Zugg Software :: View topic

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

One thing I find common among MUDs is that they display a lot of prompts with your health, mana, etc in them. This is often a lot of spam and can really get in the way when you're trying to read more important messages. Many of us make triggers to track stats from the prompt, so our scripts take care of the real jobs for us and we want to see what else is happening.

I've seen clients that have a built-in mode for defining a prompt pattern and then completely omitting prompt lines from the output (though logging them would still be very useful) and just keeps the most recent one for you to see right above your command entry bar.

Gagging prompts is just a tricky task and it often ends up in choppy display or accidentally gagging the wrong things. If display of my prompts was toggleable, I'd be very happy.

Is there any chance that we could see a feature like this added to CMUD one day?

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

I actually managed to do this in a ZMud plugin, but it wasn't what I was aiming for and I have no idea how I did it.

Apprentice Joined: 11 Sep 2005 Posts: 124

care to share the plugin?

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 2:44 am

Well, doing this in CMUD would actually work the same as in zMUD...you'd essentially create a prompt trigger and then use #GAG to remove it. #GAG works the same in CMUD as in zMUD, so if there is a problem with this in zMUD, then you should post the specific trigger that you are having problems with so we can look at it and see if it's a bug.

In other words, even if CMUD does something like this, it would use the same internal Gag routine that is called by #GAG. So if #GAG has problems, then the problem wouldn't be fixed by CMUD removing the prompt itself.

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

however, there is still the 'sticky' part of the issue where it stays at the bottom of the screen.

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

Nope, I stopped working on it after I managed to get the code for the prompt actualy working. Never said it was a "working" plugin. Confused

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

Zugg, you mentioned that #GAG works the same in CMUD as it did in ZMUD - does this mean we'll get flickering text when things show for a moment and are then removed from the screen? Is it not possible to have things checked before they're displayed at all?

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

The problem I have is gagging prompts because of the IAC GA/EOR things instead of the CR/LF usually used to fire triggers and gag text. It just doesn't gag until I send a command or get some more text, at which point it screws up output. I'll have to play around with it some more to get more specific information for you. Gagging does need some improvement, and if it's not going to be changed to work as Guinn suggests, then hopefully the increased speed and the new text display engine will take care of the flicker we now see.

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 5:28 pm

Hmm, I'll look into this. It's possible that over the years something happened to cause the screen refresh to happen before the triggers instead of after. And I'll have to check on "prompt" triggers since I know that zMUD tends to refresh the screen at the end of a prompt and that might be happening before the trigger has a chance to perform the gag.

In any case, send me as many specifics as you can. Using #debug to capture the raw communication between zMUD and the MUD might help track down issues with GA/EOR which certainly have not gotten nearly as much testing as normal CR/LF lines.

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

I think this is actually a pretty important feature - it should be "friendly" to do something like this... if it doesn't make it into first beta no problem, but I think it definately should be in first public. Having a 'sticky' prompt would be really cool.

It would need to support a prompt with or without a trailing CR/LF. It should also have options to 'strip previous blank line' and 'strip trailing blank line'. Plus whatever is required to support GA/EOR.

You should also be able to tick:
* automatically put prompt in status bar
* sticky latest prompt to bottom of output window
* strip prompts from output window
* strip prompts from log
* replace prompt with <script>

So in theory you could tick 'put prompt in status bar', 'strip prompts from output window' and 'replace prompt with <xxx>' which might be say: 'Hp %1, Mana %2' .. which would not display any prompts, but in your status window it would display 'Hp: 100, Mana 150' or something.

It would nice (further down the track) to be able to graphically replace the prompt too, eg strip it from the log and have your hp and mana as gagues.

Enchanter Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 698

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 5:24 pm

Maybe instead of keeping the prompt in the MUD Output window it should be placed to the left of the command line? The status bar is certainly a possibility, but there is a lot of other stuff that people put on the status bar. Definitely seems like something worth talking more about.

zMUD already has a special Prompt detection trigger section. This already lets you define your prompt and select how to store the values captured by it. So it might be a simple extension to add some options to remove it from the MUD window as RainChild mentioned and to better integrate some gauges.

All good stuff to think about. I wish I could get this thing to it's initial beta release so that I can start working on more enhancements like this. It's amazing how much time I'm having to put into this just to get it working as well as zMUD.

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 7:33 pm

No worries Zugg. It's just a testament to how great a product zMud was.

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

I think one of the bigges problems with mudding is it's comparitively hard to get into - not just the game, but the whole interface thing scares people away. Making something as simple as "You feel hungry." -> "eat food" is a fairly complicated thing to do for a first time user. Having options like being able to highlight a line of text, right click it and go 'Add Trigger' I think is something user-friendly that should be done.

Depending on the game, the prompt text could be pretty long - for example mine is: "<p|859/859hp 1243/1243e 245/245mv 245wm 411636242xp NeSw>" .... having that to the left of the command bar would not be a good idea. I think it IS definately a feature that some people would use, so should be among the options as listed abote (eg sticky, auto-status bar, left of prompt). Personally my status bar is empty, so it would be a perfect place to put my prompt (although, I would like my status bar to be a black background and support MXP if it doesn't already).

Also, as part of the whole right-click menu, it would be nice to highlight my prompt, right click, go 'set as prompt' that pops up a wizard which goes 'highlight the important bits' and pulls them off into variables etc. You may also want to support multiple types of prompt, for example when I'm reading a note my prompt looks like: "-- MORE -- "<p|859/859hp 1243/1243e 245/245mv 245wm 411636242xp NeSw>". When I'm in combat the room directions (eg NeSw) change to the condition of the mob and the condition of the tank. So having the ability to define a number of prompt patterns with wizard handlers is probably fairly important.

Again, I don't expect you to do all this for the first beta version, but I think you should give some thought to it.

Apprentice Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 195

this is something i'd equally be interested in. right now in a standard fight i think 30% of my screenspace is taken up by the prompt repeating. yet i only use the latest prompt at the bottom of the screen.

gagging them all then shuving it at the bottom of the output window is a feature i would be very excited to see. im sure i could currently manage this no problem by putting it into the status bar but i'd prefair it on the output window.

Magician Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 482

I agree my prompt depending on thats going on can be extremely long as well.

[safe][away][mail]<358hp 290sp 367st>

With my scripts to track changes in my prompt and other various features this would be great.

I have made use of the %mud.hpmax for example to make a few scripts for this purpose.

#GAG has some issues. I will give you an example

We have a channel called PKTALK where we talk. I capture all this to a PKTALK window and gag it from the output main window.
In doing so heres what i get

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:00 am

Can you post the exact trigger you are using to capture the text and gag it? Also, have you played with the EOR/GA option in the Emulation page? It seems like maybe your MUD is using EOR for the prompt and maybe you don't have that feature enabled in zMUD. That can cause a lot of extra blank lines.

Regarding "hideaway" windows, yes, the new docking system has this feature. It's called "AutoHide". When a window is docked to the side of a window (so, not tabbed, but docked to the left, right, top, or bottom), then next to the X close button for the window is another button called "AutoHide". When this button is enabled and you then move the focus away from the window (like clicking on the command line or any other control outside of the docked window) the window slides into the edge and "hides" becoming a tab along that edge of the screen. When you move the mouse over this tab, the window "slides out" and becomes visible again. Works a lot like the autohide windows in Visual Studio for anyone who has experience with that.

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:24 am

I think edb6377 is just showing what would normally happen due to gagging/redirecting some chatter.

Original

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

#GAG doesn't produce extra output, but since MUDs tend to display things double spaced it just looks like #GAG isn't doing its job completely. You will have to play around with multi-state triggers to get rid of the extra blank lines and prompts.

One thing you could do is create a screen-wide button. It wouldn't have to be very tall, so it'd remain out of the way even for the longest of prompts. The caption would be either a variable or variable expression representing the prompt line. The prompt trigger would then be free to #gag at will. Additionally, and this works very well with the shorter prompts, if you have a command buffer script you can include the variable holding all your commands in the queue and see them at all times.

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 4:00 am

The only reason I moved from the MUD's java client to zMUD was because of automapping. I am slowly learning the power of zMUD's scripting abilities, but 95% of my scripts are simple triggers that the java client can do just as easily.

The big advantage for the java client is that it has a graphical display of room exits, room type and health stats.

I have the impression that it is possible to recreate that already in zMUD but it does not like easy. If it was available within cMUD, I believe it will be a selling point. People like GUIs and it is easier to quickly absorb information represented graphically.

If it isn't included in cMUD, I think there is an opportunity there for someone to sell it as a packaged add-on ... anybody?

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

What Taz said. That's precisely the problem I have with capturing stuff to new windows too. You get the prompt showing up multiple times with blank lines between, but you can't arbitarily gag before/after because it might also show something like:

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 5:22 am

Of course, the trick is to figure out an algorithm where CMUD could remove the extra lines you don't want without messing things up even worse. That's also the danger in trying to remove the prompt. There are lots of MUDs out there, and coming up with something that works on most of them will be tricky. Feel free to start a discussion about how you might go about doing this. The easier it is, the quicker it will get added.

Btw, your examples crack me up. Gee, I think I'll go get a snack now :)

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:24 am

Personally I wouldn't be adverse to removing any blank lines before and after the prompt leaving:

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

I think this should just be a tick-box along with the rest suggested:

* automatically put prompt in status bar
* sticky latest prompt to bottom of output window
* strip prompts from output window
* strip prompts from log
* replace prompt with <script>
* 'n' blank lines before prompt
* 'n' blank lines after prompt

The last two - 'n' blank lines - will ensure that you have 'n' blank lines between any output and the prompt (either by stripping or inserting them as necessary). The reason for allowing insertion is for MUDs which don't send blank lines before or after their prompt but a player wishes to have the spacing.

If you set this to '0' you will get the output as Taz suggested:

Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 9:56 pm

I was messing about with my prompt following the #gag post and somehow managed to make my prompt sticky at the bottom of the mud output window, take a look at the video (it's a non compressed avi of 28Mb so download may take a while).

How freaky is that?