[MUD-Dev] Semi Graphical Muds

[Felix A. Croes]

Bruce <bruce at puremagic.com> wrote:

>[...]
> Is there some sort of time-out after which those messages would be
> expired?  Is there some means by which they can be removed by the
> application?  My concern is for a long lag or disconnect with some
> time before the re-connect (even 30 seconds is enough), during which
> the state of the game has changed such that I would not have entered
> those commands.  Would I be able to remove the corresponding
> messages from the queue?
>
> I have questions as well from the perspective of the server.  What
> happens if the client never returns?  What happens if the client is
> disconnected, and the player is attacked by a creature, yet they are
> still present within the game world?

Ellis is a low-level protocol.  It certainly doesn't attempt to hide
the fact that a connection was lost, but a higher layer may want to do
so to preserve the illusion of a continuous connection to a yet-higher
layer.

If the connection is used for a real-time game, typing ahead commands
based on a view of the game that is out of date would be a bad idea.
On the other hand, for a shell connection it could be a time saver.

For a mud, I would want to be informed that my connection is currently
frozen, but once it unfreezes I would like to know that it was the
troll that got me -- logging in next to my corpse, with no clue as to
how I died, I find frustrating.  So I would like the server to
preserve that information.  Further details would depend on the type
of mud.

So to answer your questions, Ellis offers the ability to recover
connection state, but how exactly this is done is left to the
discretion of higher layers.

Regards,
Felix Croes
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