[MUD-Dev] Structured Social Play

[Matt Owen]

On 17 September 2001, shren <shren at io.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Sep 2001, Daniel Bendiksen wrote:
>>> From: shren
>>> On Thu, 6 Sep 2001, Daniel Bendiksen wrote:

>>>> Another thing that turns me off about mud email is how
>>>> shockingly primitive it is! It's almost like someone created a
>>>> crude line entry method and thought "operational. I'll make it
>>>> better later", but then never got back to it.

>>> Sounds like there's room for a common document editor for
>>> smaller muds to use.  Have an editor/small server package where
>>> the player can write and name documents.  When the user logs on
>>> to a mud, the mud calls the player's ip with the port of the
>>> document system, and then whenever he needs to input
>>> text/email/messages/whatever he has the option of using text
>>> from the document system.

>> Maybe a pretty good idea, but you will encounter a real problem
>> with it...  The server attempting to connect to the client will
>> bounce off both NAT and most firewalls, and thusly will fail for
>> some (maybe many) users.

> True.  The solution is to somehow reverse the connection, so the
> client contacts the server.  Maybe the mud can open an extra port?
> You'd boot the document manager and the mud client at the same
> time and they'd call out.

Without cranking your own MUD client, you would be hard pressed to
get a client to fire up the document manager. Maybe just run the
document manager all the time, with an idle connection to mud
server. Instigate via the mud client the start of the email, the
server then sends down the open port it has to the document manager
the header details of the email you are about to prepare, the
document manager then automatically un-minimizes (or whatever) ready
for you to use it.

Because the document manager connects TO the MUD server on an
independant port, you should have no issues with firewalls or NAT.

- Jaruzel.
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