[MUD-Dev] Mud / Web Integeration

[KevinL]

>>> Bruce wrote
> Hiya,
> 
> Lee Hulbert wrote:
> > The idea of help files available on web pages ahs given me an
> > interesting idea.  Has anyone thought of giving new players a web
> > page and a graphical (Java,cgi,perl, whatever) interface for creating
> > a new character?  Put the basic character creation functions into a

> browsing the game world's rooms, and more.  It's relatively easy
> to do, especially if you have a webserver built into the game
> (which isn't so uncommon).
> 
> One thing to keep in mind if you move some processing down to the
> client in the form of an applet or something fancier, is that
> you'll need to validate the data on the server side to make sure
> it isn't out of the ordinary.  I'm pretty sure that there is even
> discussion of this in the archives of the list. :)

> (I bet the Moebius people chime in soon.)

*grin*  And here I was holding my tongue...

We're still picking and choosing methods.  Having just fitted a rather neat 
little XML system to the mud, and being pure objects inside, php's XML 
libraries should in theory give us a really simple way to address both the 
above - making game data available (which I was previously doing by talking 
straight to the MySQL db holding all the data, but that makes cacheing more 
complex for little gain), and validating it (pushing all that data through the 
mud's normal comms mechanisms means you _know_ it's all being treated the same 
way as a telnet app would...)

We'll probably end up with the XML route, I think, as it's needed to support 
clients nicely anyway, for non-mud applications.  The overhead isn't 
particularly atrocious.  Although, one of the other developers is threatening 
me with binding medusa into the mud atm, which'd give us ftp/irc/http 
interfaces to all mud objects "for free" apparently...  I withhold judgement ;)

The thing I'm more interested in, tho, is a comment someone else made, 
regarding integrating the two.  My feeling is that a good mud is likely to 
have good web pages - especially if you want to do things like mudmail via 
web, picking and choosing things for your char to do offline, adding to the 
"community" feel by making it easier for people to be involved in message 
boards and the like.  BUT...  Is there gain in getting people to build their 
character actually in the mud, surrounded by the place they'll be playing in?  
Is there some disparity between using a web page to build a char, then a text 
client to play it?  I'm grasping for the words here, but it feels like a break 
in context to jump onto a mud, go back to the web page to make the char, then 
back to the mud to play it.

Oh, http://www.bofh.net.au/mud/live/ for the trivial stuff I threw there 
"just because the web server can see the database" ;)  Method Source Code is 
probably the most interesting one there, but you'd need to create a mud 
account to see them...  Noting some of that stuff is broken *sigh*

KevinL
(and if anyone's actually interested in our toys over here, you're welcome to 
come and chat/pitch in and make stuff - always looking for more people with 
strange ideas and free time...  JCL, is a plug like this acceptable? :)




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