[MUD-Dev] A new MUD-standard

[Ben Greear]

Ben Chambers wrote:
 
> Recent discussion from the thread on Semi-graphical MUDs has
> inspired me to begin developing a new MUD standard.  My basic idea
> calls for using HTML like tags to tell the client to divide the
> messages from the server into seperate windows, allowing a map to be
> displayed and a seperate stat window to be displayed.  After some
> consideration I have come up with the following concept.  Would
> anyone like to comment on it?  Would anyone be willing to help me
> develop it?

ScryMUD currently uses a scheme like this to communicate to it's
Hegemon browser...though it was not designed so much as evolved :)

Basically, the idea works pretty good...but I constantly found myself
having to add new tags for very specific things.  It would have been
nice to make the parser more generic than my implementation, for
example...

> The types of messages from the server can be divided into 3 types of
> messages.  The first is scrolling text.  This is like the standard
> MUD output, where looks much like a scrolling document.  The second
> type is a coordinate screen.  This would be used for a map or
> something similar.  Where you overwrite the text starting at a given
> set of (x,y) coordinates.  The final type is the static labeled
> screen.  This would be used for stuff like statistics, where the
> label remains the same but the value changes.

I broke my stuff into things like: communications (say v/s gossip,
yell...)  Also, room, object, and door listings had their own tags.
The prompt was special in that it actually caused the client to draw
'life bars' to graphically show the user his/her prompt stats.  The
largest use was for OLC, and allows me to populate the GUI (Hegemon)
with values from the game: ie if you look in a room, it's descriptions
are automatically loaded into the room description editor, so you just
have to tweak & submit to make changes.

> Can anyone think of any other kinds of information that the server
> might want to utilize?

You'll always want more, so design your specification to be as
backwards and fowards compatible with itself as possible.

Enjoy,
Ben

--
Ben Greear (greearb at candelatech.com)  http://www.candelatech.com
Author of ScryMUD:  scry.wanfear.com 4444        (Released under GPL)
http://scry.wanfear.com               http://scry.wanfear.com/~greear
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