Member Discussions

I am currently putting together a web based application that will allow users to build and share areas, even build and convert area files from one format to another.

Although I am a couple weeks away from launching a beta site (pending hosting) I would like to get an idea if this might be useful to those of you out there.

If your interested in beta testing once I get hosting, email me. Feel free to check out the tour site that I put up. everything that you see there is functional and complete in the full application.

Take a Tour of Neoteric ORB: http://hostitwith.us/files/801/ORB_Home.html

Kyndig might be interested in something like that for MudMagic.com. I remember him mentioning that he was looking for someone to do some online area editing type stuff, or else he said that someone was working on it right now.

Your tour link doesn't seem to load for me because hostitwith.us isn't working, so can't check beyond what you wrote on here, but it sounds very much like what he mentioned. It's not in his especially recent threads, or I'd see exactly what he said. He'll likely host it for you if you point it out to him... might be worthwhile to contact him about it.

Ooooo *nodnod* Definately interested. The images look very promising (I'm more interested in the format converter though =). I started a similiar system, but more focused to just developing/transferring formats. Actually, I only have
the concept [ http://www.mudmagic.com/build/format_editor ] and a few backend scripts designed before setting it aside. The XML knowledge required to design the dynamic forms to allow for various area formats escaped me after working on the dillema for two weeks. I havn't ditched the project; but I am not fully focused on it. I was planning on returning to it once my knowledge of XML increased, or I had time to get some developers in to work more on the problem.

I was going for the same approach. Designing a simple area format base system. You can use the base system to export areas to any format/OLC command output/sql format/etc. My very rough scetch idea can be seen at the format_editor url posted above I have a working model backend that I used a simple forum thread design to create. After picking up on AJAX and XML usage; I will most probably end up using that technique instead. I am currently porting my format-less area generator and walk-through system to PHP5. This system uses an X-Y-Z grid coordinate based mapping technique to handle any area formats. I inteand on installing XMLS to read in schema styles supplied by the Format Editor to allow for both walkthroughs on the net, creation of multiple map formats, and a whole slew of other nifty tools for building. BUT - I am stuck at the format editor. If you jump that hurdle..I would be highly interested in comparing brainpans..

What I'm designing though is the toolbox for what you are showing on your site. The formats/areas/etc will be exportable and remotely retrievalbe through any area format that is stored in the database (created by builders/developers). You can then use these formats to remotely retrieve/load areas, maps, etc (whatever you can think of...)

Send an email my way if you figure out a better approach to handling multiple area conversion formats that allow for endusers to dynamically create their web-based forms for WYSIWYG click and go building. ( kyndig -at- mudmagic.com )

ALIBI: the /build area of mudmagic is not open - or even functioning properly -
Kyndig

I am currently developing the Format Editor portion of the site. Hence the reason there are fewer screeshots of that. But to give you an idea of what I had in mind. I laid out a screen that basically has parsing tokens like:

Begin field
End Field
Expect char
read char
read line
read til delimiter
etc...

and then as a person builds the format of the mud file, my application parses the format and generates a parser and formatter that translates the format to my own which on the backend is just an XML file.

That way as long as a format has been defined on the system you could translate any areas that you were working on to any format and download them.

Your topic is pretty interesting to me because I want to write a TigerMUD module that will allow people to import other MUDs room and mob files. We especially want to do this for a giant MUD file to test with.

However, I am having a hard time locating the most common formats. Do you store those off to a file that can be used for such a purpose? I think Diku and Circle are good ones to start with. Do you?

I have delt with Circle, ROM, and Anatolia mud formats I have experience in building on each platform and I have decided to start with support for Circle files and then build from there.

If you take a look at the tour site:
http://hostitwith.us/files/801/ORB_Home.html

You will see mention of the Neoteric Database Format which is the native format that my own codebase uses. This format describes all objects in an xml text file and the tool I'm writting will allow one to define a mud format from a series of parsing tokens.

for instance:
Expect Char
Start Field
End Field
Read line
Read to Delimiter
etc...

So ideally when I'm finished you'll be able to take any building docs for any mud and build a mapping for that format to Neoteric Format. once that is done the code parses the mud file according to the defined format.

NeotericMud

(Comment added by Neoteric on Tue Dec 13 10:28:01 2005)

Additionally, once the format is defined using the parsing tokens. the Server can then write an xml transformation from that so any NeotericMud World can be exported to that mud format.

I for one am extremely interested. A tool that would allow me to build areas across a web browser without the firewall blocking me for going to a "game" site or get caught installing unauthorized software.

If your native format is durable enough you may get a few coders willing to modify area handling the various codebases to support that common format and release the snippet.. Ah well, I can dream anyway.

I love this, very good work guys, and hope your having some success with it. :)

I have been working on a custom AJAX enabled interface with the intent of making a web based OLC system for our mud. I noticed that there seemed to be at least some interest in this kind of thing but also noticed that all the links on this thread were not working. We currently are not looking to make a system that is able to convert formats, but as our website talks to the mud in XML and the OLC stuff will all be stored in a MySQL database, so it can be access from inside the game, it should be adaptable to other codebases. This is in the very early stages and the OLC stuff is not working yet, but it soon will be. I am currently building a table for NPCs that the MUD can draw from to generate monsters on the fly. This will be expanded to include rooms/objects once this part is completely working. We are using LDMud driver 3.4.1 with MySQL support built in.
-=ZanZ=-