Iv been thinking recently about if I want to or need to add a command queue to my mud to allow people to spam commands in a battle but im not sure if its right for what im planning. I figured I would throw the question out there and see if anyone has any thoughts.
Is a command queue expected by players? Most muds iv played have had them. What are possable alternatives to a command queue?
I was almost thinking about some sort or prebuilt list of commands the player makes and can activate on the fly for whatever task. It would cycle until compleate or interupted, when the player activates it or a battle starts.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Can't players achieve the same thing with client aliases? They can make an alias which quickly does a sequence of commands.
I had that thought but part of the reason I was thinking of
doing it serverside is to give players a viable alternative to sending a long list of commands.
Command lists could be activated manualy by the player or automaticly by the server if the list is set to have a tigger.
This would allow me to use the same command list system to sudo randomly generate non player mob command lists to make them more unique in how they attack and defend.
This would also give the player the option of interupting the current command list at any point by entering
any command in situations where they decide they want to flee or heal and dont have a triggered heal command list or a flee command list to do so.
If you are using the queue in a unique way like that I think it is a good idea, but otherwise I would let the client handle it. People use different methods to send those commands. Some use aliases some use triggers and some use hotkeys mixed with both. I wouldn't want to rewrite the code already created unless you have a clear gain from it that gives you some competitive advantage. Just my thoughts.
Alter Aeon goes the other way, putting a lot of stuff in the server. There's command queueing, command queue interrupt via both the 'abort' keyword and control-C characters, aliases, aliases can call each other, variables and variable expansion, basic command output processing, math, and limited automatic variable setting.
In short, you don't actually need a client to play AA unless you need triggers for some reason.
I don't debate that those are very cool features to have, but I would just say that you should weigh those features again other things (like content, skills, etc) that will drive players to use the game in the first place. Eventually I would think you would want everything supported server side, so your players can have a uniform experience no matter where they are.