What You Need
The ACP requires that you have zMUD 7.x installed and properly configured for Achaea. The recommended minimum version is 7.05, though 7.21 is preferred. The ACP is unsupported on the old, free version 3.62 of zMUD and is guaranteed to not work at all. It is also unsupported on any cracked or wrongfully obtained version of zMUD, even 7.x versions.
Your character profile should contain your username, as some of the triggers make use of the special variable, %char to trigger on your name only. To configure your profile and add your character name, select your profile icon and click the Edit button on the toolbar. You should see a properties page on the Character tab where you may enter your character's name and password.
There are some recommended settings for optimal performance from the ACP. These can be configured before or after installing the ACP, so they're included both as requirements and configuration items.
zMUD allows the configuration of certain telnet options or special MUD protocols. Go to the menu and select View -> Preferences -> General to access the dialog for configuring your preferences. The following snapshot shows the recommended options for using the ACP:
By enabling MXP emulation, you can configure the ACP to show more colorful echo messages. By enabling GA/EOR emulation, you can eliminate the messages that sometimes get tacked onto the end of your prompt. This will insert a few extra newlines here and there, but it's preferrable to the alternative. The ACP will still work fine with either of these options turned off, of course.
The default for parsing scripts tells zMUD to echo any system messages, which includes the removal of triggers, variables, etc. This release of the ACP doesn't have many temporary triggers, timers, or variables, so you may not see any messages about this at all. Still, I leave it disabled because it's just extra text that nobody should care about. The 'Wildcards in {} triggers' was mandatory in previous versions of the ACP, and with the recent conversion of all triggers to regular expressions for this release, it shouldn't really be necessary, but again, it doesn't hurt to enable this feature. The 'Allow <> for expand' option is essential to the functioning of the ACP, and is used throughout the script to expand expressions being passed between aliases.
Whatever you do, do NOT check Show Triggers while you are online! It's useful for debugging scripts, but only to a point. Be cautious when trying to figure out what triggers are firing and what code blocks they execute. Offline testing initially is the best route.
The ACP uses the default set of special characters, and in case you have forgotten what those are, here is the complete list:
The ACP does not require any special hardware, such as a minimum amount of RAM or a fast CPU, though more is always better.