Zugg Software :: View topic

Newbie Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 8 Location: USA

has anyone ever used zMUD with tradewars 2002? its also a text-based telnet game.

regards,
the reverend
icq 83250263
http://thereverend.coastgames.com/tradewars/

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

Automated response follows....

Use search feature of forum to read posts all about tradewars.

MASTER Joined: 28 Nov 2000 Posts: 4817 Location: USA

Yes, several people have done so. Why?

LightBulb
Senior Member

Newbie Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 8 Location: USA

i'm just asking. i have read all about zMUD on the ZUGG website and it looks pretty cool. the main concerns i have are 1) is the database structure fully flexible? 2) would the mapper work with 6 exits per room and rooms that are not immediately adjacent? also, a friend told me that it doesn't display ansi 'up' commands correctly...

so to answer your 'why' question - i'm asking about it to see if anyone has already figured this stuff out before me.

i did a search on 'tradewars' posts - there are only 3 other threads that mention the topic, 2 of which are useful. i can see only 2 zMUD users who have even attempted to use zMUD in tradewars, one of which i've met in another forum, and the other doesn't seem to play tradewars much anymore.

regards,
the reverend
icq 83250263
http://thereverend.coastgames.com/tradewars/

MASTER Joined: 28 Nov 2000 Posts: 4817 Location: USA

1) Since I don't know what you mean by "fully flexible" I can't answer. It seems to meet the needs of the people who use it.
2) The current mapper will work with 6 exits per room, whether they are immediately adjacent or not. It will also work with 4, 8, 10, 1, 7, or 0, among others. The new zMapper program promises to be even better.

The best way to answer your real question (will it meet your needs?) is to use the free 30-day trial to find out for yourself.

LightBulb
Senior Member

Newbie Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 8 Location: USA

quote:

1) Since I don't know what you mean by "fully flexible" I can't answer. It seems to meet the needs of the people who use it.
2) The current mapper will work with 6 exits per room, whether they are immediately adjacent or not. It will also work with 4, 8, 10, 1, 7, 0, or 23 (the layout would be pretty complicated for the last, though). The new zMapper program promises to be even better.

The best way to answer your real question (will it meet your needs?) is to use the free 30-day trial to find out for yourself.

LightBulb
Senior Member

thanks for the info on the mapper... one more question on that topic - how does it handle one-way entrances to a room? for example when i said up to 6 exits from a room there could also be any number of entrances that are one-way from another room.

on the database what i mean is this: the screen shots all show like weopons inventory, food, armor, spells, etc - all mainly MUD stuff. tradewars is completely different. we have fuel ore, organics, equipment, fighters, shields, scanners, torpedos, photons, etc. and i'm never gonna have a +4 vorpal sword in my inventory. in addition, there are thousands of ports in the universe, each selling or buying fuel ore, organics, and equipment. can i 'teach' the database to manage all of those things rather than standard MUD inventories, taverns, and shops?

as far as the trial version goes - i don't have time right now to really give it a go, so i'd rather wait and get my full 30 days' worth than install it now for the neato factor and then have the 30 days go by without taking advantage.

i've been playing tradewars for going on 3 years now and i know the game very well. i have written a massive library of scripts for the game. there are also various helpers available, but most of them lack something i want. frankly, the MUD community is MUCH larger than the tradewars community. when i heard about zMUD, i had an 'aha' moment. i figure that the MUD community should have a larger pool of programmers to work with and maybe a decent app that just MIGHT be flexible enough for tradewars. i hope i'm right.

regards,
the reverend
icq 83250263
http://thereverend.coastgames.com/tradewars/

Newbie Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 8 Location: USA

on the ansi specifically, does zMUD display CR without LF correctly? how about "ESC[K"? tradewars often performs a CR + ESC[K to re-write the current prompt without a newline.

regards,
the reverend
icq 83250263
http://thereverend.coastgames.com/tradewars/

Novice Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 48 Location: USA

Just a thought
I discovered tradewars about ten years ago on a bulletin board. at the time there were no helpers, you just connected with a telnet client like hyperterminal. I rediscovered tradewars about a year ago and I joined someones corporation (team) and he used zmud and told me it was a great helper so I registered it and played my first game of tw in ten years with zmud. I got to talking to other players and found out that there were helpers that were made just for the trade wars game so I registered one called swath. The helper does complex tasks that takes alot of time to do by hand and have other features like finding your nearest fighter. also you can make macro,s and scripts. so far now I have used 3 diff helpers and they all use different languages. I feel that zmud, with a few minor adjustments or a tw version would beat them all cause it is just way more flexible. Right now there are at least 6 different helpers I can think of. its not like mudd would be steppin on any toe's. with the help of someone like the Reverend mudd could open a whole new market. there are over 1000 registered trade wars game servers and at least 10 times that many people world wide playing the game. and most of them use or need a helper. Just think of how many of these players could be pulled into this market.
need I say more?

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

Hrm, I was a bit snippy before. I won't bother with excuses.

ESC[K is handled correctly, as is ESC[D, ESC [#;#H, and quite a few others for screen positioning and display control that I don't remember right now. All of those are part of the VT102 spec to which zMud is compliant. ESC[#R which preforms split screens that almost no own ever used is not supported.

CR or CR+LF is an option setting. Most muds are operated on Linux and do not use CR+LF.

The database can be arranged to hold anything. If you wanted to you could store the phone numbers for all your favorite food delivery places. The next public version is being changed so the database will be MS Access compatible.

One way exits are totaly supported. In fact something you will never see in TW, but crops up when a mud builder is feeling creative is even in zMud, that being a loopback exit. Because zMud's mapper was originally created to map things that have a directional orientation, and TW's bigbang program cares nothing for such it just employs chaos theory you might want to use the spreadsheet view built into the mapper.

Simply put with the right planning and enough programming skill zMud is fully capable of being programmed to take over an entire universe, put an interdictor cruiser in every sector (except space lanes, and fedspace) and then use the transporter pads on them to rapidly take control of which ever ship that newbie player happens to be staring down the barrel of.

Novice Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 48 Location: USA

see, that"s why I like it here. (grin)