Mud status testing

Posted by Worstje on Fri 14 Nov 2008 10:17 AM — 4 posts, 17,719 views.

Netherlands #0
I am not sure how many people would be interested in this, so before I post a very ugly plugin (I'd clean it up prior to putting it up here), I figure I'd see how the response is.

I play a number of muds, and from time to time it happens that one goes down. Reconnect on disconnect, or manually doing it, can get very spammy in your buffer (assuming you have the messageboxes turned off. Messageboxes are even worse.)

So instead of that, this plugin will periodically check whether a mud is up when you are disconnected. Every minute when it has been noted as being down, or every 30 minutes when it is noted as up. If you are connected, it does completely nothing. :) This makes checking availability a quick Ctrl+Tab away.

Right now it supports testing by ping command, although I hope to add a connect() method of testing too for servers which do not support it. Since I also have some muds I play through proxies (stunnel, mudbot), it supports manual configuration of the endpoint also, so you won't end up testing localhost (127.0.0.1) or whatever.

I write most of my new plugins in Lua these days, but since I still prefer Python, I went with that one. Partially because using Lua would have meant I'd have had to go fiddle with the sandbox. That and I had fun playing with raw sockets this way. :D

Anyhow, I babble too much. A screenshot-collage can be found at http://qs.merseine.nu/images/mudstatus.png, so if people are interested I'll clean it up and put it up here.
USA #1
I'd definitely like a plugin like this! My only question is: will the "Server is up!" message go away after I connect to my mud?
Netherlands #2
It only shows stuff while the mud is not connected. The moment you are connected, it is out of your way. Hell, it must be one of the few plugins that is ONLY useful while you are -not- connected. :D

Edit: Anyhow, I'll start on cleaning it up bit by bit when I get some spare moments. There's some small stuff I might want to add to it still, assuming I can haul my bum to install the last 4.37 version. A rightclick menu might be nice, as well as a manual test-alias for when you think you're lagging out. I'll probably have it done by wednesday, if not sooner.
Amended on Sun 16 Nov 2008 06:22 PM by Worstje
Netherlands #3
All cleaned up, I think. Time to release v1.0!

Anyone who is interested can get the plugin from http://qs.merseine.nu/download/20081119%20MudStatus.zip

However, I'd appreciate a little note in this topic if you end up using it since I am curious how many people find it useful.