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I have spent several months working on a trigger pack for the CLI based MUD client tintin++ to play the MUD Alter Aeon. Although it is still a work in progress I believe it is ready for people to use. It comes with a detailed readme file, so I will not include instructions for use hear, but here is how to install.
Ubuntu installation>
To get everything set up in Ubuntu open terminal and type the following:
sudo apt-get install git-core tintin++ sox libsox-fmt-all
Mac Installation
To get everything set up on a Mac:
If you want, you can download, extract, and build the latest version of tintin++ from source. Get the source code from
the tintin++ downloads page The technical details for how to install from source are beyond the scope of this article. Tintin++, a slightly older version, is available in mac ports.
Install macports:
the macports installation page
Install xcode and its command line tools available free from the Mac app store. The command line tools can be found under the download button on the toolbar, it’s the last item in the components table.
Open terminal:
sudo port install coreutils git-core gsed sox tintinxx wget xz
To be able to use the alt key abilities provided in this trigger pack, open terminal preferences and on the keyboard tab check use option as meta. Finally, select the file menu and choose use as defaults.
If you are using the Voiceover screen reader, the following tips may make for a more pleasant experience. Make sure to have terminal open when adjusting these settings:
- Press VO+F8 and in Utility Category select activities.
- Click Add to add a new activity and give it a name like terminal.
- Select verbosity checkbox, VO+right arrow to select verbosity button.
- Set speech verbosity to medium.
- select additional settings to include checkbox.
- Select the navigation checkbox.
- Click set navigation.
- Set Initial Position of VoiceOver cursor to keyboard focused item.
- Uncheck keyboard focus follows VoiceOver cursor.
- Uncheck voiceOver cursor follows keyboard focus.
- Uncheck insertion point follows VoiceOver cursor.
- Uncheck VoiceOver cursor follows insertion point.
- Set mouse pointer ignores voiceOver cursor.
- Check allow cursor wrapping.
- Check skip redundant labels.
- Click close and close VoiceOver utility.
Downloading the pack
Now that everything has been set up you can get the pack with the command:
git clone https://github.com/stormdragon2976/tintin-alteraeon.git
The download will take a few minutes. I am currently in the midst of switching most things sound related over to the built in MSP sounds which will decrease download times eventually.
After the download finishes, change to the tintin-alteraeon directory:
cd tintin-alteraeon
Mac users will need to do the following:
cp modules/bash_utils.mac modules/bash_utils.tin
You should only need to do this once. Cygwin and Linux users do not need to do this step.
You must be inside the directory for everything to work. Once there you can set up your characters. To do so, type
./multicharacter-setup.sh
and follow the instructions.
After you have created all your characters they will be available under ~/charactername. So, if you character is named Finn, you get to the character by typing:
cd ~/finn/
After you have changed to your character’s directory connect by typing:
tt++ aa.tin
You will get the tintin++ credits and a suggestion for a MUD to play. To actually connect type:
login
This will connect you to the game and you will be presented with the login menu.
Keeping Up To Date
Do the following to check for updates:
cd ~/tintin-alteraeon/
git pull
This will download any changes to the code or inform you that the code is already up to date.
Other Notes
Be sure to read the readme file included with the trigger pack. Remember, the first time you login to the game using this pack to type the word:
load
and press enter. It sets your skills and spells as well as some other information into variables which are necessary for the pack to work correctly.
Windows Users
Windows users will need to install a package called Cygwin. The easiest way to accomplish this is with a small cygwin-installer program written by michael Taboada. Run the program and follow the instructions. If you would prefer to do it manually though, download the setup.exe available on the install page to your desktop (do not run). Cygwin allows Windows users to 00run Linux applications. In order to do this, you will need some Linux packages. You can access the cygwin GUI and install packages that way, but the best way to handle package installation is to pass the packages you want to the installer, because the GUI isn’t 100% accessible as far as I know. There are several packages you will need. The easiest way I have found to do it is to right click the setup.exe file on your desktop, create shortcut. This is where things get a little confusing, because now you may have 2 setup.exe files on your desktop. usually the setup file will have something like "shortcut to" somewhere in the name, but not always. In my trials though focus is always given to the shortcut after it is created. Right click the shortcut and select properties. There are a couple of edit boxes here. the one we are interested in contains the path of the setup.exe executable "C:\…\setup.exe"
Here, after the closing quote, is where you need to paste the following flags and package names:
-A -q -P bc -P cron -P curl -P cygrunsrv -P gcc-core -P gcc-g++ -P gcc-ming2-g++ -P git -P glib -P glib2 -P inetutils -P make -P nano -P pcre-devel -P screen -P sox -P util-linux -P wget -P zlib
Select ok, then to run setup.exe with all the flags, just press enter on the setup.exe shortcut and allow it to run. You may need to select a mirror from the list when it runs. The first option in the list is ok.
If for some reason the shortcut keeps reporting problems, copy everything you have in the target box including the path inside the quotes, click run from the start menu, and paste into the box that comes up and 000press enter.
You will need to add a server, the list is accessible, you can just select the first one in the list, click add, then pretty much click next until installation starts. After a few minutes everything should complete successfully and you should get a finish button. After that, Cygwin is installed.
Next, download the tintin++ source code .tar.gz file from Sourceforge and Save it to your desktop and do not extract it. If you are using Windows Internet Explorer, you may get a sound notifying you that the download has been blocked. To focus the information bar press alt+n then press space to activate it and allow the download.
Now, it’s time to open cygwin. To do so, under the start menu, click run. when the box opens for a command type:
cmd
and press enter. To launch cygwin itself type the following at the prompt:
c:\cygwin\Cygwin.bat
Note the C in Cygwin.bat is capitalized. All the other letters in the command are lower case.
If you would like to paste into the command line, you will notice that control+v is not enabled for pasting. You will need to press alt+space, arrow down the to "Edit" menu, and select paste from it.
When you press enter, you will be in the Cygwin terminal. The first time you run it it creates a few things like your .bashrc.
Now, it is time to extract and compile your downloaded tintin file. To do this you need to first extract it from the desktop. Here is where I must tell you about bash’s tab autocompletion feature. If you know the first part of something, but not the whole thing, you can type the first few letters then hit tab and bash will complete it for you. You will probably want to make heavy use of this in the next command because it will likely be different for each user. Adjust the path to the file acording to your version of Windows and user information:
tar xzvf /cygdrive/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/USER/Desktop/tintin…tar.gz
USER is your windows logon name. You can do /cygd <tab> c/Doc <tab> Desk <tab> tintin <tab> and each time you press the tab key the path will be completed until you have the whole path to the file. Press enter and the file will be extracted into your home directory and things will get a lot easier from now on.
After the extraction has completed, a matter of a couple seconds, do the following to compile tintin++:
cd tt/src/
./configure
make
make install
After that finishes type:
cd
to get back to your home directory.
Now, all that is left is to clone the git repository for tintin-alteraeon. The git repository houses all the code for the tintin++ trigger pack. You pull the code from it, and all the updates as well. Because cygwin doesn’t automatically install certificates for you, you will have to prepend each git command with:
env GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=true
For example, to do the initial clone of the git repository, you would type:
env GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=true git clone https://github.com/stormdragon2976/tintin-alteraeon.git
Note, I have been unable to get multicharacter-setup.sh to work in cygwin. You will have to creat links manually if you have multiple characters.
To read the README file in the tintin-alteraeon directory, you can open it in the Nano text editor:
nano README
When you are done with the file, press control+x to close it.
Incidentally, if you would like to install my talking-clock package in cygwin there is only a couple more steps required. You already have the packages you need installed from the list above. The only thing you have to do is install cron as a service. To do so, enter:
cygrunsrv –install cron –path /usr/sbin/cron –args -n
cygrunsrv –start cron
If you run into problems with cron in Windows this article may be of help.
Next, you need to write a short bash script so that espeak will work. You can use any synth that will take commande line input, but for this example we shall use espeak. Make sure you have the windows version of espeak installed from:
http://espeak.sourceforge.net/. Then, inside the cygwin terminal, type:
nano /usr/bin/espeak
The nano text editor will open, and you can paste the following 3 lines into it:
#!/bin/bash
“/cygdrive/c/Program Files/eSpeak/command_line/espeak.exe” “$@”
exit 0
Press control+x to save the file. It will ask if you want to save changes, press y, then it will ask for the file name, just press enter because you already gave the name when you opened the file. The path in the file may be different for you depending on your Windows version and configuration.
The final thing you have to do is make your espeak script executable. So, type the following:
chmod 755 /usr/bin/espeak
Now, you can test it out by typing:
espeak "hello world"
To set up talking-clock:
env GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=true git clone https://github.com/stormdragon2976/talking-clock.git
cd talking-clock/
chmod 755 INSTALL
./INSTALL
To test it you can type:
talking-clock
Talking-clock has lots of capabilities, including using soundpacks for chimes. It uses cron to schedule chimes and can chime 1, 2, or 4 times per hour. To make it chime two times an hour, for example, you would type:
talking-clock –cron 2
All the information you need for configuring talking-clock can be found in the file called README in the same directory as the INSTALL file.
Top open the README in the nano text editor:
nano README
To close it again control+x. If you accidently made changes just press n if it asks you if you want to save. And Nano will close without making any changes to the file.
Have fun and if you have questions leave them in the comments.
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