2006-02-11
Version 2.5
Fixed a major bug in minimissions where players would sometimes end up in the void if they were in cloned ships when the mission expired.
Smith will now announce when a player quits.
Numerous minor fixes and improvements.
2005-01-13
Version 2.4.1
You can now sell large objects that are in your quarters. See the new furniture removal tags available from the quartermaster.
Various minor fixes, particularly in banning, timezones, birthdays, and resetting.
2004-12-25
Merry Christmas from the Cryosphere!
To celebrate, the crew have arranged for Father Christmas to visit. He will be in the Restaurant on level2 and will give out presents.
2004-12-07
Cryosphere version 2.4
Boards are now much funkier. You can read any of the public boards from anywhere using the commands 'scan all' and 'message any' (which can be usually abbreviated to 'scan' and 'message'). See info boards.
Passwords can now be reset by admins for players who are not logged in.
The Canister mission is now more puzzling.
As a follow-up to the last release's unification of commlines, you can now use 'smilies' and targetted says on commlines just as you can in says.
You can now use minfo on minis as well as full missions to find out basic info about any mission before you accept it.
e.g. 'minfo cargo'
Your character will now be auto-saved every hour.
If you're not sure which mission to try next, let the mud suggest one for you...
The newspaper is now under new management. Buy a copy of the new issue from the Newsagent on the Cryosphere while stocks last!
There have also been countless bug and typo fixes, as well as lots of work behind the scenes which although is not visible within the game, it is crucial for future progress and new features. So a big thanks to all who have contributed over the last few months.
2004-04-03
Cryosphere version 2.3
New content: Hijack mission, Cargo mini, Zoo simulator game.
Improvements to several of the training simulator programs. Updates to several missions. The [intercom] is now a normal comm channel, so you can use actions on it. Lots of bugs have been fixed, and many player requests have been added.
Lots of actions have been updated. We have better handling of drunk and mogged people. We have created mission solutions (obviously only visible to Senior Officers) so that any immortal should be able to help any player with any mission now.
Lots of mobiles have new replies to being told things. The cryosphere gym has been opened on level 2 with limited equipment at the moment, watch this space.
Finally, a huge thanks to Charli and Picayune for writing so many mission solutions, and to everyone else who has put in so much time getting this new version finished in time.
2003-09-28
Cryosphere version 2.2
There is now a personal actions system, called MyAct. It allows all players to create their own actions, assuming you can follow the instructions in info myact.
Alpha Centauri now has a wilderness and the Old Town has been linked into it, as has the new Hangar mission. This is the first mission offered by a government other than the British.
There is a new type of minimission - Bulb.
More mortal ranks have been added. This means Commander is now grade 23, not grade 18. This stops the gaps between ranks being quite so ridicously large as they were getting.
Client updates: The Connect 4 and Othello games will now appear in a subwindow in ZMUD. MXP clients like mushclient and ZMUD now operate in 256-colour mode. With mushclient, unnecessary prompts will no longer be displayed on screen.
Who/users etc are much nicer, and there's a new multiwho command that lets you pick and choose what columns you want.
Emergency tickets off Eden and New Lyon are now available from the British Embassy and the Canadian Consulate.
'Sit chair' will now sit upon the first vacant chair it finds, if there are any.
We can turn you into a pumpkin.
Thanks to Boyde, Charli, Daz, Gaz, Magnus, Mariusz, Orange, plett, Secret, and Serriadh [and to anyone I forgot] for their help on this version.
2003-04-21
MusicMUD 2.1.2 released
http://www.evilmagic.org/. This is the codebase we are currently running (with a few improvements) but with Cryosphere-specific stuff cut out, and a small demonstration world. At the moment comes with very patchy docs indeed (so will only be of use to people who have previously built for Cryo), but this will be fixed at some point.
2003-03-23
Version 2.1
Durians!
There is a new type of minimission (bikes) by Mariusz. The Recover and Mercury missions have undergone small revamps.
The Wilderness code has been generalised (thanks to plett), this means we will be able to bring you wildernesses on planets other than Skinner and Livingstone, with a greater variety of terrain types.
Smuggling is implemented at long last. But we won't tell you how.
Support for the telnet MULTIPLEX option, (only supported by CVS versions of crystal so far, but hey). This makes it so when you are in the connect4 or othello rooms, there is a popup/overlaid window on your screen that always displays the current state of the game.
We have a new bug tracker, written by plett. This actually uses SQL as opposed to the previous one, which used far too many flat files.
All the remaining scripting has been converted to lua.
The mailer and boards now remember what messages you've actually read! New messages are indicated by a * next to them in the list, and you only get told that the board has new messages if it actually does! Deleted mails are no longer deleted immediately, but when you 'q'uit from the mailer - and so you can 'x' to abandon all changes, or 'u'ndelete specific ones.
We have an ignore command - you can use this to ignore anyone you like.
There's a tip of the day system - you get a tip on login, and you can view a random tip with the tip command.
There are Left Luggage Offices on Livingstone and New Southampton. You can rent one for an hour and keep whatever stuff you like safe. After the hour is up, all the objects left will be deleted.
The map for level2 now has a magical "you are here" indicator!
When you revive after being dead, you'll be wrapped in a hospital blanket, asleep on a hospital bed. The Alphacent hospital is now hooked in so if you die on alphacent you revive there.
We have a 'qinv' (quickinv) command, which is a briefer version of the inventory command.
The mud now has timezone support. Set your timezone with the timezone command. It should be long unix-style name, for example Europe/London, Europe/Paris, America/New_York, America/Los_Angeles.
There is full-text-search for actions. 'Action *smile*' to see a list of all actions with the word smile in them.
ipv6 support. Hostname is ipv6.cryosphere.net.
2002-02-25
The Night of the Long Knives
Congratulations to Serriadh, Mariusz, and Secret on their promotions!
2002-12-05
Version 2.0.11
New missions : Tea, by Mariusz and Prison by Orange, and a new type of minimission: generalised courier minis.
Two new games: Connect 4 and Othello. See the Casino, rimwards from Muon's bar. Thanks to plett and Serriadh.
We've moved the Academy to be on the station, to try to reduce the sense of isolation for newbies.
Lifts work. Type 'list' in a lift to see the floors, and then 'say 0' to get to the ground floor, 'say 1' for the first floor, etc.
2002-11-24
Version 2.0.10
http://cryosphere.net/telnet.php3?mccp=1&list=1 for a list of clients that support MCCP.
Also, we now have support for MXP (Mud Extension Protocol). This basically makes lots of references to objects, exits, players, mobiles, and so on, hyperlinks. With this, you can accept a mission or buy an item from a shop just with a few clicks of the mouse. Client support is very limited : just ZMUD and Mushclient so far.
Various bugfixes and minor updates. Nothing really very significant.
2002-10-01
Version 2.0.9 has arrived.
We have a new mission, Rogue, by Secret.
More bits of the mud has have been converted into the new scripting language. Academy, Invincible, Medical, Ocean, as well as a few actions.
You can accept by quest name now at a board.
Corpses rot (takes about half an hour or so to vanish entirely).
We've solved the problem of which kevin. In a tell, Kevin1 is the player kevin, if he is on, and then Kevin2 is the mobile kevin. You can also do "far.kevin" and "near.kevin" to specify the kevin who isn't here and one who isn't here.
say orange> Hello?" is the same as "sayto orange Hello?"
You can consider equipment to see how good it is.
Who and whoname will be narrower when possible. Many other cosmetic changes have been made.
Nasty space collapsing doesn't happen. You can type "say - -" and it will have two spaces in between the -s.
When a zone is reset, equipment and so on that has been left it in will be removed.
Starport boards now show arrivals.
2002-08-28
New web page design
A fairly major behind-the-scenes facelift. CSS now used everywhere. Links to the encyclopedia will have broken. The info/help/policy file viewer's been rewritten from scratch.
2002-08-18
2.0.8
2002-08-05
2.0.7
2002-07-27
2.0.6
2002-07-21
2.0.5
2002-07-15
2.0.4
2002-07-08
2.0.3.1
2002-07-06
2.0.3
2002-06-20
2.0.2.
2002-06-15
2.0.1 has landed. This version has over 2.0 -
2002-06-07
Hot on the heels of version 1.5 comes version 2.0! We really wanted to move to this straight away, but couldn't resist letting you have some of the features earlier.
The combat engine has undergone a total revamp. This project has been long in the making, but we've finally done it.
The Ocean mission by Orange has been added. This mission, set on Livingstone, is the replacement for the old Livingstone quest.
There's a "whoname" command now. And a "sayto", although why you'd want that I'm not quite sure.
Shops won't just buy anything back. A clothing shop will only buy clothes, a bar won't buy anything. Anything you do sell to a shop that doesn't usually stock will be added to the stock list. You might find it tricky finding people to buy Contraband items, though.
There's a rumour that the Cryosphere is just a game. You can prove that right by trying 'endprogram' outside of a simulator, courtesy of Gaz and Twiglet.
A number of core commands have been given a fresh lick of paint, including look, inventory, size, value and map.
Magic mushrooms may make you trip. (If you just take random ones from the Livingstone forest you may die, but there is of course a way round this). You can now interact with fluffinexol-inspired bunnies. Thanks to Sniper for the zone-work on this.
Most commands that take 'all fish' also take 'all but fish', too. 'take all but fish' would pick up everything here apart from any fish.
On some mud clients (putty, crt, xterm, and screen), the Cryosphere will set the title of the window to your current location. And on some (putty, xterm, crt, linux console, java), it will use line drawing characters for making tables. To turn these off do "lines off".
Skateboards!
The mud supports various different colour schemes. Just type "colour" to get a list of them.
And that's just the start of it - many bugs have been fixed, many small changes have been made, many help files have been updated.
The Cryosphere was brought to you by the number TWO and the players Bingo, Daz, Ellyll, Gaz, Mariusz, Orange, Plett, Secret, Serriadh, Sniper, Twiglet, and Zub
2002-03-30
Welcome to version 1.5 of the Cryosphere. This new improved version fixes many bugs and adds lots of new minor features, some of which are listed below.
New missions include Kazimierz by Yoru and Eviction by Orange, and two new minimissions. The old baddiel mission has been substantially renovated into the new Rescue mission by Gaz and Twiglet. A couple more minimissions are also available.
Two of the older missions, Luton by Orange, and Fraggles by Bingo, have been removed from the mission list, and can now be found in the Games Club on level 2 of the station instead.
You can now alias commands. For example, alias banana users will allow you to view the output of the users command by typing banana. Some actions, such as cower, can be used with an object as its target.Actions can now be used over the communication lines. e.g. gossip #cheer will show the cheer action to everyone that has gossip enabled.
Use of the map command has been altered slightly. Try using it on the Cryosphere itself!
Mobiles now leave corpes when slain. Don't indulge yourself on too much alcohol, it could be harmful to your health.
In outdoor planetary locations, there are now day and night periods. Use of away has changed slightly - you can just change away message by using it again, instead of coming back to your keyboard first. Back issues of the Cryosphere Daily Record can now be purchased from the newsagent at a reduced price. There should be a new edition any day now!
Of course, there are lots more behind-the-scenes systems that have been re-written and fixed, and lots of general tidying up.
Hope you enjoy the new version!
2001-09-24
In the next few days Cryosphere's IP address will change. To this end, DNS may take a while to get updated. If you find you cannot connect, try to connect to 152.78.189.236 instead. Port number remains as 6666.
2001-08-15
Congratulations to Sniper on his promotion to Commodore.
2001-07-20
Congratulations to Yoru and Twiglet on their promotions to Captain.
2001-07-17
We have made some changes to our DNS servers. This shouldn't affect you at all, but if you find that you can't get to cryosphere.org over the next few days then try mud.cryosphere.co.uk or fluffy.ecs.soton.ac.uk instead.
2001-06-29
Version 1.4.4 has landed. Features include -
many many other things
2001-06-22
Congratulations to everyone who got their results today.
2001-06-04
Welcome to version 1.4.3. Mostly minor changes - drinking alcohol causes people to be drunk. When you reconnect after being linkdead you will be shown what you missed... Updates to several missions and many bugfixes.
2001-05-21
Version 1.4.2 has arrived. The handling of wordwrapping has been greatly improved, "look" is now more concise about who is in the room when there is more than one person. "Buy" now works on the object name.
2001-04-29
Welcome to version 1.4.1. We have implemented a Justice System. It is now possible to attack mobiles in previously peaceful zones. Of course, the police may have an opinion about this. This applies to the Cryosphere, most of Livingstone, the more civilised parts of Skinner, and New Lyon.
The major new Mercury mission by Sniper has been installed. We've also added Recover mission by Orange.
A new edition of the Monthly Record is out. Make sure you read this if you are planning to do any missions - as usual you can get it from the Newsagents on Level 2.
Other random things include : we now have a "Who's on?" list on the website, and missions/mdone is now alphabetically sorted.
2001-04-28
Congratulations to Tinuviel on her promotion to Captain.
2001-04-21
We upgraded to version 1.4. This features player quarters, better handling of cloned items, chairs you can sit on, a new zone southwest of Livingstone (follow the road). We have also had major updates to the help - every command is now documented!
2001-04-20
Congratulations to Zub on his promotion to Captain.
2001-04-19
There is a new issue of the Cryosphere Monthly (formerly Daily) news out.
You can get it from the newsagents on level2, a snip at 2 credits.
2001-04-02
Version 1.3 swapped in featuring the Hospital mission, improvements to Academy, tweaks to most missions and the mission system in general.
2001-03-27
Civilians are implemented! You may 'RESIGN'. See help on that for more
info.
2001-03-26
http://cryosphere.org/
2001-03-18
We now have a "uin" command for setting your ICQ number. This will appear in "finger" information.
2001-01-26
Generally, yesterday's upgrade proceeded smoothly. A few minor hiccups were found, but nothing critical, and the mud stayed up 21 hours from the initial reboot into the new version, until we were forced to reboot to fix a minor cosmetic bug.
2001-01-25
To celebrate our second birthday, as promised, Cake is available for free, from Muon's. [we declared version 1.0 two years ago today].
2001-01-25
Welcome to version 1.2! This is the Cryosphere's biggest ever upgrade, the culmination of three months hard work. A special thanks must go to those who helped test this version, without their help, this upgrade would not have been possible.
First up, we have five new missions, Ionstorm, Academy, HolyGrail, Grain, and Invincible.
Holy Grail, deals with the theft of a historical artefact from the naval museum on Livingstone.
Ionstorm is a military mission, where you are to escort the shipping of a new type of spacefighter to a proving ground.
In, Grain, you must investigate the pilfering of grain supplies on level 6 of the Cryosphere.
Academy, is the Academy graduation mission, to visit a damaged relay station, and to conduct a rescue.
In Invincible, you must investigate the disappearance of the warship HMS Invincible.
In addition, Paralithium, and Skinner have received major touchups, and some minor changes have occured in other missions.
The Academy is now operational. With four training missions tutoring new players in the art of mudding, followed by the Academy graduation mission.
Holodecks have been introduced. This allows many people to train in the same mission, whether at the Academy or elsewhere, at the same time without interfering with each other.
There is a new station. The station has been thrown away and rebuilt from scratch, producing a coherent and immersive atmosphere. The new station offers new facilites, including holodecks, and an insurance office (see 'INFO INSURANCE')
There is a new ships system. The previous routines for ships have been consolidated to produce a plan-based ship system. Check out the docks for details. We think it rocks.
Mobiles can talk back. Although this is in its early stages, some mobiles can give you missions hints, supply critical information, or obey commands.
A wilderness has been added on the planet of Livingstone. This surrounds the town. Not much is going on there yet, but one mission already makes use of it and we expect more use in the future. When in the wilderness, the 'MAP' command will give you a map of the local area.
Cleaning robots will exist on the station, and some other places. They will take anything left lying around that isn't bolted down, so be careful.
Major changes to the missions system. There is now a missions board at Livingstone too. You can and should accept static missions in order to do them. As with the minimissions, you can use the mission object itself as a token to prove your identity.
Some missions have been restricted to certain levels. Harder missions will not be shown on the missions boards for lower level players. The critical levels are Petty Officer 3, and Warrant Officer. Once you reach Warrant Officer, all missions will be available.
Two new minimissions have been added - one to deliver supplies from Skinner to the Cryosphere, the other to repair holodecks. Also, the fixing ships mission has been made more varied. (and now Ambassadors can be
escorted the other way).
Ensign Smith will now announce when a mission has been reset.
An alien language has been devised, see 'INFO LAMIDAV' for a basic phrasebook.
We finally have COMMSTATS. Thanks to whoever thought this idea up in the first place.
Many other changes have been made.
See also : info news for the most recent game news, info veryoldnews for even older news.