Autumnal Alpha Release 0.84a0 by Canis Lupus © M. Rosenfeld 1995/6 Autumnal is available in several places, however The primary site for Autumnal is: http://absolute.foobar.co.uk/autumnal As updates can appear here almost instantly. NOTICE This is an Alpha Release of Autumnal. This indicates that not all features are implemented, and that bugs may be present. You use this software entirely at your own risk. Autumnal is a MUD client. It makes connecting to a MUD easier than using straight Telnet. It should also work with MUSHes, MUSEs, MOOs, and other obscure collections of letters that refer to a multi-user environment somewhere on the Internet. I'll still be referring to all of these things as MUDs throughout this document; inaccurate, but, tough. Requirements Autumnal has few requirements. You will need a working link to the Internet via a WinSock, version 1.1 or later; If you have an Internet connection that works in Windows, chances are Autumnal will cope with it. Autumnal no longer requires BWCC.DLL. It does require CTL3D.DLL which is almost certainly on your system already, if not, it's available worldwide, from many people, not the least of whom is Microsoft. Finally Autumnal uses the True-Type font Courier New; this comes with Windows, so unless you've deleted it, you should have no problems. Installation Create a directory for Autumnal and unpack all of its files there. If you are to be using any Plugins, you need to make sure there is a PLUGINS directory under the one Autumnal sits in. More details about Plugins can be found below. Autumnal is now ready to run, but you may wish to take a little time to configure it to your exact requirements first; see the section on configuration later in this document. Usage It is recommended you load your WinSock before running Autumnal, however, Autumnal will attempt to load it if you have not already done so. Make sure you have a working connection to the Internet. Once Autumnal has loaded, you will probably want to resize it, by dragging the borders or by maximizing Autumnal (recommended). Autumnal will rememeber the position you put it in when you quit. When Autumnal first opens up, a "greetings box" will appear, welcoming you and offering you a quick introduction; once you get to know Autumnal, you can turn this off by ticking the box. There are four distinct areas in the Autumnal window: The menu, the terminal window, the status line, and the input area. From the menu, you can: Quit Autumnal; copy the contents of the scrollback buffer (see below) to the Windows clipboard; paste the contents of the Windows clipboard to the MUD; run Notepad with the AUTUMNAL.RC file loaded (see below); edit the colour scheme; open a new session to a MUD; close an open session; start up a new copy of Autumnal; and switch between currently running Autumnals. Autumnal only supports one connection at a time, but you can run many copies of Autumnal at once, allowing you to be on several different MUDs simultaneously. The Session menu makes this easier by listing any Autumnals currently running and allowing you to flick between them. When you go to open a session, you will be presented with the "Site Manager". This is a box where you can set up your sessions. If you've already set up a session, just click on its name (or hit the first letter in its name) and click GO (or press ), and the Site Manager will go away. If you've not set up a session, you can either just type in the details in the boxes on the right hand side (the name of the session, the address (name or IP number) of the MUD, and the charactername and password you want to use). You can leave any of these blank except the hostname. Once you've hit GO, Autumnal will attempt to locate, and connect to, the MUD. Up to a certain point, you will be able to cancel this by hitting the key. Once a connection is made, you can close it by selecting "Close" from the "Session" menu. However it is usually better to log out of the MUD by entering the appropriate command; this will vary from MUD to MUD — if you just close the session from the menu, you will usually go "Linkdead" on the MUD. The middle pane, the terminal window, contains everything that the MUD sends to you: Usually, descriptions of rooms, monsters, objects and people, and what they are saying or doing. As this window fills up, it will scroll, and the stuff near the top will disappear. However, it is not lost permanently: It is stored in the scrollback buffer, and you can use the and keys to flick back to look at it. You can also copy small snippets of text out of the terminal window, to the Windows clipboard, simply by dragging the mouse over it and letting go. The status line is below the terminal window. It shows the name of the MUD you are connected to, if you have given it one; the current time (if you are looking at the scrollback buffer, the clock will alternate with a little indicator showing you how far back you have scrolled); and an area that Autumnal uses to relay information to you. The bottom panel is the input area, and it is split into three lines. The bottom line is where you can type. What you type here is not transmitted to the MUD, until you press , and until you do, you can edit that line as much as you like. Once you hit , the line is sent to the MUD, and cleared. The top line of the status area shows the last command that you sent. You can retrieve commands you've sent to the MUD by using the and arrow keys, these will let you flick through the last 20 lines you've typed, you can then edit them and send them again if you wish. The middle line shows your current "prompt" from the MUD. Often this will be just a single character, eg, ">". Sometimes though, more information is shown here, particularly if the MUD needs some special input from you. When a page's-worth of text has appeared on-screen, the words "---MORE---" appear in the status line, and Autumnal will pause (you can still type, but incoming text will not appear). Hit when you are ready to continue. You can disable this feature if you find it annoying. There is full help on this, and Autumnal's other features, in the online help. This is reached, like most of Autumnal's advanced features, by typing one of Autumnal's commands in. Autumnal recognises it's commands (as opposed to normal text you wish sent to the MUD) because they begin with a "/" character. If you need to send something to the MUD that has a / as it's first character, just type two of them; Autumnal will remove the extra one, and send the rest to the MUD unchanged. Type /HELP to see the index of Autumnal's online help, and /HELP for information on a particular command or subject. Configuration Autumnal uses two main files to store it's configuration. The first is AUTUMNAL.INI and this should be present in the same directory as Autumnal itself. This contains information about the various MUDs you use, and optionally the character name and password that you use there. In previous versions of Autumnal, you had to set this information up by hand. As of version 0.76a1, the Site Manager takes care of this for you. The details are still listed below for reference. The file should look something like this: [hosts] mudname=address port mudname=address port [characters] mudname=charactername [passwords] mudname=characterpassword [colours] colourname=red,green,blue There can be as many entries as you like in each of these sections (there is a limit, but it is decided by your system memory, and unless you have a serious net addiction problem it's unlikely to trouble you). The mudname can be pretty much anything, it's purpose is to remind you what you are looking at, and to make sure the correct character name and password is sent to the correct MUD. There are a couple of points to bear in mind: The name should be unique, and if you are connecting to a MUSH then make sure the name ends with MUSH (not case sensitive), that way, Autumnal will alter it's automatic login routines to cope with the slightly different format that MUSHes use. The address and port numbers are just the same information as you are probably used to setting in a telnet package. You may be used to putting a ":" or something else between the address and port number; don't worry about that, Autumnal just wants a single space. The character name and password will be sent to the MUD when you log on, if they are present. This feature isn't advised if other people have access to your copy of Autumnal, since they could easily masquerade as you on a MUD. The second configuration file is AUTUMNAL.RC. This file is simply a series of Autumnal commands (see the online help for a list of these) that are executed automatically when Autumnal starts. This allows you to set up your "Hilites", "Aliases", "Triggers" and other features, without having to type them in again every time you run Autumnal. For more information on what those things are and how to use them, see the online help. From version 0.83a0 onwards, you can configure the colours from the menu. Select the "Colours" option from the "Edit" menu, and a dialog box will appear which will let you customise the colours to your wishes. Note that your settings will only be used for the current session if you do not hit the Save button. Plugins Plugins are a relatively new feature of Autumnal. They allow any Windows programmer to expand Autumnal. If you are interested in writing your own Plugins, please see the PLUGINS.WRI file, which explains how to do this. Plugins generally have their own instructions for use, read them carefully. What all Plugins have in common is that they need to be placed in a PLUGINS directory under the Autumnal one. So if you wish to install the DNS.DLL Plugin, and you have installed Autumnal to C:\AUTUMNAL, then you would need to install the DNS Plugin as C:\AUTUMNAL\PLUGINS\DNS.DLL. Autumnal will automatically load any Plugins it finds in this directory. To temporarily disable a Plugin, shut down any Autumnal windows and move the .DLL file associated with that Plugin out of the PLUGINS directory, and then reload Autumnal. Plugins can add extra commands to Autumnal; filter incoming and outgoing text; add new help topics; and react to sessions open and closing. You may be able to get Plugins from the same place you got Autumnal. Final words Thankyou for taking the time to try out Autumnal. This is an early release of Autumnal and may not be bug-free, please bear this in mind, however, it has proved stable in the time I have been using it (around 4 months, so far). If you find any bugs, or want to suggest new features (I try to add these where possible, but I cannot promise anything) please email autumnal@solstice.foobar.co.uk. If you wish to contact me for some other reason, please email canis@solstice.foobar.co.uk. Autumnal is free software, in that you are not expected to pay me for its use. However, it is not in the public domain, it is copyright. If you do find yourself using Autumnal on a regular basis, please take a moment to email me, so I can gauge whether it is being used, and thus whether it is worth releasing new, updated versions. If you wish to distribute Autumnal noncommercially (ie, give it to your friends), you may. However, if you wish to place Autumnal on a magazine coverdisk, shareware collection, bundle it with another product, or distribute it as part of an Internet connection package, you must contact me for permission and, in the case of commercial products, a license. More information on this topic is available in the online help. -- Canis Lupus.