks tab and tell it where your emulated hard disk is. You can give it a volume name like "HD" and a boot priority of 1. Click on "PAUSE" to let your Amiga run. When it finishes, you should see a blue screen with some icons on it. One should be "Workbench1.3", and one should be the hard disk you created.
It will likely take you a second to figure out how the mouse cursor is working. You should pay attention to the red one, not your normal system one. You can adjust the tracking by going to the edges of the emulated Amiga window. Double click on the "Workbench1.3" icon. A window should open showing you the visible contents of that floppy disk image. Double click on the "Shell" icon. A shell window should open. Make sure the Shell window is active and type:
copy df0: hd: all
where the "hd" in the above is the name you gave in UAE for your hard drive.
The copy will take a while.
When it is done, type:
endshell
to end the shell.
If you want, you can also close the other window by clicking on the close
box in the upper left corner.
Go to the UAE control panel, select the "Floppies" tab and "Eject" DF0: . Then click on "Reset". Your emulated Amiga will reboot, using the much faster hard drive. Double-click on the icon for your hard drive, and you should see the same set of drawer icons you saw before. Double-click on the "Shell" icon to start a shell. You can make the shell window bigger by dragging it to the top of the screen by click-and-holding on its title-bar, then dragging it bigger using the resize button in the lower-right corner. If you now type:
dir
in the shell window, you should see the Binaries, DataBase and Effects folders
along with a bunch of Amiga Operating System ones.
Type:
copy binaries/mud.library libs
That will install the AmigaMUD shared library into the system library
directory, so that the various AmigaMUD programs can find it.
Note that AmigaOS ignores the case on filenames, so "binaries" is the same as
"Binaries", etc.
The commands so far are needed only once, to set things up.
Commands from here on down must be given each time you want to play and have
shut down the UAE program.
If you leave UAE running, only the final command is needed to re-run the
AmigaMUD client program.
Now type:
assign amigamud: effects
That will tell the AmigaMUD client program where the various effects files
(images, sounds, etc.) are located.
The AmigaMUD programs need a larger stack than the default, so next you should
enter:
stack 25000
Now we are ready to start the AmigaMUD server.
To do that, we must go to the "DataBase" directory/folder and run it:
cd database
run /binaries/mudserv -Q
The "run" command is the AmigaOS way of saying "run this program in the
background".
The "-Q" flag tells the server to not open a status window.
We can verify that the server is running by typing:
status
which should show the server as one of the running processes.
When I do that I get three lines of output.
The final step needed is to run the full AmigaMUD client program, telling it
to contact a local server (the default):
/binaries/mud
You can run "MUD" in the background using "run" if desired.
Within the "MUD" client, note that hitting the F1 key moves the graphics window up or down, which allows you to see or hide more text. The AmigaMUD scenario is a text-based scenario with added graphics. That simply means that you must pay attention to the text window - you will see vital information there. You cannot succeed in the scenario if you only watch the graphics stuff.
When playing, the scenario sources are checking for various image files that don't exist. You will see messages about that in the text window of "MUD", and they can be annoying. You can turn them off with the Options/Effects/Quiet menu item, or with the "-q" command-line flag. To get at the menus in the "MUD" program, make sure the text window is selected, and then press and hold your right mouse button.
When you are finished a session of playing (via a menu entry, by using the "quit" or "bye" commands, or clicking on the "close box" in the top-left corner of the text window), the "MUD" client program will exit. If you will not be running the client again during this session of UAE, then you should also shut down the server program to make sure that all of the changes you have made are properly written to your emulated hard disk. That is done by:
/binaries/mudshut
or by using "status" to find the CLI number of the server and using the
AmigaOS "break" command on that number.
Give the server a couple of seconds to shut down before exiting the UAE
program - you can check using the "status" command.
If you want to continue playing later, you can leave the AmigaMUD server
running and minimize the two UAE windows.
To get back to playing, un-minimize the UAE output window and run the
AmigaMUD client program again.
You can also just leave the "MUD" client running, but note that if you are in
the town area, you may end up with a screen full of messages about Caretaker,
Postman and Packrat coming and going.
If you plan on doing much in the scenario, such as trying to solve all of the six quests, you should read the Playing.txt file. You can ignore the parts about chatting and posing, mail and bulletins, and usenet mail and news.
There doesn't seem to be a way to type the special Amiga keys into UAE, but you can still try out running multiple "MUD" clients. Get one running in the background using "run", then trigger the "Options/ScreenToBack" menu item. Your Workbench screen and Shell window should appear. Select the Shell window by clicking in it. Type the "status" command to see the CLI number of your MUD client. Type "break f <N>" where <N> is the CLI number of your "MUD" client. That should bring the "MUD" display back to the "front". If you go back to the Shell window you can run another "MUD" client, and create another character to use. That way you can sort-of test the multiplayer aspects of AmigaMUD. Unfortunately, UAE doesn't emulate an Amiga ethernet card (they were expensive and not very common), so you can't actually put your AmigaMUD server on the internet, or connect to a remote server using "MUD".
The other problem is more serious, but I have no fix for it. Sounds often do not play correctly. Web searches show that this is a common problem with UAE, especially when running on Linux. I've looked at the sound-playing code in the "MUD" client program, and don't see any uninitialized variables, bad lengths, etc. Also, sound was fine when running on real Amigas. The symptom is often sounds playing far longer than they should, and playing garbage, or even running into the wrong sound. To me as a programmer, this seems like the sound sample length/address is incorrect.