Of Markdown, REST, and others

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As I’m working on my side project (You should probably watch it onGitHub to stroke my ego), I’ve been toying with how I’ll eventually handle colors and web content. I’m almost fully set against using MUX/MUSH color codes, as those don’t do the best job of handling where color starts/ends. They’re also not very friendly for web-based output.

I’ve been considering a few different approaches:

  • Restructured Text
  • HTML
  • Something resembling customized BBcode

I really like Restructured Text, but am not quite sure how I’d substitute in the color sequences on the MUD side. HTML (or a subset of it) is possible, but I’m not sure this is a very clean solution. BBcode could work, and is probably the most simple to implement, but I wonder if it’d prove too limiting.

I’ll open this up to other MUD developers for commenting. How do you handle color in a way that plays nice with a variety of different clients/protocols (I’m very interested to hear how games that have both a Telnet and web-based service handle this).

Rabbits for the celery

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I run an Arch Linux desktop as my primary development workstation.We use celery pretty heavily on some of our Django projects, and I was working to get my local environment at least somewhat closer to our production setup, only to find there isn’t a non-AUR package for rabbitmq-server.

Of course you can just download an AUR package, but that’s not nerdy enough. I managed to get a GitHub project to act as a pacman repository, and will share it here in case anyone else would like to stay up to date with rabbitmq-server without mucking with the AUR packages yourselves.

Just to be clear, there is no real benefit to installing from my repository, other than not having to download PKGBUILDs and mess with compiling/installing yourself. I just yanked the highest voted rabbitmq-server off of AUR and sucked it into a repository.

If there are any other common packages that you use that I might also use, comment on here and I might be convinced into pulling them in.

Repository: https://github.com/duointeractive/archduo

Back to basics (again)

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It’s definitely different starting all over again with writing a new MUDcodebase. My first attempt was Evennia, which  has evolved significantly since I handed it over. It is/was meant to be more general-purpose, and appeal to MUX/MUSH/MOO refugees who are tired of softcode (MUX/MUSH’s internal scripting language). This time around, I’m writing something specifically crafted for my own purposes, so I get to be greedy.

I’ve got some particular ideas in mind for what I’d like to do. While I could have used Evennia (it has matured into a fine codebase), I decided to take what I learned from my first effort a few years ago, refine it, and turn something out that was the bare minimum for what I want to do (more on what that is in a future post).

I am in no way advocating this approach for most or even a few, as it’s extremely time consuming, a re-invention of the wheel, and not at all sexy. I find myself implementing command parsers/tables, object persistence, and a bunch of other stuff that I’ve already done, all in the name of being my game’s ideal environment for development. But for those that are masochistic, have tons of time on their hands, or are otherwise mentally ill, it can’t be beat!

While I am very unlikely to ever write documentation aside from what any future game moderators will need, the full source code for the new codebase can be found on GitHub. This is going to be in constant flux, backwards incompatibilities will probably arise every time I touch it, and it’s likely to be partially or completely broken at any time. That said, maybe you’ll find something useful in it.

Unable to shake the habit

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Some of the first multiplayer games I played were text-based MUDs. Theiraccessibility, the imagination required, and the variety of places to spend time was great. Myself and a close friend had a few favorite places to haunt online, and had a blast exploring other people’s worlds.

We stumbled through Apocalypse, played Shades of Evil at its height, cyborged our way through Thunderdome, and finally got sucked into BattletechMUXs of various kinds. Times changed, we moved on to greater things in life, but I keep catching myself looking back at MUDs as an ideal gaming medium for me. This may sound strange to some of you, which is why I made sure to add that “for me” part at the end of that last sentence.

But why would anyone want to play these crummy, crude, text-based games when there are so many massive, beautiful titles to spend time and money on?

These crummy, crude, text-based games offer a minimalistic, focused way to game. They are typically free, they can be developed and iterated upon rapidly, and new content is exponentially easier to add than to a graphical game. The element of imagination is perhaps the single strongest appeal to me in a MUD.

I am sure by now that some are wondering where I’m going with this. To that, I answer: I am once again spending some free time hacking on a game concept I’ve been mulling over in my head for a few months. I’d like to borrow desirable elements from my favorite games, and make something that is fun for me, and hopefully others, to play.

I have no idea if I’ll get far enough to have something playable, but I have finally, after a few years of thinking, found an overall idea that I like and can make progress towards a clear goal on. More to come on this later, but I’ll be doing the development in the open on GitHub. While the more astute of you can find the project already, I’ll hold off on announcing anything until I have something interesting to show (if ever).