About this Manual

The MUCK Manual comprises five sections. Section 1 is an introduction for new players, covering basic commands and setting up your character. Section 2 deals with server commands and the commands included in the standard start-up database. Section 3 covers programming. Tutorials are presented in Section 4. Section 5 discusses technical and nontechnical issues of administering a MUCK. New players should read Section 1; others may safely begin with later sections.

The Overview sections provide relatively thorough discussion of relevant concepts, but are not comprehensive. The Reference sections are comprehensive (or at least attempt to be), but are written in a terse style that assumes the reader has some familiarity with the topic or has read the Overview. The remaining sections discuss aspects of the section topic meriting special attention.

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Examples in the manual are set off by half-lines of equal signs, like this.
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Text enclosed in [square brackets] is optional. Text enclosed in <angle brackets> should be edited as appropriate for you and your character. For example, where the manual says `type <your name>', type your name, rather than typing this literally. Within examples, lines beginning with a > greater than sign indicate material you should enter at your keyboard; the remaining lines are sample output from the MUCK. (In some longer programming entries, the > sign has been omitted so that you may cut and paste text from the web page to a MUCK.)

The MUCK Manual attempts to provide a single, relatively comprehensive reference for MUCK, as Lydia Leong's MUSH Manual does for MUSH. The organization of The MUCK Manual is in part based on her manual, and any indebtedness is gratefully acknowledged.

The MUCK Manual was written in collaberation with Winged of SPR and FurryMUCK, author of the online documentation for MUCK, version 6.0. Authors and editors of reference materials quoted include Foxen (foxen@belfry.com), Fre'ta (stevenl@netcom.netcom.com), Ioldanach (mortoj@rpi.edu).

This version of the manual was written for MUCK version 2.2 fb5.64. Version fb6.0 is given partial coverage. Note: this is this is the 'Fuzzball' branch of the MUCK server family, which is itself a branch of the TinyMUD branch of M* server families. In other words, while The MUCK Manual discusses MUCK as though there were a single standard version, this is not really the case. You should type @version on your MUCK to see what version you are on. If the version info includes the letters 'fb', you can be pretty sure that material presented in The MUCK Manual relates to your sever. (If you have expertise in alternate flavors of MUCK and would like to help me get up to speed so that I can expand the manual, then great, let's talk!)

The Manual may be freely copied, distributed, quoted, and archived.

Compressed archive files of The MUCK Manual, in UNIX and Windows formats, are available from Mink Downloads.