@thenomain said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
what did people who weren't us like back in the day?
Other people!
He/Him
@tinuviel said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
@thenomain said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
what did people who weren't us like back in the day?
Other people!
I think we like other people. Mushing is social, and making friends online is incredibly easy.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
@thenomain True, though there's a great deal of distance. So it's a different kind of social, I think.
He/Him
@tinuviel said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
@thenomain True, though there's a great deal of distance. So it's a different kind of social, I think.
Welcome to 1993.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
@thenomain I'm in the public education system, man. We're still working from 1893.
@sparks Ah! That makes sense. I feel like it makes even more sense that if we take lessons on information hierarchy, flow, focal zones, etc and apply them towards how a new interface would look/behave.
For the server, I'd be happy with something that had modern interfaces to communicate with multiple devices natively. To me, that means (after this conversation) At least competent telnet ability but primarily a secure WebSocket interface, MAYBE webRTC Data Channel (overkill for text), and a JSON API for web/app integration. Web Portal/Settings Dashboard and detailed client design are for another conversation maybe - or maybe here? This conversation has been very informational and super interesting. 
@kumakun said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
@arkandel I wholeheartedly agree. I was /thinking/ of telnet because I wanted to make it approachable for people stuck to their telnet clients.
It would be interesting to define a websocket protocol to standardize server/client communications so someone so inclined could make a ws based client capable of connecting to multiple servers. I entertained a webRTC data connection for a second, but, overkill.
You will be happy to know that a websocket protocol and browser-based clients already exist for the latest PennMUSH release, with basic support for RhostMUSH in a private fork as well. The newest client can be found at https://github.com/grapenut/mush-portal with a live demo at https://node.grapenut.org. It already integrates with the basic stuff like room navigation/contents, @mail and Myrddin's BB. I'm currently working on per-game customization and integration for things like chargen, character sheets, or even browsing logs/wiki.
It features a full 256 color terminal with support for inline HTML/Pueblo and out-of-band JSON communication. There is a built-in windowing system which powers the @mail and +bb apps. Something like chargen or +sheet could spawn it's own fully interactive window. Some of the planned features include custom events, triggers, macros and keybinds. These could be used to create separate chat windows, for instance, where your channels and/or pages are displayed with custom coloring, etc. Your game's wiki could be accessed simultaneously through text in-game or formatted with HTML/CSS in a popup window.
There's no reason to choose one or the other. All of this runs on a standard PennMUSH server, so you can support the traditional telnet users while at the same time offering an enhanced experience for Web users. It comes with an event handler object that eases integration, but also works reasonably well for an updated PennMUSH without any server-side changes. It's built with JavaScript and ReactJS (like Facebook!), so there is a HUGE framework of tools available and it's pretty easy for people to modify to suit their needs. This is still very much a work-in-progress and I'm currently looking for help making it more mobile-friendly, with a possible native mobile app down the line.
@grapenut said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
a live demo at https://node.grapenut.org.
Not working for me. Safari/macOS, Version 12.0 (14606.1.36.1.9).
@grapenut That's pretty cool! I like the animations in your UI, pretty slick!
@thenomain Yeah it was recently reported that Firefox and Safari are having issues, though they were working not too long ago. I've done a ton of new updates recently and haven't gotten around to bug fixing other browsers yet. Chrome support is always 100%, and I've been told it currently is working fine in Opera as well.
@thenomain The issues with Firefox and Safari should be fixed now.
Is there a dedicated place where people talk about MU development these days? A slack channel, a Discord server? I'd love to find like-minded people in advancing tech of the hobby in a more real-time environment.
If not, would people be interested in one?
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@kumakun said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
Is there a dedicated place where people talk about MU development these days? A slack channel, a Discord server?
MSB?
But seriously, I don't know if this is the kind of topic that can benefit from real-time conversations. Those don't tend to work very well for groups, since not everyone's available at the same time, and keeping track of tangents becomes problematic when you don't have threaded topics to separate different discussions.
@arkandel Hmm. Good point. Changing the hobby tends to be a tender topic here when it comes up here I've noticed... Though I suppose it is good to also get feedback from dug-in vets as well so they don't get left too far behind.
No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
@kumakun So much tends to be a tender topic for some that if we cared about it all we'd never talk about anything.
If it's on your mind, discuss it. Take what you can use from the input you get, and dismiss the rest.
I said a different conversation, but I'm just going to bring it up here! I just dug up SimpleMu and fired it up (wow was my games list old!!) to look at how it handles spawns. It looks like they work KIND OF like Potato, except they're in the same tab strip with your world definitions, and fire an event in the 'notification window' when there's new activity. I think that's the biggest difference, the notification bit. It draws attention in the lower 30% of the screen you're normally paying attention to in the first place. How does your favorite client handle spawns?
No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, however, a significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
@kumakun Like this:
@roz Oh nice! I like the folder/email category style listing.
@kumakun For me, I didn't mind how they were handled so much as how easy they were to set up. For some reason or another, half the time I can't get spawns in Potato to work right, so I just don't use them anymore. Instead, I rely heavily on coloring things that I need to see and I keep the list of channels I'm on down.
I'd love what Atlantis has though, if it was just on Windows ... eyes @Sparks longingly
@kumakun Potato also doesn't allow you to access your spawns via a keyboard shortcut, which is kind of miserable. That plus the lack of clear activity notifications just sucks.
@tinuviel said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
@thenomain said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
what did people who weren't us like back in the day?
Other people!
I think we like other people. Mushing is social, and making friends online is incredibly easy.
