MUCK and Mods and Updates thereof

[Christian A Ratliff]

Greetings from LughMUCK fellow MUD/MUCKers,

NOTE:
If ye be faint'o'heart or full'o'flames then stop reading now.
This covers the tender subjects of complaints, questions, mods
and attitudes among the establishment.

After about two weeks of MUDing on TinyTIM I came into the
administration of LughMUCK (mostly being a mods slave). Since that
time all of the other Wizards have gone home, leaving me alone to
mod, change, and administer as i feel fit. Alson in that time I
have come upon problems with topology and recycling and the
MUCK code/db/concepts.
The mods I wrote are @boot (for removing nasty players),
@untoad (for those absent minded mistakes, @newcharacter (since
I removed the ability of player to create new characters at
login so i oculd have email address to track people down to),
@destroy (so the MUCK could recycle and slow the onslaught of
the db), and WHO list mods (including adding fields like
player dbref, room the player is in (dbref), and hostname
or IP number). None of these were very difficult for anyone
to write, but they did introduce me to many problems and
annoyances. Now I am overhauling our topology.

----- The above was not so you will praise me --------
----- Just so that you will not write me off --------
----- As a random MUDing d**khead (pardon the --------
----- abuse of english. --------

Now, the biggest problem I have encountered is that MUCK
is really, well, ugly. With the addition of drops and odrops
a player now sees up to 5 or even 8 messages when going from
one room to another. And the only delimeter between them is a
newline; no pregnant pause or delimiter (say 10 "-"'s). The
next largest problem is the database getting out of hand.
And the last and least important are the inconsistancies
among MUCK mods on different servers.
I am not just here to complain i am also i need of solutions.
For example, for the first problem what i feel is in order is
a whole bunch of (tiny very TINY) cosmetic changes: an
extra newline here another "---------" there maybe a short
busy wait (doubtful). However, this is where problem three
comes into play. If I make a million cosmetic changes then
there will be one or two servers with the sorta changes
installed and diffs would be abhorent. So the obvious solution
is a rapid assembly-line release that contains the new (and
necessary mods) and the cosmetic changes. Instead of my putting
out my mods and George putting out his and Jane putting out hers.
The largest problem here is that means there has to be a group
of people willing to do the work and do it fast and be
communicative.

In sum, what I am trying to say here is that
if (there is to be a new realease) {
it should be done well;
not just applying patch after patch of bondo;
It should come out clean and well made, like a new suit;
Not a dry cleaned pair of shorts;
I am also offering my many sleepless nights of service;
} else if (there is no group currently working) {
I would be more than glab to make such a group;
and start it up;
and provide and anonymous ftp site;
}

Thanks...
Caleman of LughMUCK (pawl24.pawl.rpi.edu PORT: 6666)
cal...@pawl.rpi.edu

[Fatima Fates #43 21342]

Once upon a time, there was a TinyMUD. Then Stephen White came along
and added actions, meta-links, player chown, and lots of other nice
stuff. That became TinyMUCK.

Now, TinyMUCK has a database format that was not backward compatible
with that of TinyMUD, so Stephen came up with a compatibility mode,
which is supported to this day.

In any case, as Stephen White has told me that he is no longer working
on TinyMUCK code, but is hacking MOO, I have taken it upon myself to
codify and update TinyMUCK and coordinate changes.

Unfortunately, because I've been hacking on TinyMUCK 2.0, I did not
get a chance to either look at Caleman's mods, nor do much updating.
In any case, I will eventually incorporate Caleman's modifications or
modifications based on his work. (where I feel that work needs to be
done.) I cannot guarantee that I will do things the way he (or anyone
else) did them, but I will do my best to fix bugs and provide updates
frequently.

I cannot provide an FTP site, so Caleman will have to do that, but
other than that, I AM supporting TinyMUCK. (And will continue to do
so as long as there is support for it.)

The lack of announcements coming from me is not due to a lack of
interest in supporting other users, but because I have no desire to
announce vaporware. Rest assured that when TinyMUCK 2.0 becomes
ready, it will be announced here together with the address of an FTP
site. (And yes, I promise that it will be much better documented than
before.)

Lachesis
"Atlantis 128.96.80.1 4201 : TinyMUCK Beta test site.
Crashes possible but infrequent (At least, until the next time I try
out a new feature.)"