[MUD-Dev] Developing A Web Generator

[Kyndig]

Evening list,

I'm writing up a new area for a site I've been developing steadily
the past two years. I am an avid Mud fan and have found the perfect
hobby in developing a website with online text games in mind.

The new area is for builders to develop areas, mob, and
npc's. Standard generators such as figlet, name generators, random
dungeon,town, quest, etc.. will be made available as well to assist
the builders in fully developing their project areas.

It all looks good on paper [ 20+ hand written pages scattered across
my bookshelf], but a problem I am having is determining how to best
cater to the many different area formats. This is more of a 'how
would you' question. When it comes to text game areas, a majority of
the servers utilise their own bit system or other unique identifiers
to store specific details for their area. They use data storage
devices such as flat text files, backend databases and xml (I
consider this a flat-text storage device as well).

My thoughts on the workaround for this is to go ahead and create
templates for the most popular servers that have public released
source. By viewieng how 'stock' sources store their data, I can
write a cgi to store the areas unique identifiers in my own sql
scheme. This task, while abit daunting is not too serious of a
concern. Yet whom runs a mudserver long from stock source code? 
There will be any number of changes to the area format that the cgi
must overcome in order to store the data in my database scheme.

The areas [or specific rooms, mobs, objects, spells,..] which are
stored in the database can then be downloaded by other community
members for their own specific game server format. [ You can build
an area for an XX based mudserver, someone else can choose to
download it as a YY based area format ].

To be sucessful, there needs to be flexibility in the cgi for all
derivitive game servers. Would the best method of handling be the
request of a 'standard upload template' in order to determine that
games layout.

Example:

  ::structure-area_flags::
	flag_open 1
	flag_closed 2
  ::structure-mob_flags::
	flag_agressive 1
	

Thoughts on how to accomplish a non-server specific cgi between the
database and game server format is much appreciated.

Calvin
http://www.kyndig.com/

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