Playing games on Moud#
Moud is also where people play the games made with it. When it starts, it opens on its home: the games on Moud, your friends, and Studio in the top right corner, which opens the editor's projects. One copy of Moud plays every game, so a player installs Moud once and never installs a game.
This page is the player's side: signing in, finding a game, joining a server, and what Moud downloads on the way. It is worth reading as a creator too, since it is what your players go through.
A game exported as its own jar does not show the home. It starts straight in the game, as described in Pausing, quitting, settings and screens.
Signing in#
There is no Moud password. Moud signs in with the Minecraft account it runs on, the same way joining a server does, and your password never leaves Minecraft.
Your name and head in the top bar show who you are signed in as. Click them to see whether signing in worked.
When Moud can not reach the catalog, the home says so and tries again every few seconds. Studio does not need the catalog, so you can keep building in the meantime.
The home#
The home is laid out to get you into a game quickly:
- Invites from friends sit at the very top, each with Join or Accept and Decline.
- Your friends sit under your name, the ones playing first. A green dot means Moud is open for them, a blue one that they are in a game, and the game's name is under theirs. Click a friend for their menu: Join puts you on their server, and the menu also opens their game, invites them to your party or unfriends them.
- Your party, when you are in one, sits under your friends.
- Recommended for you shows the best rated games you have not played yet.
- Continue shows the games you played last.
- Popular shows the games played most.
Two links in the top bar lead further: Discover lists every game by genre, and Friends lists your friends, your friend requests and your party. A number next to Friends counts the requests and invites waiting for you. The search box, or Ctrl+K, finds a game by its name, its genre or its creator.
Friends#
To add a friend, press Add friends and type their Minecraft name. That sends them a friend request: they see it pop up if Moud is open, and it waits on their Friends page, and on their Friends page on the website, until they Accept or Decline it. If they had already asked you, sending one back makes you friends straight away.
The Friends page lists the requests you sent that nobody answered yet, each with Cancel. To end a friendship, open the friend's menu and pick Unfriend. Neither side is told when a request is declined or a friendship ends; the friend simply leaves the list.
Being friends is what lets you see what someone is playing and join them. A friend is joinable while the server they are on has room and is not a private one, such as a match a game reserved.
Inviting friends#
In a game you joined from Moud, press Esc for Moud's menu and pick Invite friends. It lists your friends, online ones first, and Invite sends one an invite to this game. Games can open the same list themselves, often from their own menu or when a round needs more players.
An invite shows up for your friend wherever they are. In the home it sits at the top with Join. In another game it slides in at the top right with Join and Decline, which you can click once the mouse is free, such as with the menu or chat open. Invites and requests in the menu lists every invite and friend request waiting, in case one went by. Join puts them on your server while it has room, and in the same game otherwise. An invite lasts an hour.
The website makes invites that anyone can use. On a game's page, Invite link makes a link to the game, and the link icon on a server in the server list makes one to that server. Paste it anywhere: the link opens a page on the website with Join, which starts Moud and puts the player in the game, or on that server while it has room. A link works for a week.
Parties#
A party is a group of up to six friends who play together. Open a friend's menu and pick Invite to party. That makes you the party's leader, and the friend gets an invite to Accept. The party shows on the home under your friends, on the Friends page, and on the website, with a crown on the leader.
When the leader joins a game, everyone in the party with Moud open comes along to the same server, wherever they were. Members do not lead: a member who joins a game alone goes there alone. If the server has no room for everyone, the ones who fit come along and the others are told so.
Click a member while you lead to Make party leader or Remove from party. Leave party leaves it. When the leader leaves, the member who joined first leads, and a party left with one person and nobody invited ends.
Interface size#
The first time Moud starts it picks a size for its screens from your screen. On a 1080p screen it looks the same whatever Minecraft's GUI scale is. On 1440p and 4K screens it is bigger, and when the window is too small to fit the home it is smaller.
To change it, click your name in the top bar and pick one of the five sizes under Interface size, from Smaller to Larger. On the home you can also use the keyboard: Ctrl and + makes it bigger, Ctrl and - smaller, and Ctrl and 0 goes back to Medium. The keypad's +, - and 0 work too, and so do the keys that type + and - on your keyboard layout, so on AZERTY Ctrl and - is the key with the dash.
Moud remembers the size for next time. Studio and its projects screen use the same size.
A game's page#
Click a game to open its page. Its pictures and description tell you what the game is, and below the Play button are its votes, how many people are playing it now, how many visits it has had, how many players fit on one server, and its genre.
Play is the usual way in. It finds a server of the game with room and puts you on it, preferring servers that already have people on them so you are not alone.
The Servers tab is for when you want a particular server. It lists the servers running the game, each with the heads of the people on it and how full it is, and Join puts you on that one. Servers with a friend on them come first, so joining a friend is one click. Exclude full servers hides the ones you could not join anyway. The list is sorted the way Play would pick unless you choose another order.
Playing from the website#
The game's page on the website has a Play button too, and so do a friend's Join and a server's Join. While Moud is open it stays connected to the catalog, so pressing Play on the website reaches it and Moud joins the game in a moment.
When Moud is not open, the website uses a Moud link instead. A Moud link starts with moud://:
moud://game/<game>plays a game, the same as its Play button.moud://server/<server>joins one server of a game.moud://invite/<code>follows an invite link.
The first time Moud starts, it tells your system that these links belong to it: a desktop entry on Linux, the registry on Windows and a small helper app in your Applications folder on macOS. After that, clicking a Moud link anywhere, on the website, in Discord or in a browser, sends it to Moud. If Moud is running it switches to that game, leaving the one you are in. If it is not, the link waits for it: Prism Launcher and MultiMC start your Moud instance by themselves, and with any other launcher the link is followed when you start Moud within ten minutes.
If you move Moud to another folder or another launcher, start it once from there so the links point at the new copy.
What Moud downloads#
The first time you join a game, Moud downloads what the game needs to start behind the loading screen, which shows how much of that is left. You join as soon as it is there. Music, videos and big pictures keep downloading while you play, and anything the game asks for before it has arrived is fetched first. A song may start a moment late the first time, and a picture may appear a moment after the rest.
Moud keeps what it downloaded in moud-games/ in the Minecraft folder, and later joins reuse it. When
a game is updated, only the files that changed are downloaded again, and a file two games share is
kept once. Only the latest version of each game is kept, so old ones do not pile up.
Every file is checked against the list the catalog keeps for that game before it is used. A file that does not match is thrown away and downloaded again, and if it still does not match the join stops and nothing of that game runs. That keeps a changed or damaged download from running on your machine. A game's server scripts are never part of the download: they stay on the game's servers.
The files in moud-games/ are locked. Moud gets the keys from the catalog when you join and forgets
them when you leave, so the folder can not be opened outside Moud, and copying it to another computer
gives nothing anyone can use.
Leaving#
Pick Leave game in the menu to go back to the home. Being sent away by the server, such as when it closes, brings you back to the home too, and the reason the server gave shows at the top of it.