Starting up
 -----------

If you're here then you've got your talker configured, compiled and now
running sucessfully. To check type:

  ps x

And somewhere you should see the following (NOTE: Your talker name will
be inbetween the arrows, the process numbers *will* be different and you
may not have all 4 listed depending whether you chose to use the intercom 
or ident):

 2255  p4 S N  0:00 -=> Playground+ <=- Guardian Angel watching port 9999 
 2256  ?  S N  0:00 -=> Playground+ <=- Talk Server on port 9999 
 2257  ?  S N  0:00 -=> Playground+ <=- Ident server 
 2258  ?  S N  0:00 -=> Playground+ <=- Intertalker communication server 

You may find that you don't have the intercom or ident running. This could
be because you've disabled them or, in the case of the intercom, you
haven't changed your intercom abbreviation from "pgp" which means that the
intercom won't even think of booting up until you change it :o)

Yay! Okay, now is time to log in and sort out your character. So telnet to
the correct port (in our demo its 9999) with

  telnet 0 9999

and log in as usual. When you get to the message:

  You are attempting to login as a hard coded admin.
  To continue, you must enter the HCADMIN access password.

enter in the password that you defined in the softconfig file and
(provided you got it right) you'll enter the code. On the way past you'll
have probably noticed the words:

  Eeeeeeek ! No saved bits !

and

  You have no password !!!
  Please set one as soon as possible with the 'password' command.
  If you don't your character will not save!

The first can be ignored but the second cannot. You must set a password in
order for your character to save. This is done with the "password" command
(funnily enough) and DOES NOT and SHOULD NOT be the same as the HCAdmin
access password.

 Its playtime
 ------------

Now thats sorted you'll probably want to have a play around with the
commands and see what each one does. Once you've tired of having you and a
few mates on you'll need to customise the talker to look unique.

The first thing to do is to edit the rest of the soft messages in the
soft/ directory. This will allow you to set up defaults for players and
system messages.

Once you've done that the files/ directory is another good place. Anything
that ends in ".msg" can be changed and really should. Notice that there
are 3 connect screens which are picked at random upon login. If you want
only one then just copy connect1.msg to connect2.msg and connect3.msg.

If you've defined "do_email_check" in soft/config.msg then you'll
definately need to edit the "email_welcome.msg" file since this contains
the message that is sent to people when they change their address. I've
lost count of the number of talkers that have set me a message which says
"Welcome to <<setme>>". Duh!

You'll probably notice that the files make extensive use of the &t symbol
and the &e symbol. When viewed through the talker these are replaced
with the name of your talker and the email address respectively. This
means that a good deal of the files are already talker specific.

Then you need to edit the files in doc/help. This is the help file. All
keywords are listed with a : before it and if there are more than one
associated keyword with a help file it is seperated with a comma. So:

:help,general,fruit

Means that typing "help help", "help general" or "help fruit" will bring
up the text below.

You'll want to search for the << symbol and follow the instructions. Most
of these are just places to insert your policies on certain privs. Once
you are done, type "reboot" and watch all the new stuff appear!

 Time to go live!
 ----------------

Nows the time to get the people on and the place going - thats the fun
part.

Finally I'll leave you with some words of wisdom from Mike Bourdaa (traP):

    "At this time, you have a code. Thats the easy part. You need a site
    (this can be really hard to get), you need residents, and you need a
    staff now.

    Running a talker sounds like a great idea at the time, often, but
    sometimes, it just isn't. Ask yourself, "Why do I want to start up
    another talker" -- if the answer is "because I wanna be an admin" or
    "I wanna let my friends be sus" then you're in for a rough go.  Its
    not for everyone.. and its a LOT easier to just logon to existing
    talkers and chat there, than it is to start your own."
    
Best of luck with your talker.

		Richard Lawrence (aka Silver)
		26 September 1999