How to use Potato MU Client

[skew]

Potato is the best MU client, but some people struggle to use it. The documentation on the site is a little difficult to follow, and some of the features are not very intuitive. As such, I'm putting together a little How To so we can all use the best MU client.

Why's it the best? Easy. It has two input windows. That means when you're in the middle of Hot TS and get paged a dank meme, you don't have to ctrl+a ctrl+x to save your half-written pose while you respond to @tragedyjones about how dank his memes are.

Example:

Sweet right? Okay, so, set up isn't very hard. Input a name, address, port for your MU. It'll then open the world configuration menu.

"Worlds" are self contained configuration thingies within Potato. You can configure the default world ("Options" -> "Configure Program Settings") as well as Program Settings, and all the future Worlds you create will pull from the default. Me? I just copy my existing world and modify it.

Within Program Settings, here's some things that are useful:

Under Program Settings -> Misc Settings
Start Maximized? (probably uncheck that)

Within World settings ("Options" -> "Configure Worlds"), here's some things that are useful:

Basics:

• Select Default Char (only after you have added a char)

Characters:

• Add your character. Add multiple. The world can be set to auto-connect to the default character. If you want multiple auto connects to multiple characters, you create multiple worlds.

Display/Ansi, Colors and Fonts:

• Configure your font. Pretty simple.

Display/Miscellaneous:

• This is where you save the Wrap Text size! Go in here, choose "Current Window Size"
• Echo Sent Commands? will make sure your text doesn't echo. Unless you want it to... weirdo.
• Two Input Windows? Uncheck if you hate the best things in life.

Activity Settings:

• Flash Taskbar? This will make if flash when there's activity.
• Show activity, clear activity. This will add a yellow "New Activity" marker on the screen that's held until there's a new, New Activity marker (if you have it clear).

So, that should get you in! Now, some things that might be useful to you...

Edit/Convert...

• Convert Returns to %r - If you copy and paste text into the input box, you can run this command to remove the lines.
• Escape Special Chars - this applies the \ in front of all special characters so they don't get read by the MU code.

Logging

• You can turn this on to easily log a current scene. You can even have it grab everything in the cache. I don't use it, though, because I auto-log! I'll show you how to do that later.

Tools

• Text Editor - Opens a separate window for you to input text. This is useful to have a big writing area. You can then choose to send this text into the window. Just make sure you send it to THE CORRECT WORLD. It's active for the world that was open when you clicked it, not the world that's currently selected.

So, that's it for now... next post will be logging, then next will be events and spawn windows.

EDIT:

I did a write up on how to use spellchecking within Potato on a separate thread. Just for organizational sake, it's here: http://musoapbox.net/topic/840/how-to-use-spellcheck-on-potato-mu-client

[skew]

How to Log in Potato

The simplest way to log is to use the built in logging feature.

Logging -> Show Log Window

• Include Buffer From: - This will capture everything that's currently in the buffer. If you were not already logging, it will capture everything that's in your back scroll. So, basically, it's just like "Save as..." and saves everything.
• You will input where you what the file saved and waht to name it.

There is another option, of course, and this is what I use. Potato can be set up to automatically start logging. It starts when you connect and stops when you disconnect (or choose to end the log) and captures everything that comes through. Each world will have it's own file. I've been logging for years and I have about 150mb of text file saved, so don't worry about space.

Auto Logging

1. Go to "Options" -> "Configure World"
2. Choose "Auto-Sends" on the left.
3. Under "Send upon first connect, before Login info:" input something like the following...

/log -append 1 -leave 1 -- [/get _name]-[/get _char]-[/time %Y-%m-%d].txt

Now to break that down... /log enables logging. Append means it will append an existing file if it finds one (such as if you close out and come back in on the same day). Get name will get the name of the world, get char will get the character you are logged in as, and the time command will add in the year, month, and date.

This command will create a new .txt file in the same location that Potato.exe is, and that file will be named world-char_name-yy/mm/dd.txt.

When you connect, you should see something like...

Now logging to "C:\Location_Of_Potato\Eldritch-Joey-2016-02-09.txt".

Now remember if you are creating multiple worlds, you will need to copy your world and edit, or input the above command into each world's Auto-Sends. Easy, yeah?

[Arkandel]

@skew The one thing that's always kept me from Potato is the as-you-type spellchecking. That and spawned windows are my dealbreakers.

[skew]

How to create events in Potato

So, you want Potato to do something to the stuff that appears on screen? Things such as highlighting, color changing, spawn windows... You do that here.

Go to "Options" -> "Global Events"

This is the global events window. There's a whole lot of crap you'll see here, and I am not sure how to use all of it, but here's a few things...

The List

The left hand side of this window is a list. It executes in order as the items appear here. If a pattern is met, it will run the event. If not, it will skip. You have the option to check "Continue?" to mark if you want the program to continue down the list. Pay attention to this, because if you want two things to happen to a single line of text (say, highlight your name and send it to a spawn window) you will need to have the "Continue?" option checked. The arrows at the bottom allow you to move items up and down the list.

Exclude from Activity Alert

While multi-tasking, or multi-windowing, I would often wait for my client to flash and let me know my RP partner had responded. Then I noticed that various auto-commands, channels, etc, would set my window flashing. I did not want to ignore these things, but I definitely did NOT want them flashing at me.

As you can see here, this will watch for incoming text that looks like "<Watch> *" where the * represents anything at all. I have "Activity?" checked, which means it will omit from the activity monitor. This means that whenever my watch command goes off ("<Watch> Ganymede has connected.") it will still show on my screen as text, but it won't flash the task bar/window/whatever.

Highlight Names

Note the type. Contains instead of wildcard. Idk why, but this is how it works. This will make the given word (Betsy) show bright white. Note also that I do NOT have "Continue?" checked. This means that once this event runs, it won't continue down the list. That also means that if I have the activity alert on channels suppressed, if this event comes first, it will process this event first, then never reach the second event. Meaning, if someone says "Betsy" on channel, it will flash.

Spawn windows

If I were to input a different name in "To:" it would output to a different window. I can have many channels, for OOC, pages, only certain channels, all channels, whatever I want. This game uses brackets around their channels, and also around their OOC talk. That means I'll need a separate event for [OOC], wherein I do absolutely nothing, save have it existing. It will hit the [OOC] first, then stop, and not move OOC talk to the spawn window. For all text that does not start with "[OOC]", it will continue.

The spawn windows will appear below the list of worlds, and activity will show in the spawn window with an orange circle:

[Sanguine]

When I use Potato on HeroMux it freezes on certain commends, the other day I hit +ooc , froze right up. If anyone knows a fix for this, I'd be ever so grateful.

[Alzie]

I feel like you should put this caveat in for flash Taskbar. It doesn't just flash the Taskbar, it takes focus, may Satan curse the developers soul.

[Arkandel]

@Alzie said:

I feel like you should put this caveat in for flash Taskbar. It doesn't just flash the Taskbar, it takes focus, may Satan curse the developers soul.

What kind of monster does that?

[skew]

@Alzie Does it? I don't seem to recall that ever happening. I know I've watched it flashed while I was in the middle of typing into Skype or whatever else, and there's been no loss of my cursor or whatever. I could just be misunderstanding what you mean back takes focus.

@Sanguine Never heard of anything like that. Has anyone else complained about it? The +ooc is a command is something MU-side, not client-side, so I can't imagine it matters to Potato Client, not unless what data is sent to the client by the MU causes it to freeze. Is there something strange about the OOC room? Some weird stuff running inside of it? I am assuming, of course, typing +ooc takes you to the OOC room.

[Alzie]

@skew As of the latest version, it most certainly does. It even snaps to fore. Especially on linux. It harbors a special kind of hate for linux I guess. It's easy enough to stop mind you, I still use the client, it's just slightly annoying.

[skew]

@Alzie I just tested, it does no such thing on Windows. Sorry Linux.

[juke]

Just out of curiosity: why do the people who prefer this to other clients prefer it over, say, beipmu, specifically?

I use and love beip, and it seems so much more intuitive to me, but maybe there's something I'm not seeing.

[skew]

@juke I can't tell from the screenshots on the page... Does BeipMU have two text input windows? (Picture of it in potato is the first screen shot in the first post I made.) I see two windows, but one appears to hold connection information, and isn't used for input?

[Arkandel]

BeipMU

Spawn windows and correct-as-you-type spell checking. That's where it's at.

[skew]

@Arkandel said:

correct-as-you-type spell checking.

Or maybe stop spelling things incorreclty! God.

[juke]

@skew It does not, as far as I know, though the dev has added things on request, so who knows what the future holds. The second field is actually your input history.

Spawn windows drive me nuts, and I don't really need the spell-check, though that is a pretty cool feature. Thanks for the answers; I guess I don't have to worry that I'm missing anything I would love to have!

[Three-Eyed Crow]

See, I couldn't deal with a lack of spawn windows at this point. The only thing I use them for are channels, but I'm at a point where channel spam in my RP window drives me crazy and I inevitably lose/miss things if they're all on the same screen. I know some people keep an alt logged for the sole purpose of being on channels while their other char is RPing, but I alt pretty sparingly.

[skew]

@Three-Eyed-Crow I mute my channels, so they don't "flash". It cuts down on distraction. I then leave channels when I start RPing. Frankly, I just don't care what's being said, when I'm busy RPing. Plus, most games I've been on have logging enabled in the comsys channels, so you can always read back what you missed.

I don't use spawn windows, though. Drives me crazy, having more than one place to look.

[Arkandel]

@skew I spawn windows, set them so they don't flash but I still have the option of going over later. And if for any reason I decide to chat while doing other things - such as during a scene - I can do so without contaminating its backscroll with channel spam.

[Ninjakitten]

@skew said:

Why's it the best? Easy. It has two input windows. That means when you're in the middle of Hot TS and get paged a dank meme, you don't have to ctrl+a ctrl+x to save your half-written pose while you respond to @tragedyjones about how dank his memes are.

...just in case anyone using SimpleMU is unaware, you don't have to ctrl-a ctrl-x in it, either. Hit ESC, write and send your new thing, then ctrl-p twice and you have the thing you escaped right there again. Keeps you from accidentally losing it by copying something else.

On Potato, can you switch between your two input windows without using the mouse? I didn't really explore that feature a lot back when I was trying it out, but it wouldn't really work for me if you have to click.

Also, I seem to recall a friend of mine went back to SimpleMU because logging the main window for a world wasn't keeping in the text from the spawn windows as well, but that was a couple-few years ago. I see 'omit from logs' is an option in that event definition screen, which suggests unless you click it you do get the stuff in your log -- but that could just be an option for things you gag, and spawn windows could still be not-logged by default, so: does it log your spawns?

I'm almost certainly going to keep using SimpleMU until I can't, but I'm hoping when/if that day comes Potato'll be a replacement I can cope with...

[Ganymede]

@Ninjakitten said:

On Potato, can you switch between your two input windows without using the mouse? I didn't really explore that feature a lot back when I was trying it out, but it wouldn't really work for me if you have to click.

Pretty sure you can use Tab and Shift+Tab to move back and forth.