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MXP, Automapper, and reasons why?

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Posted by

halkeye Canada (28 posts) Bio

Date

Wed 17 Dec 2003 12:11 AM (UTC)

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I've been fighting with Telnet options for a few days now, as my previous posts have alluded to. I've finally got them working, at least for everything I wanted todo.

I've finished cleanly implementing MCCP now, and started to move onto MSP and MXP.

I've decided to tackle MXP as someone has already hacked MSP into the mud.

As exciting as it looked at first, i've now found that MXP is fairly ugly, the <send> links really look out of place all of a sudden and ugly. There is absolutly nothing else (that i can see) that isn't provided by ansi codes. There is even an italics ansi code that isn't usually used.

So what, other than just for bragging rights, is MXP good for? Supposably its supposed to allow the zmud automapper an easy time to setup with your mud, but i have yet to figure out exactly how that works (yes, i've sent the RoomName tag and such).

Have a missed a page somewhere with the benefits of MXP?
Any tips on how to get the automapper working cleanly with it (I'm thinking if it handled vnums or something, at least then it would know if it doubled back onto a room.)

Gavin
Dark Warriors - Coder
http://darkwars.wolfpaw.net
telnet://darkwars.wolfpaw.net:4848

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Posted by

David Haley USA (3,881 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #1 on Wed 17 Dec 2003 01:30 AM (UTC)

Message

MXP gives you cleaner ways of globally changing the way your MUD looks, by declaring entities and then using those.

MXP allows greater color control, giving you all HTML colors (256 * 256 * 256 colors) instead of the 32 (I believe) that are provided by ANSI codes.

If things are ugly in the code, most likely you didn't do it right. :) Nick Gammon has a really nice and clean way of doing it on this site somewhere.

You can always tweak the way the send links look, but that is mostly client-side I believe.

The automapper tags are by themselves a useful feature of MXP. By specifying *exactly* which parts of the text are the room name, description and exits, the mapper doesn't have to guess. This is a useful thing.

Similarly, MXP can be used to specify exactly which parts of, say, a prompt are the HP, mana and movement. Traditional triggers have to "guess", which is not as clean.

The links themselves can be very useful if you have sub-menus, for instance. Imagine in a shop, where you can now buy an item, look at it, consider it, whatever, without having to know its keywords. For that matter, being able to manipulate items in general without having to fight with finding the right keywords.

At the end of the day, MXP doesn't completely change the world, but it adds in some features that can be awfully nice. It takes some thought, however, to use MXP properly and efficiently; just throwing it in to look cool (or for bragging rights) won't do you much good. To truly take advantage of it, you need to see what commands are useful in your MUD, and implement your MXP tags accordingly.

One example is to use it to facilitate building. Dawn of Time, for instance, lets you set flags and whatnot by just clicking on the list of flags, colored to indicate on/off. Look on this forum, in the Dawn of Time section, to see some really neat examples of using MXP.

My personal opinion is that MXP can be fun and neat for players, and occasionally useful (such as being able to pick an exact item from a list without knowing its keyword), but when used intelligently it can be brilliant for building and be a real time-saver.

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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Posted by

halkeye Canada (28 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #2 on Wed 17 Dec 2003 06:11 AM (UTC)

Message

Well my Code is clean, i was talking about the mud side styles. Personally i find the underlined links absolutly ugly, but i'm sure there's a way to deal with that.

And yea, I saw that thread, never thought about building, but even just for player config flags and such, that could easily be done.

Just wish with MXP i could make the automapper work 100%, it seems to just make the parsing alot easier, but still breaks more often than not... Getting lost where it is, just going south then north repeatedly seems to get it lost. even with RoomName and such setup..

I never thought about triggers for prompts and stuff, so I guess that is one of those things to deal with.

I did read somewhere that earlier versions of zMud do not handle MXP properly, How do you deal with this? disable auto-detection?

Gavin
Dark Warriors - Coder
http://darkwars.wolfpaw.net
telnet://darkwars.wolfpaw.net:4848

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Posted by

David Haley USA (3,881 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #3 on Wed 17 Dec 2003 07:13 AM (UTC)

Message

Well, as I remember, the auto-mapper in zMud has always been a little quirky. You just have to know how to use it right, that's all. My brother once mapped many thousands of rooms with no problem using it. For example, you have to avoid confusing it on purpose. :) If you try to break it, no wonder it breaks eventually...

How to fix earlier zMud versions not working? Well, you tell them to stop using cracked versions and go buy the most recent one. Or you just disable auto-detection. Or, you tell them to use MUSHclient...

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (23,173 posts) Bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #4 on Thu 18 Dec 2003 06:51 AM (UTC)

Amended on Thu 18 Dec 2003 06:52 AM (UTC) by Nick Gammon

Message

Quote:

Have a missed a page somewhere with the benefits of MXP?
Any tips on how to get the automapper working cleanly with it (I'm thinking if it handled vnums or something, at least then it would know if it doubled back onto a room.)

I'm not sure if there is a page on the benefits as such. :)

However I can give you a bit of a list:

I agree an occasional hyperlink would be jarring, but if you hyperlink exits, who lists, inventory, configuration options etc. then they become natural, like browsing a web page. If you don't like the hyperlinks, disable MXP, or you can turn the hyperlink underlines off in MUSHclient.
As Ksilyan says, you go from having 16 ANSI colours to 16,772,216 (256 X 256 X 256) colours
By using server-defined elements you can simplify things, eg. make an element <mob> that makes the text that follows appear in bold, green, underline.
You can pass information down to the client more simply, eg.

<hp>1852</hp>

This lets the client cleanly and unambiguously establish the current HP value.
You can define actions for right-clicking, with a pop-up menu. eg. an inventory item might let you take, drop, eat, use, examine an object.
You can simplify things like auto-mapping.

As for old versions of zMUD, recent implementations of MXP let you send a <version> tag to see what version the client supports. You can customise your response based on that, and if it doesn't arrive assume an early version of zMUD. I think that zMUD has been working pretty well as far as MXP goes for a couple of years now.

Quote:

There is absolutly nothing else (that i can see) that isn't provided by ansi codes.

You can't use ANSI codes to do pop-up menus, like I described, or send down full colour codes, or send variables to the client.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

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