Basics and Global Exits
Stepdisks
The Taxi and JumpRoom
The Sky
FurrySpace
Vehicles
Other Miscellaneous Travel Methods
Travel-related Commands
Popular Areas and the WhereAre Command
On Exploring FurryMuck
FurryMuck is an absolutely huge place to explore, and it's easy to spend a lot of time doing it. So let's start with the basics. How do you get from one room to another? Most of the time it's like a text- based adventure game, and you type the compass direction you want to go in. Here are typical examples:
- n, s, e, w, u, d
- north, south, east, west, up, down
- nw, ne, sw, se
- northwest, northeast, southwest, southeast (sometimes a hyphen is added)
For the most part, the abbreviated ones are used. In some regions of FurryMuck, there are compound-compound directions, such as nne, nnw, sse, ssw, wnw, wsw, ene, and ese. Please don't be frightened!
In most rooms, the exits will be obvious. You might have to read the description of the room carefully to find your way out. Exits like in, tree, path, cave, hole, and tunnel are not uncommon. Note you can also add the command go or move in front of your movement command if you're having trouble getting FurryMuck to understand what you're doing: go north, or move sw for example. In some locations, people have placed a sign or a directory to show nearby homes or sites.
But, as it does happen, you might find yourself trapped in a room with no way out. What do you do? Well, you can try the standard out (or just 'o' for short), followed by back, leave, and exit. At this point, if you're still stuck, claw at your desk a few times, read the room description carefully, and try again. Occasionally, someone will have made a room with no exit out, or some rooms may be inaccessible (locked), allowing some people to enter, but not others.
The bright side is that you've always got a way out, thanks to global exits. These are called "global" because they always work, no matter where you are! (With few exceptions.) What are they?
go home, home, house, hom, ho, gohome, goh
-> brings you back to your designated "home" room. Any objects
you are carrying may also return to their "home" locations when
you do this.
nexus, nex, gonexus
-> brings you to the Underground Nexus, located under the Park.
bandstand, gobandstand, band, goband, utb, ubs
-> brings you Under the Bandstand, inside the Park.
taxi, taxix
-> you enter the Taxi (see below). Humorous messages appear when you
both enter and leave the taxi, and you can avoid activating them by
setting the property _nospam?:yes upon yourself. A small number
of locations prevent people from using the taxi.
tport <destination>
-> the global command which evolved out of BoingDragon's JumpRoom (see
below). Allows fast, direct teleporting to dozens and dozens of
interesting places. Type tport by itself for help, or
tport #help for more detailed instructions.
For some of the above commands, you can set the _global/odrop property on yourself, which will give a standard message when you arrive at the destination. For example, if my character name was Fred, and if I had the property _global/odrop:appears in a flash of light! , then when I arrived in the Underground Nexus using the global exit, people there would see: Fred appears in a flash of light!
Occasionally on FurryMuck you'll come across places on major travel routes where there is a stepdisk on the ground. What are they for, and how do they work? Basically, they are there to permit you to jump further along streets or paths quicker - you "hop" from one stepdisk to the next, skipping the rooms in between. You (generally) do this by typing the direction you want to go, but twice: nn, ss, ee, or ww.
The Taxi (see Global Exits, above) was invented to get people to popular places much faster. Once upon a time, it was only possible to board the taxi at certain locations, but now you can call for it from (almost) anywhere. Once you're in, look at the sign which lists the destinations, and off you go! Simple as that.
However, as FurryMuck's database grew, and as more and more people wanted ways to get where they were going quickly, BoingDragon's JumpRoom was created in 1992. It now plays what is probably the most central role on FurryMuck for travel, to the extent that popular places usually must be accessible via the JumpRoom, or they won't be popular.
The JumpRoom can be reached by taxi, although in certain locations, just typing jr will automatically get you there. (You can also walk there from West Corner of the Park by going w,ww,ww,nn,ww,s,w,s; but that takes longer.) The JumpRoom area contains excellent documentation to explain how it works, so I won't bother to get into details here. At one point, you could go to the JumpRoom and ask for a "Personal Teleporter", a device that let you teleport to all of the places the JumpRoom went to, but saving you the step of having to go to the JumpRoom first. These devices became so popular that eventually they were done away with altogether, and became a global command (see tport above).
The Sky over Furrymuck is quite large. There is a "parent" sky room, from which you can reach all other sky rooms, such as Sky over Drachenswald, or Sky over Shady Street. Each sky area provides a wide variety of landing sites. But how can you make yourself fly? Set the following properties on yourself:
_flight:yes
_flight?:yes
_fly_ok:yes
_fly_ok?:yes
The sky cannot be reached from all locations, but it is still highly accessible. Usually the way to reach it is to type up, u, fly, or sky. Getting back down again is usually done by typing down, d, or land.
For the more sci-fi oriented, you can travel to FurryMuck's region of Outer Space, and beyond to other systems and planets. Travelling in Outer Space is usually a little tricky and involves owning a spaceship of some sort. Since spaceships need to be built, there are also public spaceships available which anyone can use. Space can be reached from a number of places, the most mainstream of which is Mos Ottersley Spaceport (also known as MOS). MOS can be reached via taxi, and while there, consult the Visitor's Center. The public spaceships can be summoned from the Landing Bay area.
It is possible to build a vehicle for yourself to travel around in. Vehicles are only allowed to move through specific land routes (thus preventing someone from driving a jet engine into your living room), but can also fly through the sky and into space.
Vehicles are somewhat complex to build and involve some familiarity with working with programs. The best way to build a vehicle is to type programs drive, which is a good starting-point. More importantly, have someone around who has already built a vehicle who is willing to answer your questions.
The region of Outer Space requires spaceship vehicles which utilize more specialized space-oriented programs which are not designed for land or air vehicles. To learn about these, visit MOS (see above).
There are tons of ways to get from place to place in general; like entering a strange portal you come across, or typing the name of an exit attached to an object someone has given you. Some rooms are programmed to automatically "kick you out" after a certain period of time.
In some places, there are extra ways to travel around. At one point, FurryMuck had a rather spectacular real-time subway system, which was the first working mass transit system involving a vehicle. This is now gone, but it became the precursor of the FTA (Furry Transit Authority), whose Trolley Stops are located at a number of locations. Similarly, Greywolf's Shuttle Bus services several places in the Wolf Run Road area, and Pounce's River has its own internal Water Taxi service.
The Drachenswald region has two extra features for travel. In the Enchanted Forest, you can type mapstone, and you'll pick up a magic stone which tells you who lives in the local area. Or you can use the Drachenswald Pathfinder: just type find and you get instructions on finding your way to specific homes.
whereis <player>
This command may tell you the name of the room that another player is
currently located in. The other player may be informed of your
inquiry when you do this. Most people do not use this command
because it upsets a sense of personal privacy, and even if you do
get the name of the room someone else is in, often you have no idea
how to travel there. For instructions, type: whereis #help .
ride (also known as carry or hopon)
This command allows you to carry one or more people along with you:
You do the walking, and they automatically follow along. Type
ride #help to get instructions. One of the more bizarre uses
of this command is to get a large group of people together to form
a conga line.
run <path>
If you know where you want to go and how to get there, you can run
to the location quickly without your screen filling up with the
descriptions of every room you have to pass through. For instance:
run n,n,ee,down,w. Some exits and rooms are locked so as to
prevent people from running through them. For instructions, type
both run and look run.
nav <search string>
Short for Navigate, this program allows you to search for directions
on how to reach another location. For instance, if you knew there was
a pool somewhere nearby, and that the name of the room had the word
"pool" in it, you could type nav pool and the program would look up
to six rooms away for it, and would then tell you how to get there,
as long as the path had standard exit names. Type nav #help for
instructions.
meet (also known as mjoin or msummon)
The Meet program allows you to teleport yourself to a friend or vice-
versa, so that your friend comes to you. Type meet for instructions.
map
In some locations, you can type map and your screen will be filled by
an ascii map, showing nearby areas and indicating your position with
an X. Maps are only available in certain regions, although they
are also set up in various houses and other buildings.
It is difficult for this document to describe which areas of FurryMuck are "popular", mostly because popular areas come and go like trends. Any list that could be offered would quickly become obsolete. The (biased) list below doesn't do justice to all the places to visit, but contains the most long-lasting popular areas to gather or explore:
West Corner of the Park, and the whole park in general
Underground Nexus, and the Underground Inn
Adventureland (which contains puzzles to solve)
Palace of Dragons (PoD) Truth or Dare (T|D) pools
Cafe Rose
The Temptation Ice Cream Parlor
Most of these places are within a short walking distance from the Park, and all are accessible by Taxi and JumpRoom.
Another way to find popular locations is to use the WhereAre command, which tells you some of the places where people are currently gathered. To use it, just type whereare or wa for short. Typing wa #dir may offer directions to the popular locations. Instructions are available by typing wa #help.
But by far the best way to learn about popular areas is to make friends with other people! Once you belong to a circle of friends, you'll eventually find your own little nook or nooks to gather in, where you can always expect to find someone to talk with.
Because FurryMuck is so huge, you'd expect it to be next to impossible to "logically" picture yourself travelling from point A to point B. Admittedly, yes, all large MU* systems are messy, maze-likes places to travel around in.
But FurryMuck contains a good deal of cohesion. There is a distinct geography present, though virtual it be. The core of FurryMuck is its Park, out of which stretch four streets for each compass direction. Around these streets are cross-streets, and beyond those, is the countryside.
Northwards is Henson Lake, the Great Northern Forest, mountain ranges, and the Arctic. As you go west you pass forests, the Savannah grasslands and the region of Drachenswald until you reach the shores of the great Dragon Sea and Western Ocean. To the east and south are more forests which are then bounded by a large desert. Also to the east is Pounce's River, which travels south and slowly turns west until it too reaches the Ocean.
But that's not even the start of it! There are myriad "pocket worlds" that people have created, accessible by portals or by teleportation, and there's outer space, too. And not only are geographical regions the only places to explore, but so are castles, caves, and houses. There are "theme" areas, shopping stores, restaurants, amusement areas, and places where weekly events happen or where special-interest groups occasionally meet.
A note on exploration ethics, however: some people like having unexpected visitors exploring their houses, and some don't, but you can never tell. As a rule, people leave their front doors unlocked for the sake of convenience and because of a sense of community trust. Respect another person's house as you would want them to respect yours: don't steal things from houses, and don't abuse whatever facilities you may stumble across (some people have alarms installed). Above all, try to stay out of what seems to be someone else's "personal" room - everyone likes to have a place where they can be by themselves for their own quiet and comfort.
Exploring, like everything, improves with experience. Rooms may have hidden exits, mentioned only in the description. Often, finding your way out of a room can be as difficult as finding your way in. To fully appreciate the beauty of FurryMuck, look at everything. Try looking at things mentioned in the room direction, and try looking at exits too. Try using the map command, and go where you want to go.
FurryMuck has grown so huge that it is an unfortunate fact that most people teleport from place to place instead of walking. While this does save time and takes less typing, by jumping from point A to point F you miss points B,C,D and E - places which people have invested creative energy into, which they'd like to share with everyone else. So, every now and then, take some time out to explore and look around! It's amazing what you can find out there!
To facilitate exploration, maps of FurryMuck have been made in GIF format. While they don't purport to show every location, they do show the general geography and cohesion which exists. Rooms also come and go, so the GIF maps cannot guarantee 100% accuracy as time goes on; but the main routes will generally always remain constant.
The maps are available from the Avatar FTP site at avatar.snc.edu , in the /pub/furry/images/downloads/f directory. The file names are fmap01.gif, fmap02.gif, fmap03.gif, and so on. These maps have not been copywritten, and anyone is free to take one and upload an updated version!
Enjoy FurryMuck, and happy exploring!
-- Dronon / Tom Turrittin, August 1996
My great thanks to Mel White and everyone else I pestered while creating this document. :)