Connecting to Legend

In your Explorations of this Volume, you have found the Description of this Distant Land most appealing, yet you have no Passage booked to travel to this World? Merely read below for advice and Assistance...

LegendMUD is located at mud.legendmud.org 9999.. Like all muds, it can be reached by a variety of means, all of which use the Telnet protocol. Chances are your web browser is already set up to connect to Legend. If not, if you have a modern browser you can run Legend in a window here on this very website. If you are anxious to connect, you should click on one of the two links above, and start playing! However, the staff of LegendMUD suggests that instead, you download a mud client suitable for your computer, and use that to connect. Read on for more details, including instructions on how to connect via America Online!

Telnet Link

This will simply launch whatever Telnet application you have configured as a helper application in your web browser. Look elsewhere on this page for instructions on how to set up a helper application if you haven't done this already.

Note that if under normal circumstances you cannot connect to a site with a port number, clicking on that link will not help. Also note that raw Telnet is not the ideal method for connecting to a mud as it does not provide a text input window and your text will be broken up by the mud output as you type.

A Scythian deer, from the 7th to 6th century B.C.
Please check at the bottom of this page for information on obtaining a Telnet application.

A web mud client written in Java

If you have a Java-capable browser such as Netscape 2.0 or later, or Internet Explorer, then at the link above you will find The Cup-O MUD Client (v1.3), a Java applet mud client which will connect to LegendMUD. NOTE! When using the Cup-O MUD client, you will want to make sure that you have color turned off for your character as it is not supported.

We suggest that you make use of this Java client only if you are unable to connect via other means. Java is still slower than a program native to your machine, and the implementation of Java mud clients is usually not perfect.

MUD Clients

A mud client replaces regular Telnet for connecting to the mud. As long as you have a SLIP/PPP connection to the Internet, you can use a client on your PC or Macintosh. If you have a Unix shell account, you can also use a mud client. In general, we highly recommend use of a client in order to provide a more enjoyable experience and a better interface than Telnet. The following clients are recommended by Legend.

In using any of the clients which suport multiple sessions, please be aware that multiple sessions to LegendMUD are not permitted by our Player Code of Conduct.

We support MCCP (mud client compression protocol). Enabling this feature in your client should speed your connection.

Windows clients

MudMaster for Windows 95/98/2000/XP is an up and coming mud client. Mud Master is a 32bit mud client designed to run under Windows' console mode. The console mode is text based -- if you are looking for a graphical client with menus and a mouse-driven interface, MM isn't for you. When it comes to scrolling text, the console mode generally does it faster than the windows GUI. Anybody familiar with Tintin should have no trouble getting used to Mud Master.
MudMaster 2000 is a GUI version of MudMaster with a lot of features added. Both MudMaster and MudMaster 2000 allow you to use custom DLL's to add your own features.
MudTerm is a free mud client application that allows users to connect to any mud servers on the net and immerse themselves in their chosen Role-Playing-Games. MudTerm enhances the experience of the players by allowing them to customize images, sounds, and music, hence enriching the game in every aspect. MudTerm has also built-in tools like aliases, triggers, tickers and macros to help facilitate players in their game.
MUSHclient is a client for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. It supports Oliver Jowett's MCCP as of version 2.14.
NTTinTin is a port of the Unix Tintin++ client to a Windows console window. They were written by Arkenstone, one of Legend's immortal staff. They offer all the capabilities of the Unix version, and WinTinTin color. You can use NTTinTin with Windows 95 or Windows NT.
A good page for other clients and resources for Windows 3.1 and 95 is the Mud Clients page, listing over a dozen clients with detailed feature lists and information.
ZMud for Windows 95 is the current client of choice for Windows users. It supports an extensive macros and triggers system for scripting actions, as well as multiple sessions, an integrated mudlist, and of course full color. Available in freeware and shareware versions, and in 16-bit and 32-bit versions as well, so it works under Windows 3.1.

Macintosh clients

Rapscallion is the current best client for the Macintosh. It supports aliases, full ANSI color, multiple pane output, triggers, command history, logging, auto-mapping, and many other features. As of Early Feb. 2002 Rapscallion hasn't been updated for OS X. A number of users report that it works in classic mode under OS X. (Note to OS X users: Check out the UNIX tools below as OS X has unix-like shell capabilities.)
TView is a new client for the Mac, still in development. The goals of the developers are quite ambitious. It currently supports HTML tags in output, full ANSI color, OpenTransport, split screens, is available in a PowerMac native form as well as a 68k version, and supports macro keys. Note that since this client is still in development, any version you download may include a "self-destruct" clock until a Gold version is released.
MudWrestler is another new client being developed for the Mac. It supports a customizable toolbar and many other features including support for MacTCP and OpenTransport, a graphical interface, triggers, aliases, gags, macros, a ticker, and other goodies.
If none of the above recommendations is satisfactory, take a look at The Macintosh MUDding Resource Web Page, which houses links to many mud clients and utilities for the Mac mudder.

A Russian icon of Saint Nicolas, 13th - early 14th century Unix clients
With all Unix clients, check into the possibility that a client has already been installed on your server. Many Internet Service Providers have made both of the following programs available to their users. It may be possible to request that they install either of these two clients for public use, rather than taking up your disk quota with the program. Keep in mind that neither of these two clients will be particularly easy to use if you are accustomed to a graphical environment, and that compiling them may prove difficult for you if you are not familiar with C and GCC. Both tintin++ and TinyFugue are extremely powerful and capable programs, and the choice between them is largely a matter of taste.

Tintin++ is one of the two principal mud clients used on Unix. Oriented towards combat-style play, it features a complex trigger and macro system, split input screen, multiple sessions, and many other features.
TinyFugue is the other most popular Unix client for mudders. It is oriented towards roleplaying as opposed to combat, and thus has a better interface for things like multiple sessions, logging, text recall, quotation, etc, but less of one for fighting. It does have an extremely powerful macro and script system. The standard distribution includes the ability to read and use tintin macros and files.

Other platforms

TinyFugue is available for the Amiga and for VMS, but both versions are unsupported.

Downloading Telnet

Telnet is the name of the protocol which allows networked computers to log into each other (or into programs running on remote machines). It is the protocol used to log into muds as well.

The best Telnet for the Macintosh is NCSA Telnet 2.7b4.
There are many good Telnet clients for Windows; check out the archives at TUCOWS for more information on Windows 95 and Windows 3.x Telnet clients.

Connecting through America Online

It is possible to get mud clients working through America Online. If you using a web browser other than the standard AOL one, then you are already set up and can simply launch your mud client after you have conneted to AOL in the usual fashion.

If you do not have this set up, America Online fortunately makes it easy for you. Go to keyword internet or tcpip and read the relevant documents, and you should be able to get get set up in no time.

Detail from an illuminated manuscript, The Life of Sir Galahad

Configuring a mud client or Telnet app as a helper

What follows are instructions for configuring Netscape and Internet Explorer to use either a mud client or a different Telnet application than the default. You may not need to configure this at all; Internet Explorer uses the stock Windows telnet as a default under Windows 95, for example, and if you use a Macintosh with Internet Config, most of the work has been done for you already. You can however set up your mud client of choice as the helper application if you so choose.

To configure a helper application in Netscape, simply choose General Preferences from the Options menu, and then select Apps. Browse for the location of your preferred Telnet or mud client.
To configure a helper in Internet Explorer in Windows 95, choose Options from the View menu, and look under File Types. There will be a type named "URL: Telnet Protocol." Click on the Edit button, and it will bring up a dialog box. There will be a box there called "Actions" and in it will be the word "open." Double-click on that word, and another dialog box will come up, where you can browse to select your preferred Telnet or mud client.
Internet Config for the Macintosh is available at most major Macintosh shareware sites, such as the Web-accessible MIT HyperArchive. This handy utility standardizes helpers for all your Internet programs, and Netscape and Internet Explorer (and Eudora, and Newswatcher, and in fact almost every Macintosh Internet program) can use it. We suggest that if you are mudding from a Mac, you install it, and use its defaults in your web browser.