Introductory MOO tutorial

The BioMOO (Multiple user dungeon Object Oriented) will be the main system for online communication throughout the "Bioscience Resources on the Internet (BRI)" course. This MOO system provides a virtual meeting place for biologists as outlined in the purpose statement
If you want to communicate to people in a MOO system, you need to register for that MOO. Registration provides you with a character name for yourself and allows you to connect to the system.

Get yourself a character in a MOO

Even though everybody in the course has already a MOO character and knows how to request one for the BioMOO system, most MOOs do not yet provide a WWW form for registering. Usually, you need to connect to a MOO using either 'Telnet' or a Muclient. A typical MOO address ends in a port number like 7777 or 8888 as you can see on the list of MOOs connected to the GNA-Forum. BioMOO is part of the GNA-Net which was developed by Gustavo Glusman.

Once you have a physical connection to the system you need to log in to get a software connection. Depending on the system you either need to type 'co guest' or ' guest your-name any-password' you will be connected and are able to move in the MOO. You can now move around and found out about the system. When you think that you would like to have a character name for yourself in that MOO you can usually request one by typing
'@request userID for email-address'. The system will guide you through the rest of the process. When you are finished, you will receive an e-mail message containing your character name and your password. You will have to change this password as soon as you connect to the MOO using your character name. You can do this using the '@password old-password new-password' command.

Due to heavy network traffic the response time of a MOO system can be considerably long. This form of net lag can have a strong impact on ongoing discussions and guest lectures as this time can add up to several minutes. Additionally, the connection to a MOO can become unstable resulting loss of connection. It is therefore recommended for this course to request a character name in a second MOO system, preferably in a MOO that participates in the GNA-Net mentioned above.
While all online session will usually take place in the BRI classroom, we can relocate a session to another room when the net lag for a speaker or a whole group of people is too large. Relocated sessions will take place in the GNA Forum.

Which client to use?

There has been a lot of discussion on the 'best' client program for use with a MOO. Please have a look at the MUD FAQ for Clients and Servers Included in this document are also "Directions for how to ftp"
Personally, I would recommend Mudwin for use with Windows computers, Muddweller for use with Macintosh, and Tinymud for Unix machines.

Connect to a MOO

When you have received your character name and password, please connect to the MOO system as described above, but this time type 'co character name password'.

Connect to a MOO using a web browser

When you are connected to BioMOO using 'Telnet' or a Muclient, you can also open a Web Window into BioMOO. This can be achieved by accessing the Web Gateway Page. From there the Authentication Form is available, where the User's name and the User's password must be entered. Hitting the 'Open an independent web browser window into BioMOO' button results in opening a web connection into BioMOO and subsequently allows for moving in the MOO and viewing objects that are linked to an URL using your own web browser.
There is also a new system called 'Open an integrated telnet/web window into BioMOO'. Using this button, you don't have to have a separate 'Telnet'/Mudclient session open at the same time. For this system it is necessary to use a web browser that has Java enabled.

You can find more information on this on the Web Gateway Page and at the BioMOO Image Archive at CalTech.

Customize your character

You can customize your MOO character by two different approaches. When you have a web window into BioMOO you can just use the Customize yourself link on the bottom of the web page. When you are connected via 'Telnet'/Muclient only, you need to use the following commands:
@gender
@describe me

Please connect to BioMOO now and try to customize yourself. To find out about the proper use of the @gender and the @describe commands please use the help command. You can always get help on a command by using the following syntax:
help @gender
You can view your description by executing the following command: info your_user_name

Moving in a MOO

Well, once you are connected to BioMOO you need to get to the classroom. If you first want to check if there is already somebody in the classroom you can find out using @who, which returns a list of all people currently connected to the MOO and where you can find them.
To get to a certain room use go room_name. Please try to get to the BRI classroom now:
go bri class should move you to the classroom.

Communicating in a MOO

Finally, you made it to the desired location :-) When you arrive in a room, please read the room description first and see if there is a meeting going on. If there is a meeting, please do not try to get off topic, rather ask if nobody minds you listening to the meeting. Of course, if this is a BRI meeting, please come in and join us for discussion.
When you first enter a room it is considered to be polite to come in and : waves. This results in everybody seeing you waving. Please say hello by typing quotation marks(!!!) in the beginning. Thus, if you would like to say something, you need to type " your text.
If you want to do something, type : verb.
Talking to somebody is done using to user " your text.
If you want to talk somebody in private you can use the whisper "your text" to user command, or
if you want to attract somebody's attention you need to page user "your text" that person. The page command enables you to talk to people that are not in the same room.

Please use the first days of the course to familiarize yourself with BioMOO and feel free to explore the system, so that you can communicate during the welcome party on Thursday.

If you have any difficulties getting yourself properly connected to BioMOO, please send an e-mail to netbio-tech@uu-gna.mit.edu.

References:
Back to the BRI course home page.
The BRI course is part of the Internet Biologists project.
Copyright Christian Frosch (1997).