News Archives from TMC

Some of you may be experiencing problems with playing muds with computers running Windows Vista, the following explanation was found on the zuggsoft.com forums along with the suggested fix.

Windows Vista enables something called AutoTuning by default which earlier windows versions had disabled, to bypass this problem login to your computer as an Administrator and open a command shell (Start -> Run -> type cmd ) and enter this text and then hit return:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable

We are proud to announce the launch of the first Social Network devoted to mudders, tentatively being called TMCnet. The Mud Connector Social Network offers a suite of features designed to help bring the mud community closer together, including:

• Member profiles - simplifies the process of finding other mudders with similar interests
• Image Galleries - Share your images with other Social Network members.
• Instant Messaging - Send and receive IMs with other members, as well as with mudders connected to the IMC network
• Mail - Send and receive TMCnet mail to/from other members
• Friendships - two-way friendships allow otherwise private content to be shared among members
• Groups - create your own private, semi-private or public groups and invite other members to join in targetted discussions
• Journals - post entries in your personal or group's journal for other members to read and optionally comment on
• Events Engine - create calendar events for others to read about and take part in

We welcome you to come and activate your TMC member account ( for members 14 years of age and older ) and join us on TMCnet.

Today (03/12/2006) TMC will be launching our new (read: revised) stats and ranking system, the coming changes will reflect many of the suggestions from our users in a recent discussion board thread. A quick summary of the changes follows:

• The 3-vote system is being replaced by a single vote system, telnet and homepage clicks will no longer count towards a mud's tmc ranking.
  
• The visual verification system is being removed, we will evaluate if it needs to be restored over time.
  
• Vote and Rank data will be reset twice monthly

We hope the new ranking system shows to be an improvement.

Three new RSS feeds have been added, allowing our users to subscribe to receive discussion board summaries, new mudlist additions and new tmc mud reviews.

There has been alot of feedback regarding tmc member login problems, which I believe are caused by the way certain browsers handle framed content and document caching. I made some changes to the login system today which I hope will help with this problem.

We have wiped the stats and ranking tables once again after finding evidence of some open-proxy usage in our logs. We have added code to help restrict the use of known open proxies and prevent votes from being counted from those servers. We are logging all votes now and will periodically check votes that were tallied for open proxies, muds found to be using votes issued from open proxy servers will have their stats wiped and be suspended from the rankings system (this is the only warning you will get).

Many of you have written to me expressing concern about the integrity of the rankings system. Despite many attempts to discover the source of the _holes_ and fix them I have thrown my hands up and have rewritten the voting system to hopefully solve these issues. The new voting procedure involves matching an image-embedded character code generated on-the-fly as an extra layer of confirmation before a vote may be considered valid and applied to a muds' stats. The mud rankings and tmc stats have been wiped so we can start fresh and examine how the new system behaves. As always please report any suspected abuse to the TMC Admin.

This is a change that has been planned and delayed and replanned and pushed back for years now. Internally it is massive, a complete reworking of our submission and mud listings management system; To the mud adminstrators that have been stuck with our old, klunky, poorly designed and way out of date submissions system the new version should seem a world of difference. Don't take my word for it, go check it out:
--> [TMC Mud Listing Submissions] <--

For quite a few years our board system has remained pretty much as it was originally created (1995 or so) while newer and flashier message boards have appeared on the scene. I have been hesitant to make such drastic changes to avoid straying far from stock version of the software and because I knew it would be a painful process. So after years of fielding your comments requesting a better message board structure I finally gave in and went to work on it, and today the beta version is available to TMC's members.

For some information about the changes you can read my post in the general board. I welcome your comments, suggestions for further improvements and any bug reports that you can provide.

The addition of member Avatars and signatures effects both the new version of the message boards as well as the old, to choose an Avatar and set your signature please head to the member settings panel.

TMC will also be providing articles written by a handful of regular contributors, including an upcoming article on Building Tips and Tricks. We will also be posting articles submitted by TMC users. If you have an idea for an upcoming article and want to get your voice heard send us an email to articles@mudconnect.com

• Added a complete thread history to each post's display, showing you exactly where you are in the thread and providing links to all posts.
• Modified the reply subject so the 'RE:' is only prepended if it isn't there already.
• Added the ability for members to edit their discussion posts. Well, somewhat, you can't really change your original post but can add a comment to clarify if something didn't come out right in your post.
• Added a Reply Tracker to provide a single location to display recent replies made to your discussion posts.

1. You can now specify a mud creation date filter and have search results filter our either muds created before the date, after the date or show muds created in the specified year.
2. We have added result sorting, you can now sort results based on mud name (default), codebase, or last update date.

Also, we have added a Password Reminder to the update form as well, be sure to hit the update panel and set your password reminder, in case you ever forget your TMC password.

If you are an avid RPer please give it a try!

We are now welcoming under construction muds which are not yet open for players. There is now an option to be set in the submissions system, if you are submitting a mud which is not yet open for play be sure to set that flag!

A note of interest: The Connector has three new domain names, all of which point to the same site. These are mudconnector.com, mudconnector.net and mudconnector.org . The plus side of this is mainly for those of you who forget the url, the newer web browsers will be able to find us if you simply enter mudconnector in your browser's location field.

• Added new options to the mud submission system. Submitters can now specify the type of training system the mud uses (level or skill based) and the type of equipment system used (level, skill or level and skill based). This information is listed in the extended mud listings (via advanced searches).
• Added new search options to the advanced interface. You can now search for muds which are 1) newbie friendly, 2) appropriate for children and 3) adult-oriented.
• Added a new categorical listings page. This simplified interface allows the mud list to be generated based on a specific category. Some of these categories are: AD&D, Dragonlance, Roleplaing muds, Science Fiction Muds, and many more. Check out the new interface at mud_category.html, if you have suggestions for new categories to add send me an email, I'll be glad to expand the list!
• Top 20 system being revamped. The top 20 muds will soon be determined based on a moving average for one month's worth of data, as opposed to the global averaging system used now. The data is being gathered and once the first month of data is obtained the new system will be made active. Thanks goes out to Alexander Fader for this suggestion!

I am also extending an invitation for other organizations to have a mailing list hosted by our Mudbot. If you are interested contact admin@mudconnect.com for details.

• Router problems with our ISP's neighboring backbone - This problem was only affecting some regions of the world and in any event has been corrected recently with new hardware upgrades.
• Limit of server resources - The MUD Connector is using a Virtual Server, which shares system resources with other accounts. Each virtual server is allocated a certain portion of system resources, including a maximum number of running processes at all time. When many users are trying to make requests at the same time, exceeding our limits, the server begins sending users away (hence you get the 'Sever Busy' message). I have spoken with my provider and sometime soon they will be making available a more advanced server, offering more processes running simultaneously. As soon as this option is available I will convert the server over. This will effectively double my cost for running the site, but I want to provide the best possible service so money won't be an issue and I won't hesitate to take the upgrade. I will post a message when this has happened, in the meantime please try to cope with the delays. If you get that server busy message give it a little bit of time and try again. My apologies for this hassle!

Looking for an old mud friend or other mudders with similar interests? Check out the MPD search engine, or feel free to browse our listings! The site officially opens today and we hope to stock the database with your players' info as quickly as possible, if you find the database scant right now please check back soon!

1. Simple Keyphrase Search - For new users or for those users who just don't know what they want, this search mode accepts a keyphrase and scans all of the listings in the standard database.
2. Advanced Search Mode - This new mode allows our users to specify three keyphrase search modes (AND - look for all keywords, OR - look for at least one keyword, PHRASE - treat the keywords as a text string). For AND and OR modes keywords are space-delimited. With this mode you can also specify a particular mud server type to search for, specify various traits to look for (extended race selection, extended class selection, quests, role-playing, etc...). You may also restrict your search to just the theme of the mud.

A help system is coming soon to help make your visit a prosperous one. Don't think we are stopping here, we have ALOT in store to help make our search engine the most powerful way to find a mud available on the net!

• Top 20 muds by telnet daily average
• Top 20 muds by homepage request daily average
• Top 20 muds by search request daily average

The new contact email address for the Mud Connector is mud@mudconnect.com, please feel free to drop us a line.

The new database can be selected as your search target (choose 'Extended Database' in the search form options) and matches to your query will now return the following extra information:

• Administrator's email address (if they allowed me to list it)
• The theme of the mud. Soon there will be more search options available to target specific fields in a typical mud listing. Who am I kidding, soon could be next year for all I know, make it when I get the time. :)
• Availability of multi-playing (ability to play more than one character simultaneously).
• Player killing, whether it is allowed, not allowed or restricted.
• Other stats about the mud like availability of quests, extended race/class selection, ansi color availability, pay-per play, etc.

As soon as time permits I will be adding the ability to have search results emailed to you. This will allow you to create custom mud lists using the results of your mud connector searches. Of course, as usual, I am open to your suggestions for further improvements. To be truthful most of the enhancements made are based on your suggestions, so it does pay to send comments! :)