The macintosh MOO server is a port of the 1.7.6 release of the MOO server from xerox parc. This code is supposed to be rolled into some future version of the MOO server, but judging from features they intend to include, in my opinion, its not likely.
Installation of the MOO server
First, pick a directory on a machine that has at least 8 megabytes of ram. The MOO server runs best when given a 'large' partition, like 6 megabytes. This depends on the database you are running, so experiment.
Once you have your directory picked out, unpack the MooServer.SEA and UpdatedDB.SEA files. These are the server and database, respectively. You start the server by opening the database file. This will take a few minutes; its reading the database. Once you have control of the machine back, you can connect to the database.
Unpack the "Moo.SEA" file, which is the client application. Using this application, you can connect to the Moo server. The server posts itself as "LambdaMoo" on an appletalk network. If you use the "Connect" menu item in the client program (Moo) you will get a standard PPC program linking dialog. Select LambdaMoo on the server machine, and log in. Once you've set up the database, log in as 'bob', no password.
Features
The initial database is set up to be an image of the Orion Network Systems offices. There are a few populated cubes, etc. If you want to pare it down and rebuild, try 'make-core-database', which will blow away everything except a single room and a single player. From there you can start building your own virtual world.
There is lots of help. If you get stuck, try the help command. Also, there are documents available from ftp.parc.xerox that will tell you about the programming language, and give you hints about creating your own virtual world.
Feel free to email me if you run into problems installing it, or if you have any other questions. You can also email pavel@xerox.com, who knows lots more than me about setting up virtual worlds, programming the thing, etc.
Caveats
When the server first starts up, it takes a long time to read the database. While its doing this, the machine is locked up. Don't worry, it will come back. Also, when the database is being written out (every hour) the machine locks up. This is kinda annoying, but the MOO server was designed to run under UNIX, and the mac doesn't have a preemptive scheduler like UNIX.
The server will create a LOG file with the same prefix as the core database name, suffixed by .log. You can keep track of what your users are doing with this.
When the system dumps the database, it will dump it into a file with the same name as the database, suffixed by '.core'. Thats the current copy. When you go to restart after a shutdown, use that one rather than the original one. I just rename the original one to LambdaCore.OLD, and rename the core to the original name. The core contains all of your changes to the database, so if you lose it, your users will lose all changes made (new verbs added, objects created, movements, etc). I usually back up the core to another disk once a day in case of disk failures. That way, you will only lose a few changes.
