Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 1:48 pm

I hope this hasn't been posted before, I thought I read ages ago that this was being developed but I did a search and came up with nothing.

I'd like to see a new log format created for CMUD, the most important feature of this format is that the log would all be time-stamped, down to the milisecond and the different types of text would be tagged. The point of this format is to enable the log to be played back as if the log were being created in real time. For example, if a fight was logged I would like the log to be able to be played back and it would appear just as the fight were actually taking place, all perfectly timed.

Ideally this format would allow the log to be 'played' back through CMUD and have the option of 'blanking out' various different kinds of text that appear in a log. For example, triggers would be tagged as such and could be toggled on and off the display, normal typed commands, aliases, etc. In addition, there should be the option to play the log through and have it used as a much more advanced way of testing triggers and scripts.

Anyone familiar with the very old Islands of Kesmai and the log viewers for that program from Compuserve will understand the type of output I am looking for. If anyone has such logs and a viewer perhaps they'd be willing to make them available for anyone who can't understand my description?

It would also be nice if it were possible to log into other formats, RTF, DOC, ODT, etc.

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

You can turn on timestamps in your log quite easily. Click on Options|General|Session|Logging, and mark the box labeled 'Log timestamps'. Discussion of that feature, when it was new, may be what made you think this had come up before.

There is also the debugging log, which does tag whether things come from the mud, from triggers, etc. Interpreting this output takes some skill. I believe Zugg has indicated that he can use debugger logs to replay scenes, which he uses for debugging purposes. I don't know whether anyone else can easily use that log for replay.

As for RTF, DOC, and other formats, I have to ask--why? If you use HTML logs, you can convert that to other formats. If you don't use HTML logs, text is text. Why try to insert all those other formatters into code that is already quite sizeable? (I ignore here the fact that HTML logging is not perfectly implemented yet, in the expectation that it will improve over time)

Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 7:26 pm

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Sure, I realise you can log timestamps, but they only stamp to the second and would offer no help if someone were to make a program to play back a log file at the same speed as it actually happened.

If Zugg has debugging tools that log all this stuff, it would be great if it could be refined and made into a very useful feature, at least to me and I know others who would use it. The idea behind the log would be that it was designed to be read by a tool, not really by hand.

The reason why I suggested other logging formats is really just because I figured it would be relatively easy to do, and it would allow logs to be transfered/exchanged in easier to read formats. HTML would most likely take care of that.

Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:06 pm

You can actually set up a timestamp that shows fractions of milliseconds (I believe it's the "z" character in the time format string). You can set any time format output string that you want in the preferences.

It is *not* easy to output other logging formats. HTML was hard enough. But HTML was easier because CMUD already supports MXP, which is very similar to HTML. I have no plans to add any other log file output formats, sorry.