Zugg Software :: View topic

Newbie Joined: 02 Apr 2008 Posts: 2

I wasn't sure how to get access to the developer board, so I'm posting this here.

zMud has a bug in it's MCCP (Mud Client Compression Protocol) implementation.

When zMud reconnects to a mud in the same session window, it incorrectly sends the IAC,DO,COMPRESS2 string *before* it gets IAC,WILL,COMPRESS2 from the mud.

This manifests itself usually by prepending a "V" to the username. So when I type in my username "bob", the mud reads it as "Vbob". This is because the COMPRESS2 byte is equivalent to the V ascii code.

This is easily testable with netcat. Here is the output of netcat when I reconnect with zMud:

Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 3:55 am

Unfortunately, the chances of the bug in zMUD being fixed, is slim to none as zMUD is considered feature complete.

You can try the next generation client from Zugg which is CMUD. If the problem does exist in CMUD as well, then submit a bug report and it will be added to the bug list to be fixed in a future release.

Wanderer Joined: 19 Nov 2005 Posts: 53

Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 5:20 pm

Actually, this isn't a bug. The Telnet option protocol is bidirectional. zMUD will respond to IAC WILL to enable/disable options such as MCCP. But MCCP also allows the MUD client itself to send DO/DONT commands back to the MUD to tell the MUD to enable/disable MCCP. So it sounds like your particular MUD just doesn't implement the DO/DONT commands properly.

But I've tested this on many MCCP MUDs, such as the Iron Realms MUDs, and they all work fine. So perhaps you can give us more details on the exact MUD that you are using.

Also, no software is *ever* "without bugs". Anybody who tells you that there software doesn't have any bugs is either lying, confused, or the application is trivial. zMUD is over 1 million lines of code, and no software of that size is ever without bugs. Also, many of the "bugs" are actually problems left over from supporting old versions of Windows, such as Windows 95/98. There is no way to fix them without breaking compatibility with those versions of Windows. That is why CMUD was created instead, so that I could use a new and more modern design that wouldn't have some of these bugs (and would not need to support old versions of Windows).

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

I agree with Zugg, I've implemented this protocol on 2 different MUDs I coded for, and believe me, it isn't broken :)

Newbie Joined: 02 Apr 2008 Posts: 2

Thanks for the response.

You're right of course, the telnet RFC specifies that options can be negotiated in either direction.

The confusion, for me at least, is my interpretation of http://www.zuggsoft.com/zmud/mcp.htm.