There are four methods that can be used to connect to EMuck. These are detailed in the sections following.
There are many programs that are written especially for accessing Multi-User game servers like EMuck. A good place to find out about these is to check out the Frequently Asked Questions about Multi-User Games, especially the part which has information specific information on MU* Clients and Servers.
If you don't see any MU* clients available for your computer or software platform, you may want to try one of the other methods for connecting to EMuck.
An easy and no-frills method of connecting to EMuck is using a telnet utility to connect to EMuck at its address and port number displayed below:
Address: game.emuck.com [24.147.128.187]* Port number: 6903
* EMuck's current host uses dynamic IP addressing, which means that occasionally the IP address may change. This won't happen very often, but when it does, you can get the current address from http://www.tiac.net/users/lar3ry/emuck-addr.html.
All attempts will be made to keep these sites up to date with the current address of EMuck.
If your web browser understands telnet URL's, and can launch a telnet session, it may be as simple as following this link.
If you are using a telnet client manually, have it connect to
game.emuck.com; if you do not have a name server, or
your name server cannot find this address, use the numeric address
24.147.128.187.
See note above about EMuck's dynamic IP addressing.
By default, most telnet programs try to connect to the standard telnet login port (port 23). YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ACCESS EMUCK ON PORT 23! You must instead tell your telnet client to use port 6903 instead.
On Unix systems, you may use the command:
telnet game.emuck.com 6903
-or-
telnet 24.147.128.187 6903
Consult the documentation for your telnet client on how to reach alternate ports for other platforms.
Once you are connected via telnet, you can type the command:
connect guest guest
to connect as a guest.
Check out the example login section below.
When you connect to EMuck using a MU* client or telnet, you should see ta login screen similar to the one shown below:
EntertainMUCK DM-0.15.22b -- An Amberthree Production
___ _ _ ___ _ _
( _`\ /'\_/`\ ( ) ( ) ( _`\ ( ) ( )
| (_(_) | | | | | | | ( (_) | |/'/'
| _)_ | (_) | | | | | | | _ | , <
| (_( ) | | | | | (_) | | (_( ) | |\`\
(____/' (_) (_) (_____) (____/' (_) (_)
EntertainMUCK - Where YOU Are The Star!
Welcome to EMuck! To connect to the game server, type the following at the
EntertainMUCK (amberthree) login prompt:
connect <playername> <password> (for regular characters)
connect guest guest (for guest access)
. . . . . . . [ some other stuff may be here ] . . . . . . .
EntertainMUCK (amberthree) login:
If you get to this point, you have successfully made the connection to EMuck! If your screen is blank, or you get an error message, you may want to check out the section on Connection Failures.
That last line
(EntertainMUCK (amberthree) login:)
is your cue to connect to the game server by typing connect guest
guest to connect as one of EMuck's guest characters.
If you do not see anything after you have entered the connect command, make sure your telnet client has local echo set to ON.
Once you are in, you can take a brief interactive tutorial that will help
you learn the basic commands on EMuck by typing @TUTORIAL.
Once you are logged in and are inside the Welcome Center Lounge, go to
the chat area in Mickey's Cyber Diner by typing chat.
In a perfect world, everybody would be able to connect to EMuck 100% of the time, every second of every day of the year. Unfortunately, nothing is perfect, so we have compiled some error messages or error conditions that you may encounter and some explanations of what may be happening or what you may do to rectify the situation.
It can be a bit tricky to use telnet to reach places such as EMuck from America Online (AOL). While none of the game admins use AOL, we do have some tips we've compiled from other players that may help you in using AOL to reach EMuck.
There is an AOL version of winsock.dll (which allows Internet programs to connect to the 'Net via AOL). Go to keyword AOLSOCK (type control-K, then enter 'aolsock') for instructions on how to download and install it. You can also try keyword 'telnet' as well. This area contains links to the winsock.dll file you need to download and put in your Windows system directory, and also links to various telnet programs.
Once you get AOL's winsock.dll downloaded and functioning properly, you can then find a workable MU* client.
If you are seeing a login screen that looks similar to this when you attempt to connect:
Connected to game.emuck.com. Escape character is '^]'. AmberThree Productions Server login:
OR...
Trying... Connected to game.emuck.com. Escape character is '^]'. Connection closed.
This is the standard login port for the system on which the EMuck game server runs. This is NOT the EMuck game server. What has happened is that you have connected instead to the normal telnet port (port 23), which leads to the maintenance user accounts. Check the documentation for your client on how to connect to a port other than the default telnet port. You should be connecting to port 6903 instead.
AmberThree Productions, which runs EntertainMUCK, has obtained its own domain (emuck.com), and has contracted out the maintenance of this domain to a domain name service. Sometimes, due to no fault of AmberThree, access to the emuck.com domain is temporarily unavailable. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as a catastrophic failure at the domain name service provider like a major power failure or network cable disconnect.
As a backup condition, you may either use our numeric IP address
(24.147.128.187) instead of the hostname
game.emuck.com.
This isn't a perfect solution, however.
For one thing, EMuck's IP address is dynamic, and is subject to change
at the whim of its internet service provider.
Also, it is not always very easy to remember such a number.
Because of this, you may want to use one of our alternate host names, some of which are maintained by different providers than that hosting emuck.com. You may find one or more of these easier to remember than our numeric IP address (which, as was mentioned above, is always subject to change).
So, when the host name
game.emuck.com
doesn't resolve (you get the "Unknown host" error message),
try one of the above host names instead.
The "Connection Refused" message means that there is no game server on the port that you are attempting to connect to. This could indicate that you are trying to connect to the wrong port (did you type the port number correctly?), or that the EMuck game server is not currently running.
The "Connection Refused" message means that there is no game server on the port that you are attempting to connect to. This could indicate that you are trying to connect to the wrong port (did you type the port number correctly?), or that the EMuck game server is not currently running.EMuck's network connection assigns it a dynamic IP address, which means that EMuck's network address may occasionally change. When this happens, an attempt is made to update the name server that contains EMuck's new address as soon as possible, but in the real world, sometimes this takes time to propogate throughout the Internet. A section above contains three locations where EMuck's new address should be able to be found when the IP address changes. You can try to connect to EMuck using the IP address specified in these locations to see if it is a simple case of not getting the correct network address.
If you have verified that you are attempting to connect to the correct port (6903) and the correct network address, and you still get this message, it could mean that the EMuck game server is not running. Occasionally, the system on which EMuck runs needs to be rebooted for various maintenance purposes, or new software needs to be installed on the game server. These downtimes, infrequent as they may be, are usually for very short periods of time. You may want to try connecting a few minutes later to see if the problem has been rectified.
A connection timeout means that a TCP/IP connection could not be made between your system and the system on which the EMuck server runs. If this happens, you may want to check the following things:
It may be that your system is not connected to the Internet. Try using other Internet services on your system (like browsing the web) to see if you can reach other systems. If you can reach other systems that are remote from your system, then you are connected to the Internet.
On some corporate or educational networks, security is imposed preventing direct connecting from "inside" the network to an "outside" system. These systems are protected by what are known as "firewalls" that prevent network connections. If you are not on a public Internet Service Provider, there may be such a firewall preventing you from accessing EMuck. Contact your network administrator for more information on whether you have a firewall and if there is some permitted way that you can access outside systems.
If you access the web using something called a Proxy Server, then there is almost assuredly a firewall on your network. Telnet and MU* clients are unable to work if there is a firewall between the system you are running the client on and EMuck.
Occasionally due to system software upgrades, power failure, or other reasons, the computer that houses the EMuck server may be disconnected from the Internet. A good way to verify this is to try to access the EMuck Web Page. If you cannot access the web page, most likely this is the reason. Wait a few minutes and try to connect later.
EMuck has a current limit of 10 guest characters that may connect concurrently at any time. It has been on very infrequent occasions that this limit has been reached. If you get such a message, you may want to try a few minutes later; if an already connected guest disconnects, you may be able to connect.
Occasionally, EMuck has found it necessary to discontinue access to a particular player, or in some extreme circumstances, an entire network site.
If none of these helps you, you may want to contact your system or network administrator (if applicable) to see if the problem can be diagnosed. The administrators do not profess to be knowledgeable about every piece of software on every computer, but they may be able to help you out.