Zugg Software :: View topic

Newbie Joined: 29 Aug 2005 Posts: 2

Can we use zChat somehow, or is there a package for cMud?

Magician Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 482

Im sure thats a future implimentation however i would think zugg is still working the quirks out of cmud and now isnt a good time to add more stuff to it. I believe he hasnt worked on "Plugins" atm

Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 6:49 am

I couldn't imagine some form of zchat not being implemented...

It's NEW, it's IMPROVED... it's cCHAT! :)

Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 5:33 pm

Plugin compatibility turns out to be a tough issue. Because of the way Windows handles COM objects, any plugin that calls something like zMUDCommand will need to be edited to call CMUDCommand instead.

One of the important goals with CMUD is to allow it to co-exist on the same computer with zMUD. This means that CMUD cannot simply replace the zMUD COM interface. So all existing zMUD plugins will need to be edited and re-compiled to work with CMUD. Essentially you will have the zMUD version of a plugin and a separate CMUD version of a plugin.

As far as Chat, I plan to integrate the zChat features directly into CMUD. But this probably won't happen before the first CMUD public version. It's something that will be added over time. And yes, it will be greatly improved over zChat (which is about 8 years old now and in need of *lots* of improvements).

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

If at some point, one didn't want to run zMUD on the same computer as CMUD any more (e.g. after CMUD is stable), could there be a way, in principle, for CMUD to replace the zMUD COM interface? i.e. just for that computer? I'm sorry I don't know enough about COM to know if this is possible. Personally, I'm not too concerned, since I'm not using any plugins at the moment.

Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 2:11 am

Nope. The API routine names are hardcoded and exported in the DLL file. A compiled plugin is linked to a specific DLL library interface with different routine names. I would have to distribute a file called ZMUDAPI.DLL (same name as the zMUD API) with the same routine names as zMUD that end up calling CMUD instead. But in the future time you are talking about when people are running CMUD instead of zMUD, having the API maintain the zMUD names just wouldn't make sense. I think it's better to have the plugins recompiled specifically for CMUD.

Also, forcing plugins to be recompiled will give users more confidence that the plugin works and is supported for CMUD.