Zugg Software :: View topic - Where the MUD meets the *ML (Area Building App)

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

I've got the idea for an application to help the coders on my mud.

There are a lot of players who often submit areas to the coders in plain text files and the coders then have to go through and cut and paste the submitted area into actual mud code.

My idea was to design two versions of an Area Builder app. One for players (without mud code abilities) and one for coders (with export to mud code) and store everything in an encrypted XML file.

With the deal that eLicense cut for zApp and the framework zApp surrounds, I thought this would be a brilliant idea to write it in there.

My major problem I'm running into at the moment is fitting everything I need into a graphical interface and figuring out how to store the information in XML.

I thought this would be a great application to get my feet wet in zApp, but I'm used to writing simple single window apps not multi-tabbed, possibly MDI, with special configuration screen apps.

Anyone have good advice for this?

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Very good idea, my builders have been complaining for years about not having decent build tools for the MUD, and/or wanting to build 'offline'. If they could take an area to work on a USB stick and edit it in a nice GUI format that'd be very funky indeed :)

I personally prefer multiple tabs, MDI's are a bit weird. Does zApp support MDI apps?

Multiple tabs should be easy enough though. And if we get some spritey things, you could render an area map as well hehe.

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

zApp does MDI... the Editor Demo is technically MDI even though it is done in tabs.

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 5:14 pm

Actually, zApp *doesn't* do MDI, at least in Microsoft's definition of it. Microsoft no longer really supports or encourages applications to use MDI.

MDI is technically the way the old Office applications used to work where there is a main Parent window, and a bunch of Child windows that move around within the Parent. It has options for tiling the child windows (Cascade, Horizontal, Vertical), etc. Windows treats each Child window as a special "MDI window" within the operating system. It works mostly like a normal window (move, resize, min, max, etc) but has some special code for dealing with the MDI stuff.

The Tab control in zMUD isn't using any of the MDI stuff. It is not treated as a Window. You can't move it around, resize it, min or max it, or anything like that. About all you can do is close it separately from the other tabs.

zApp allows you to put a tag within a , but all this does is create the controls from the and put them into the Panel parent control. This still isn't an MDI window.

There isn't any way to tile or cascade the windows or tabs either. So really none of the MDI stuff is supported.

What zApp *will* support is a more modern docking window and panel system like what Microsoft is using in their newer software like .NET Studio. The DevExpress controls contain a powerful set of docking controls, but I'm still working out some bugs regarding the Theme skinning system. For whatever reason, their docking controls are not as stable and bug free as their Grid, Tree, and other controls.

Anyway, it's really easy to handle multiple windows, like configuration windows, etc. Take a look at how all of the demos create an About window. And look at the IMAPMAIL demo for how it opens the Compose window for composing new email messages. That will show how to open multiple windows, either modal or modeless, in zApp.

Newbie Joined: 20 Jul 2005 Posts: 3

I was browsing the forums and I noticed this post. I've been working on something that sounds similar to what you were thinking.

It's basically a graphical interface that allows you to "draw" (using the keyboard) a map of a MUD area, and then using an editor you can fill in the areas that are needed (short, long, etc.). After that you can use a template to generate the code for the MUD (it should be usable for almost any MUD, but I only have experience with LPC MUDs so that is what I tested it with).

It's still in it's testing phase, but comments and suggestions are most welcome.

EDIT: Set up a website.

http://bmedia.t35.com/genesis/

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 7:14 am

Hmm, damn.. I was about to suggest you go look at/try vLPC, which a mate of mine started and wasn't bad for this, but the URL I have gives a 404.. :(

Lady C.

Newbie Joined: 20 Jul 2005 Posts: 3

I tried looking for it, but apparently the URL that links to it on a website went to some jeans site.