Notice: Please discover that the bidding course of ends this 12 months at 8:00 PM Eastern time on Friday evening, Feb 29th 2008 (unlike previous years when bidding ended at midnight). This time change was requested by several folks last yr to permit MUDs in Europe a greater likelihood to bid. The time and day of the week was chosen to be as truthful as attainable to cowl MUDs in both the U.S. Europe (the principle customers of zMUD/CMUD).For the 2008 icon bidding course of, you might be bidding on icons for Both zMUD AND CMUD. In different phrases, the top ten bids that win will get their icons loaded into each zMUD and the brand new CMUD shopper that was released last 12 months. What does this mean? It implies that the icon bids for 2008 are far more necessary than prior to now. Icons are only installed into zMUD and CMUD when the software is first installed.Thus, if somebody is already a user of zMUD, they solely see the icons that have been installed when they first ran zMUD and won't see any new icons. For instance, in the event that they purchased zMUD in 2005, then they only see the 2005 top-ten icons and never the 2008 icons. However since Each set up of the brand new CMUD shopper is considered a brand new install, Everybody who installs CMUD this year will get the brand new 2008 high-ten icons, no matter whether or not they were utilizing zMUD in the past or not. Since over 5,000 customers are expected to upgrade to CMUD this year (based mostly upon past upgrade statistics), that's 5,000 current zMUD prospects that can see your 2008 icons in CMUD who wouldn't have seen your icons in the event that they kept using zMUD.So, in a way, you are getting double-value for your icon bids in 2008. Whether or not or not we proceed to make the highest-ten icons in zMUD and CMUD the identical in future years depends upon the fraction of people nonetheless using zMUD instead of CMUD. CMUD has a brand new feature designed to learn the MUDs with startup icons. When a player connects to your MUD, a Telnet option called TERMTYPE can be utilized to determine what sort of "terminal" the participant is connecting with. After they connect utilizing zMUD, a TERMTYPE of "zmud" is shipped to the MUD. With the brand new version of CMUD, a participant connecting to your MUD will return a TERMTYPE of "cmud".However, if they connected by clicking one of many startup icons, then CMUD will return a TERMTYPE of "cmudicon". This will enable MUDs to track the proportion of players utilizing the completely different MUD purchasers and to determine the effectiveness of the startup icons. When someone starts zMUD or CMUD to play a MUD, the primary display screen they see is the character choice display. These icons are added to this screen when the participant first installs zMUD/CMUD and runs it for the primary time. The primary ten icons are for particular person MUDs who win the yearly bidding course of. The ten MUD-particular icons had been bought by every particular person MUD. When the player clicks on one of many icons, a customized textual content file for that MUD seems within the left-hand panel.In CMUD, the customized text file is proven at the bottom of the icon window, as shown in the above CMUD image (the example reveals clicking on the Medievia icon). The participant can also click the brand new button and see the entire checklist of MUDs from the MUD Connector. However, many new gamers will obviously just click on one of the MUD icons on the primary display. Thus, these startup icons in zMUD and CMUD generate a big quantity of recent gamers connecting to the MUDs which have bought icons. MUD/CMUD icons characterize the best manner for you to promote your MUD and produce new players to your MUD. The participant will get to see your custom icon, and might click on on it to learn extra about your MUD.Since they are already working zMUD/CMUD intending to select a MUD to play, new gamers naturally begin from the listing of MUDs that they see on this screen. This is far past buying banners for web sites and hoping that potential gamers click on the icon. Right here you might be getting players that have already got a excessive-quality MUD client and are searching for a place to play. Every icon is limited to 32 x 32 pixels and 256 colours. Actually, you solely get 240 colors since 16 colours are reserved for the usual Home windows coloration palette.Icons may be sent in either BMP, GIF, or JPG formats. Animated GIF images are usually not supported. The textual content file that accompanies the icon might be any size. The textual content file shall be word-wrapped to fit into the display panel in zMUD and CMUD. PKG package deal file for CMUD. That is the settings file that incorporates the beginning triggers, aliases, macros, and many others. For instance, you possibly can pre-outline a MUD display screen that already has graphical gauges for hp, mana, and so on, in addition to a graphical compass that players can click on to maneuver them in numerous instructions on the MUD. MUD file for zMUD, this identical file will likely be used by CMUD and automatically converted into the brand new package deal format.ZFG mapper configuration file. This file is used to configure the zMUD/CMUD automapper in order that the player does not need to mess with it themselves. If you happen to assist the automapper and wish to help new players get started, offering the ZFG configuration file is a great way to assist. Who actually sees these icons? As mentioned above, these icons are installed while you run zMUD or CMUD for the very first time.After that, the startup icons are by no means up to date. We felt that we by no means needed to interfere with the players icons after they started using the MUD client. Including or updating icons behind the scenes robotically would annoy many purchasers. So, only new players who are running zMUD or CMUD for the primary time will get the present set of icons. However, to draw new gamers to your MUD, that is just what you need.Experienced MUD gamers both already have a longtime character on a MUD that they are playing, or they're playing on the identical MUD as their mates. It's really the brand new gamers who've never played a MUD earlier than that have no idea the place to begin and need some instructions. Your entire function of those startup icons is to offer a direction for model new gamers. With out these icons, a new MUD player would must click the brand new button after which browse the checklist of over 2,000 MUDs.This can be very intimidating for brand spanking new gamers. Even if they find a MUD they're involved in, they may try to connect with it to find that the MUD not exists, or is just in the testing phase, or solely has a small number of people playing it. By offering startup icons for a few of the main MUDs on the web, we're directing model new gamers to nicely-established MUDs that are inclined to have a number of gamers. A brand new player is more more likely to get help on one of these MUDs and get addicted, slightly than getting discouraged and by no means attempting MUDs once more in the future. To assist determine how many new players may probably see your icon, I have collected some statistics on current zMUD and CMUD utilization.At present (January 2008), there are about 117,000 activations of zMUD per day, and about 13,000 activations of CMUD per day. Out of these, 200 per day are model new users installing zMUD or CMUD for the first time, or reinstalling a newer version from scratch. These 200 activations per day will get the current set of startup icons. As soon as these new users have downloaded your icon, they will see your icon every time they run zMUD or CMUD till they manually delete the icon. Though your icon bid solely lasts for a yr, anyone that already has your icon will continue to view it till deleted.The startup icons are only changed when zMUD or CMUD is first put in or if the person has deleted their startup.ini file. Thus, the longer your icon is active, the extra users who will proceed to see your MUD icon. For example, in case your icon is lively for a year (the normal bid interval), your icon could have been installed on roughly 70,000 new user systems. In zMUD there is no approach to track actual "click-by way of" charges for startup icons (besides on the MUD itself), these statistics present the nice value for getting your MUD icon into the zMUD startup display screen and holding it there for an extended period of time.In CMUD you can observe the number of players utilizing the startup icon using the TERMTYPE telnet choice and searching for the "cmudicon" response. In 2006 (Feb 2006-Feb 2007), the top-ten icons had been downloaded a complete of 82,132 times in zMUD, and 8,392 in CMUD (which was first launched in June-2006). In 2007 (Feb 2007-Feb 2008), the top-ten icons were downloaded a complete of 62,730 in zMUD and 15,548 in CMUD.What are you bidding for? Once JOMCUCI casino added the aptitude for customized icons within the zMUD startup screen, I decided early that I was not going to "spam" the customer with heaps and plenty of icons. After all, if there are too many icons listed, then it isn't any higher than simply looking at all the MUD checklist. A complete of ten MUD icon slots are available for bidding. Clearly there is loads of demand for these ten icon slots.After all, there are thousands of MUDs on the web who would love to get an icon in zMUD/CMUD and improve their new participant base. When these icons were first added in 2004, I contacted a few of the bigger MUDs who had done promoting enterprise with Zugg Software program previously. These MUDs each paid $1200 for one-year of icon display in zMUD. The order of the icons listed was determined by who paid first (first come, first served). I solely needed to contact ten MUDs before I had filled all eight of the original icon slots.Throughout the following 12 months I used to be contacted by many different MUDs that puzzled how you can get their MUD icon added to zMUD. It became clear that this was going to be very aggressive and that I might now not just contact MUDs that I had worked with in the past. So, starting in 2005 we carried out a bidding course of for the ten icon slots. Just like e-Bay, every MUD would submit a bid for how a lot they had been keen to pay for one of the ten icon slots in zMUD.Once the bid was over, the top ten bids could be chosen to fill the ten icon slots. The order of the icons can be determined by the value of the bid, with the highest bid listed first. In 2005, the top icon bid was for $4000 (Nodeka), and the tenth icon bid was for $1100 (Lusternia). In 2006, the top icon bid was for $5010 (Medievia), and the tenth icon bid was for $1201 (Arctic). In 2007, the top icon bid was for $3000 (RetroMUD), and the tenth icon bid was for $1620 (Misplaced Needs).The primary objective of the startup icons is to drive new MUD gamers to well-established MUDs so that they have a good first expertise. We want new players to come back for extra. We don't need them to get discouraged or intimidated and go back to enjoying World of Warcraft or their PlayStation. I am not doing this simply to generate profits. The cost of the icons is needed to offer a fair manner for numerous MUDs to compete for a very limited number of icon slots. It's true that most MUDs are free and don't have a lot of money.Thus, these icon slots tend to be dominated by giant MUDs, or MUDs that charge money. Nevertheless, from the perspective of attracting new gamers to well-established MUDs, this is definitely desireable. While there are always exceptions, in general the MUDs that can afford a zMUD/CMUD icon are good locations for brand spanking new players to start. I perceive that there are many many top quality MUDs who simply cannot afford this kind of advertising, and i apologize that there isn't a greater technique to handle this.