OK the first tutorial shall cover Aliases and some of the basic terminology you'll see in ZMud and ZMud help files. Hopefully this will give you the tools to explore ZMud more fully on your own.
What is an Alias?
Before we get into making aliases, I should explain what one is. An alias is basically any text that you want to type, that then tells ZMud to send something to the MUD you're playing. Now, some MUDs have an internal system to refer to this sort of thing as a macro but for the purposes of these tutorials, a macro is something different.
Sound complicated? Well, it can be confusing at first. So I'm going to try and provide an example.
Say I want to tell my character, Xaruthan, to say "Hello there, my name is Xaruthan, it is a pleasure to meet you."
I could just type into the text bar as below.
However, if I want to do that more than once, it would get rather tedious. This is where an alias comes in. I could set an alias call say, "intro" and type that into the bar and do exactly the same thing over and over again.
Aliases can make very long commands very short, especially if you have to type them over and over.
So, let's throw you out there and try making an alias.
Look at the ZMud command bar, as show in The Basics, and click on Aliases. You should get a window like this open up.
Right then, this can all look very confusing at first, and it can get quite complicated as you progress in your coding prowess. However, for now, this isn't anywhere near as complicated as it looks. For now, you can ignore most of what you see here. One thing you should note however is that this window can be used to view many other settings simultaneously, so we need to check you're looking at your aliases.
Right then, for the sake of ease I'm going to use some commands that most MUDs share in common for demonstration. I'm sure you will be able to adapt this for your own ends.
OK, so lets make an introduction for your character, so when you type intro into your command bar, your character will introduce themselves.
OK, the "Name" bar, you should put intro - nothing else, just what you see in bold.
In the box where you see "Value" next to it, simply type a suitable introduction for you charachter, and you should have something that looks like this.
Now, just click the green tick, and you're done! Simple as that. Now to test your alias. Go to the text bar, and type intro then hit enter. You should see your character introduce themselves just as you wanted.
Now, aliases can be a lot more complex than this, but even basic aliases are incredibly potent tools in the right hands. They can give you an edge over someone who is trying to type out everything in full, and certainly will help avoid the ever present typo!
