Zugg Software :: View topic - Wish-list for zMUDXP

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 3:24 pm

Here is your chance to have input into the next MUD client from Zugg Software. Feel free to post whatever features you have wished zMUD had but didn't. Or, even if there is something little in zMUD that you'd like to see improved, go ahead and post that.

There are many improvements that people have asked for over the past several years that were either hard or impossible to add because of the legacy code in zMUD and because zMUD needed to support old versions of Windows like Windows 95. It's possible that in a new MUD client it might be possible to reconsider some of these features.

I don't make any guarentees about anything said in this topic. I'm going to use it for ideas as I'm working on the new client. But I don't promise to implement everything or anything that is posted here.

I will also try to leave this post open and not make any judgemental comments myself. I'll mostly just try and sit back and let all of you wonderful users chat back and forth about zMUD improvements.

So, go to it...this is your chance to make an impact on the next generation of MUD client!

Beginner Joined: 22 Jul 2005 Posts: 17 Location: UK

A command line HOTKEY, whereby no matter which window is active your cursor jumps to the command line and its ready to accept type, the ability to change this HOTKEY in the users preferences would also be nice.

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

XML settings imports and exports. The current text format is archaic and prone to quirks when re-importing an exported file. We all know that some of the commands that have been around for a decade aren't compatible with the way other commands work (such as #STAT).

I'd like to see much better support for scripting in WSH languages such as Python or PerlScript, and perhaps even an integrated Lua engine (though I believe that requires a C code base; haven't really looked into it too much myself).

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 7:41 pm

knowning the diff from #func and #var on exporting would be nice :-)

Beginner Joined: 27 Feb 2005 Posts: 24

A command to show something (anywhere) on the screen that stays (or fades out) but is not in the scroll-back.

Kinda like a 2nd layer, that can change dynamically.

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 10:52 pm

Here are a few quick suggestions.. I will probably post another message later as well.. but off the top of my head:

1) If the new interface in zMUDXP is different, I would love to see an option (similar to Windows offering "classic" mode). Some of us are very accustomed to, and like, the old interface (visually speaking).

2) Exporting (classes or your entire zMUD file) should automatically have your classes/triggers/etc {disable}d

3) A little more user control over the system (such as {Autolog}) directories -- as in, if you remove them to add your own triggers, they stay gone

4) More configureable reconnect options. I like the recconect1/reconnect2 timers, but it'd be nice to choose the number (with no maximum, or such a high maximum as to not really be limited) of recconect attempts per each. If your MUD crashes for a week, you could wind up missing a full day of MUDing if you have to keep remembering to try to reconnect manually ;)

5) The ability to disable some of the hotkey features (I constantly hit control-b aiming for control-z, and then if I have hit other commands after, it often saves a "phantom" button -- one that I cannot remove without restarting ZMud).

6) An autoexport feature, that will automatically export your entire zMUD file to text (the safest, imo, way to back up zMUD) on a timer (configureable to one-time, or multiple uses).

7) A hotkey for "syntax enabled" in color syntax preferences

8) A button that links directly to the forums inside of zMUD (not for me, but for the thousands of users who don't realize what a powerful tool the forums are)

9) The option to move zMUD from your task bar to your tray (and back, or both). Same applies for the edit window, and mapper window, and so on

10) The help file documentation on the database, mapper, and on many little things could be drastically improved. A more powerful search engine, when searching for your commands, would be very useful. As would more examples within the help files (preferrably minimum 3 examples per command, one showing easy useage, one medium, one advanced). zMUD is so large and all-inclusive it would be impossible to have perfect help files, but some improvement would be nice. For many of the commands (especially the database ones) the help file is so short, with no examples, that commands a user like myself would probably have no problem using or understanding often seem cryptic and too complex, and remain unused. I can provide plenty of other ideas regarding help file improvements, in terms of specifics, but they all fall under the same basic umbrellas as what is listed above.

11) A cool little feature might be a counter, applied to each MUD, to show "total connects" and "total time played"

More to come...

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 10:56 pm

Oh, one more before I forget...

12) Active memory compression for scrollback in the parent (and possibly child) windows. Anotherwards, you'd have 2 options:

Scrollback (Active)
Scrollback (Compressed)

Active could be set to (for example, what I use) 10,000 lines. Compressed could be set to (for example) 100,000 lines. Every time active exceeds 10,000 lines, the top 25% of the scrollback would be compressed, removed, and stored to a log file... that log file would have a maximum size of the Compressed option. This would be viewable within zMUD via a hotkey or button or something. Don't know if this is possible without generating excessive lag, but since the new program is aimed at better computers, maybe...

Adept Joined: 30 Dec 2003 Posts: 226

I'm not sure if this is possible with zmapper atm, since I havn't looked into it that closely, but something I'd like to see (maybe in the pro version?) would be a way to easily add some sort of temporary tag to rooms on the mapper and have some way to clear all of these temporary tags at once. Maybe add a small dot on the room, or bold the border, or something to show you that that room has already been searched, or whatever other use this would have.

Wizard Joined: 15 Jan 2002 Posts: 1644 Location: USA

More on the mapper and walking *drool*

Being able to easily script the "shortest" path the mapper takes by temporarily changing room cost/kind depending on variables and in a "path script box" It would execute something like this for every room when trying to find the shortest past

#IF (@FLYING=FALSE AND %roomflags=AERIAL) {#CALL %path_roomkind=128} //the do not enter flag
#IF (@MOUNTED=TRUE AND %roomflags=DESERT) {#CALL %path_roomcost=50}

If I wasnt flying and I was mounted it would not enter any room flagged as arial, and it would put a higher cost on the rooms flagged as desert.
Hopefully sometime this week Ill have a nice long post dedicated to mapper ideas and expanding on this in a more understandable sense :p

Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 2:06 am

built in html-logging...

Wizard Joined: 15 Jan 2002 Posts: 1644 Location: USA

And a Built in chat client too :p

Apprentice Joined: 29 Jun 2001 Posts: 198 Location: USA

A multi-line status bar

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

A way to automatically reorganise the mapper layout. I have maps look messy. Since zmud knows that room 1 is west of room 2, which is north of room whatever etc, then (upto a point) it could make an educated guess at how to redo the layout to look more structured.

Adept Joined: 10 Jan 2002 Posts: 264 Location: USA

Leeme 1st say that your mention of ZERO phone home is enough to make me buy this *new product* :P I own my copy of zmud, but i have it cracked as on more then one occasion I've has major issues with the eLicense control.

Onto a list of things I'd like to see in it:

1] #WRITE <-- lemme write to ANY directory ANYWHERE on my machine... htdocs, USB flash drive, other machines in my house.

2] Status line (multi-line from above) plus the use of colors (variable set)

3] the "classic" look was a must have, the worst part of moving to a new app is TRYING to get used to how it looks.

4] tab completion of any defined alias - if only one match it completes, if many, a list of possible ones, if too many(user defined) ask if i want to see all 2500 matches. (similar, no exactly like *nix command/dir completion)

5] more when i think of em... i know there is more :P

Beginner Joined: 09 Aug 2005 Posts: 17

IntelliSense in to code editor

Enchanter Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 698

Save/Lock Layout, Preferences, and Save/Open Settings added to windows' right-click/speed submenu.

AutoQuester. - same concept as automapper, except it solves quests automatically.

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 873 Location: USA

1) Extended GUI for trigger creation
a) Automatic trigger creation- give the client a couple of copy/paste examples of what needs to be triggered on, and the client suggests a trigger.
b) graphical (tree?) representation of structures like COND triggers
c) Extend the current "try this" triggerbox to allow line by line replay of selected log files (now you do this by reading by hand from a file, or building a fake server)

2) Cleanup of code editor. It often reports syntax errors on code that's fine (sometimes doing something like hitting space and then delete makes it happy). I haven't used this much recently, but also haven't seen any changes in the release notes.

3) Spellchecking shouldn't flag code on the command line as mispellings.

4) Cleanup of color triggers. The user shouldn't have to use a debug file to figure out which ANSI or MXP sequence turned the text red, only know that it LOOKS red in one part and blue in another.

5) better user access to parameters like recursion limits

6) plugins
a) activation should be possible on a per-character basis
b) additional call to tell the plugin that a packet is complete. This is useful if the plugin is trying to recognize prompt lines in the low level call. Alternatively (if the call is always made with all of the data from a packet, and zMud never passes less than all of the data in one call), update the docs to reflect that.
c) "pulse" call. zMud calls pulse(int *sleeptime) and the plugin describes, how long in milliseconds, it wants zMud to let it sleep before calling pulse again for that plugin. This avoids tricks like starting up extra threads to let the plugin do stuff periodically.
d) more intuitive handles/indices for plugins to understand which session/window data is from.

-Tarn

Beginner Joined: 05 Aug 2005 Posts: 12

Here is my wishlist. My apologies if any of these ideas can be done easily on the existing version...

I know it's been mentioned that it would probably have it, but SSH! I would like to use zMud for a few other servers that don't allow telnet.

Nexela's ideas on room flags are also something that would be quite a nice addition.

Being able to use a variable in for a gauge button's caption, such as @currenthp for the HP gauge. I know you can use the variable to set the gauge color, but I would also like to have a customizable caption on it, too.

Allow blank lines in the code window (spaces between code segments).

Allow customization of the "to [Zone Name]" labels in the Mapper window (different colors, fonts, ability to move the label, etc.).

Automatic support for the zmapper plugin (not having to worry about coding in all of the COM ref's...don't know if that can be done only on the zmud side or if you would have to change zmapper, too.)

More automapper requests:

-having the ability to pick colors to parse by in the configuration settings

-currently, when choosing which paragraph to parse the room info, it checks from last paragraph received and lets you pick which paragraph to grab for the name, desc., etc,. How about also having the ability to start at the 1st paragraph and working down?

-Room Names: ability to recognize room names that have punctuation, multiple colors, and LONG names.

-I can't really figure out how to word this wish, but a more user-friendly approach to the automapper, possibly if we move to a room, and the automapper doesn't create it or move to it, we can find out why...maybe by having the automapper read the output and we can see what it's getting caught up on.

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

Since there are so many automapper feature requests, I'd like to add a very specific request of my own: please, please, please make the automapper easier to use with all the IRE games (Achaea, Aetolia, Imperian, and Lusternia). I won't be able to sell my complex mapper scripts and configuration files any more, but I'd rather have the system easier to use and more reliable.

Adept Joined: 30 Dec 2003 Posts: 226

A function holding the value of the time remaining on the tick timer would be nice. I know you can query it with #T?, but I'd like something like %tick that would could be used in scripts to return the time left till tick.

Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 158

I suppose for wishes sake I could add my two cents in with everyone elses...

Layout:
- Some people like different layouts than others. I found it annoying that some windows could be docked where others could not and ended up floating. I would make them consistant. Either make them all able to dock or remove docking.

Triggers:
- I second the recommendation of supporting triggers with multiple colors on the same line. Many times these are status lines and only the colors change.
- I would like to see a trigger "any but" option. Many times it would have been useful to have a "trigger on anything *but* this line".
- Zone triggers like room triggers. While I do know there is a place for zone settings I have found that if you make triggers there and leave the zone they are still active.

Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 8:59 pm

easy to create multiline triggers :O

Apprentice Joined: 29 Jul 2003 Posts: 101 Location: USA

I'd like to see multiple status windows.

Currently, you can have only one. Two or Three would be cool.

Newbie Joined: 10 Aug 2005 Posts: 8

Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 6:25 am

Another suggestions:

ok, currently (using zMUD 7.13a and prior versions). if you have the editor open, then click on the main MUD window, the editor window will disappear. Often when you go back to the editor window, you'll find that it is in a different spot (in the directory tree) then when you left. When editing scripts with massive amounts of classes (or deep class trees) this is a pita.

This can be fixed by using the down arrow option next to help in the editor window, and choosing "task bar icon". This generates a several second freeze up when selected, can cause zMUD to crash (if you press any keys during the freeze up), and needs to be done every time zMUD is restarted. These ideas relate to this:

1) Have the "task bar icon" option remembered when settings are saved.
2) See above idea regarding putting this into your tray.
3) Fix whatever causes zMUD to lose it's place when not using the task bar icon.
4) Fix the crash bug ;) I think the length of the freeze is determined by the size of your settings file (I have some 4,000+ aliases).. bigger file = longer freeze (I also have 1GB of RAM).
5) Change it so that the ESC key, when Task Bar/Tray Icon is selected, simply minimizes the editor window (instead of closing it). I often hit that key from habit, then have to wait 5+ seconds for it to reload next time I go into it ;) An alternative option via file-close editor should be added of course.

Other editor ideas:
1) When in all classes mode, double clicking on an alias/trig/class/whatever should remove the all classes mode, and bring you directly to what you double clicked on.
2) An option (in settings) for "remember expanded" -- if enabled, all expanded classes always stay expanded, if forgotten, the directory tree condenses down all the way, except for root of course, when the editor is re-opened

Another "bug" to fix:
When creating a new class, the editor freezes for several seconds (same problems as listed for task bar icon above). Then it often goes to some random location, and you need to click on the empty class to rename it...