MUX with Teletext graphics

[Michael McConnell]

Hi,

Just for the sheer hell of it, I had a go at creating a client for
TinyMUX (really, it'll work with pretty much anything) that uses
Teletext/Videotex/Viewdata attributes to do colour and graphics.

This has been achieved using no hardcode changes (so, if I was
mad enough I could go back to TinyMUD and it should still work),
but it requires a client that understands Teletext and a special
escape notation that allows use of codes that can't easily be typed
in at the keyboard.

I've put a demo up on pegasus.matrixnetwork.co.uk port 2860, for
telnet users it'll look utterly strange.

A client is at <http://brandy.matrixnetwork.co.uk/testing/muxclient.zip>,
the .exe is a standalone binary for Windows 7 or later, the .bas file
is the BBC BASIC code that executes under Matrix Brandy
<http://brandy.matrixnetwork.co.uk>

Am I insane? You decide.

-- Soruk

[Kristian Hansen]

As a lifelong lover of Teletext, I look forward to having a play with this tonight when I get home. Amusingly enough, my long-term MUX project has an in-character information directory which mimics the BBC's former teletext service, Ceefax.

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[Michael McConnell]

To be fair, there's not a lot to see, I rather threw this together as a
proof of concept.

I've since expanded on it, using the capabilites of Matrix Brandy BASIC
(which is what powers the client) to offer a graphics room which offers
higher-resolution graphics, some drawing commands and supporting a
subset of the BBC Micro and RISC OS PLOT codes. Since the BBC Micro
architecture (from 1981) did everything via control codes, while nice
commands were available you could do everything via "VDU" commands (and
PRINT CHR$(...) so having a client that allowed MUX to issue these gives
quite a flexible graphics capability to a text-mode server with no
server code changes at all. A room's description can be a drawing!

For those who have never come across the BBC Micro (or other Acorn
computers) I can only apologise, this might come across as a bizarre way
of doing things. I happened to grow up with them.

-- Soruk

On 23/01/2019 16:13, Kristian Hansen wrote:
> As a lifelong lover of Teletext, I look forward to having a play with
> this tonight when I get home. Amusingly enough, my long-term MUX project
> has an in-character information directory which mimics the BBC's former
> teletext service, Ceefax.
>
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 1:19 PM Michael McConnell <so...@eridani.co.uk
> <mailto:so...@eridani.co.uk>> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Just for the sheer hell of it, I had a go at creating a client for
> TinyMUX (really, it'll work with pretty much anything) that uses
> Teletext/Videotex/Viewdata attributes to do colour and graphics.
>
> This has been achieved using no hardcode changes (so, if I was
> mad enough I could go back to TinyMUD and it should still work),
> but it requires a client that understands Teletext and a special
> escape notation that allows use of codes that can't easily be typed
> in at the keyboard.
>
> I've put a demo up on pegasus.matrixnetwork.co.uk

> <http://pegasus.matrixnetwork.co.uk> port 2860, for