TinyMudServer

Posted by MJohnHBerry on Fri 24 Feb 2017 04:27 PM — 20 posts, 83,454 views.

MJohnHBerry USA Fri 24 Feb 2017 04:27 PM #0

Hello!
@Nick Gammon
I have recently been taking C++ tutorials in hopes of one day being able to create my very own MUD. I have noticed that your 'tinymudserver' on GitHub is like the only C++ starting point for someone in my shoes around the internet. I've been doing tutorials on SoloLearn and other places and will keep learning before I get too crazy and in too deep over my head. But I'd like to know if you had any plans to further your project?

I also read through some other threads on your forum, namely the 'Programming a Mud' topic about a book written just for that. It apparently also came with a CD and a sample server that was further along than your own server. I was wondering, since it seems that more than a few of the users on this forum bought that book, if anyone would like to sell it to me at a discount if you're no longer using it? It seems pretty pricey still for an old book from the places I was shopping around for it.

Well, that, or any other tips towards building a MUD in C++ I would greatly appreciate. Many thanks.
-John

Fiendish USA Global Moderator Fri 24 Feb 2017 05:17 PM #1

So I can't help with the book, but it looks like someone has mirrored the source code (original sourceforge site no longer seems to work) on GitHub. see https://github.com/briandamaged/bettermud

MJohnHBerry USA Fri 24 Feb 2017 05:36 PM #2

Oh, wow! You're the man! Thanks alot!

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Fri 24 Feb 2017 08:44 PM #3

MJohnHBerry said:

But I'd like to know if you had any plans to further your project?

I think about that from time to time, however I'm not sure it would be anything more than an exercise. My impression is that MUDs are decreasing in popularity (for example, the number of questions on this forum here is quite small compared to five years ago).

There are quite a few issues that need resolving in a workable server, for example: handling people who disconnect in the middle of a fight if they are about to lose, handling trades between players, some means of enhancing equipment (enchants), possibly handing ranged attacks, and so on.

It is fun to play with a minimal server, but making one that is likely to attract anyone other than you and close friends will be a lot of work.

MJohnHBerry USA Fri 24 Feb 2017 09:18 PM #4

Oh, I've read many a posts about this topic. Even some of yours. You're well known around the MUD community.. obviously, hah. Even on other websites. I'm pretty young for a person who appreciates MUDs.. possibly one of the last of the mohicans of my generation. Kids that are up and coming now are more into visual effects. And as you've said..there has been a decline.

BUT.. maybe that's because there hasn't been a great enough MUD built within the last decade to attract more kids. I remember when I was 8-9.. starting off on AOL. I played a game called Darkness Falls.. Great MUD. I still have dreams about that game, 20 years later. I've always wanted to get involved in something like that. I just never had any friends or acquaintances interested in helping me learn, and the idea of learning to code by myself was intimidating.

Now that I'm older I want to create something akin to that Darkness Falls MUD though. I want it to be a MUD.. but I want visuals. Player pictures, item pictures, etc. Intricate combat system. And I want to build it with the idea that eventually it will be ported to mobile. You won't be able to go crazy on your phone in a text based game.. but if you want to handle political affairs, or grind out a little exp then it would be possible.

I unfortunately never met any friends in the 'real' world who shared my interests. I would hope that If I can at least get a project started and possibly start posting results.. than next year around this time I could have a demo and possibly attract other people to join the team.

But I've been interested in this idea for quite some time. Just wasn't sure where to start. I did check out the "Evennia" Python 2.7 community.. but I was to understand that C++ would be 10x faster than Python should I ever need that speed I would hate to have to recode my whole project later. Why not just start where I hope to be headed, right?

But I definitely think with your knowledge and love for MUDs that you shouldn't let them die, either.

MJohnHBerry USA Sat 25 Feb 2017 01:20 AM #5

Hey, sorry for bumping this. I have no clue how to build this file, lol. The BetterMUD is saying that it's not able to be compiled with new versions of Visual Studio. So I'm not sure how you guys got it running. And the tinymudserver I can't build because I don't know where to enter
gcc tinymudserver.cpp -o tinymudserver -g -Wall

or where to type 'make'. A little help?

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sat 25 Feb 2017 08:19 AM #6

Quote:

I want it to be a MUD.. but I want visuals.

Me too.

Quote:

Player pictures, item pictures, etc. Intricate combat system.

Same.

Quote:

I unfortunately never met any friends in the 'real' world who shared my interests.

That's exactly what happened to me!

Quote:

I don't know where to enter

gcc tinymudserver.cpp -o tinymudserver -g -Wall

Time to ditch Windows. Either install Cygwin (Unix under Windows) or get yourself a Linux PC. Believe me, life is a lot easier! I even run MUSHclient under Linux (both as a Wine program and using a VirtualBox Windows subsystem).

Fiendish USA Global Moderator Sat 25 Feb 2017 10:45 AM #7

Quote:
The BetterMUD is saying that it's not able to be compiled with new versions of Visual Studio.

Can you be more specific? The newer visual studio should convert the old sln and vcproj files to the new format for you. Anything else will be modern compiler errors that are probably fixable.

MJohnHBerry USA Sat 25 Feb 2017 04:53 PM #8

Alright:
I had to click 'Open in Visual Studio' from the Gitub website in his repo section.
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=vzvmuw&s=9

When I click files to view inside of the project I get:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=1z4weib&s=9

Then this:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=r0yvit&s=9

And finally I go back to Visual Studio and get this:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=28ssny0&s=9

And I'm looking into dual-booting Linux right now. I've wanted to try it out forever ago but I've just always used Windows and was intimidated.

Do you guys use Skype or Discord?
MJohnHBerry#3634 - Discord
MJohnHBerry - Skype

Worstje Netherlands Sat 25 Feb 2017 09:21 PM #9

So, at the risk of being _that_ guy..

Is learning C++ the means to learning how to build a MUD server? Or is having a MUD server the reason you want to learn C++?

If the latter, is there a reason you are opting for C++? The language is powerful, but I'd consider it a venerable minefield and not very productive.

There are some really interesting and already existing mud codebases out there. Most are written in C(++), but there's a couple written in languages that are a lot easier to digest due to the lack of housekeeping and other forms of verbosity.

Not reinventing the wheel - or being very good at borrowing features - is something that ought to not be underestimated. It can be very effective in just keeping yourself going simply because you keep seeing results that are also useful. Starting from scratch as a novice, it can be really easy to spend ages of finnicky details that are trivial on first glance, but end up surprisingly gotcha-ey and hard to debug (Sockets, I am talking about you.)

MJohnHBerry USA Sat 25 Feb 2017 09:32 PM #10

Oh, well.. I actually started off with Python and checked out the Evennia community. I am opting for C++ because of it's speed and I've always kind of been interested in learning it. However, I am no where near ready to 'start' the project I am after. I am just interested in these projects that are doing the difficult server setup for when I -am- ready to start my project.

If I could get that BetterMud up and running, or even the Tinymudserver, that would be a great starting point. I imagine in a few months after I've completed a few dozen minor/medium sized projects to get me in shape on C++ I'll start to grasp what exactly is going on behind the scenes here with these servers.

I've got like 100 pages of hand written pages and plenty of information saved on my laptop about my dream game. So now I just need to get to learning how to use it. I also want my game to have a stand-alone client. Other clients won't be able to connect to it.

I would also like to touch up on LUA and use it as my games scripting language for quests, etc. Or possibly Python.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 26 Feb 2017 03:33 AM #11

I think the TinyMudServer compiles OK. For example under Cygwin I just tried it:


$ git clone git@github.com:nickgammon/tinymudserver.git

Cloning into 'tinymudserver'...
remote: Counting objects: 81, done.
Receiving objects:  34% (28/81)remote: Total 81 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 81
Receiving objects: 100% (81/81), 41.36 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (36/36), done.
Checking connectivity... done.

$ cd tinymudserver/

$ make
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c tinymudserver.cpp
g++ -MM  tinymudserver.cpp > tinymudserver.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c strings.cpp
g++ -MM  strings.cpp > strings.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c player.cpp
g++ -MM  player.cpp > player.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c load.cpp
g++ -MM  load.cpp > load.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c commands.cpp
g++ -MM  commands.cpp > commands.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c states.cpp
g++ -MM  states.cpp > states.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c globals.cpp
g++ -MM  globals.cpp > globals.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c comms.cpp
g++ -MM  comms.cpp > comms.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c room.cpp
g++ -MM  room.cpp > room.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -o tinymudserver tinymudserver.o strings.o player.o load.o commands.o states.o globals.o comms.o room.o

$ ./tinymudserver.exe
Tiny MUD server version 2.2.0
Accepting connections from port 4000

See? No problems. Use Cygwin and ditch Visual Studio. It only took a few seconds to compile.

MJohnHBerry USA Sun 26 Feb 2017 11:58 AM #12

I hadn't realized that the BetterMUD code hasn't really been working in like 10 years. After some more searching around for it I can see that I'm not the first person here to try and find/use it. Looks like it's mostly broken now and probably wouldn't be a good starting point to learn from as there are, I would imagine, more advanced ways of doing what he did 15 years ago. So I'll probably end up just starting off with your tinymudserver, Nick.


$ make
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c tinymudserver.cpp
g++ -MM  tinymudserver.cpp > tinymudserver.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c strings.cpp
g++ -MM  strings.cpp > strings.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c player.cpp
g++ -MM  player.cpp > player.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c load.cpp
g++ -MM  load.cpp > load.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c commands.cpp
g++ -MM  commands.cpp > commands.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c states.cpp
g++ -MM  states.cpp > states.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c globals.cpp
g++ -MM  globals.cpp > globals.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c comms.cpp
g++ -MM  comms.cpp > comms.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -c room.cpp
g++ -MM  room.cpp > room.d
g++ -g3 -Wall -w -pedantic -fmessage-length=0 -o tinymudserver tinymudserver.o strings.o player.o load.o commands.o states.o globals.o comms.o room.o

$ ./tinymudserver.exe
Tiny MUD server version 2.2.0
Bad vnum '' for exit  for room 1000
Bad vnum '' for exit  for room 1001
Bad vnum '' for exit  for room 1002
Bad vnum '' for exit  for room 1003
Bad vnum '' for exit  for room 1004
Bad vnum '' for exit  for room 1005
Accepting connections from port 4000
**** Terminated by player on signal 2 ****

Closing all comms connections.
Game shut down.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 26 Feb 2017 09:33 PM #13

Quote:

Bad vnum '' for exit for room 1000

OK, so it compiled OK. Is that the latest version of the server? Recently there was a fix about that. If you pulled it from Git, check you have the latest. You can do:


  git fetch
  git merge origin/master

Or if you downloaded the .zip file, get it again.

In particular, this commit:

https://github.com/nickgammon/tinymudserver/commit/1e42533151b1c

(You could check line 115 of load.cpp).

I am pretty sure the issue there is line endings on the rooms.txt file. The file should look like this:



1000 

Starting room (room 1000).%rYou are standing in a fabulous, fabulous, exotic room, with all sorts of things that go 'hum' and 'plink' in the night.%r%rAs you glance around the room, you wonder what else might exist in this world.

n 1004 s 1001 e 1002 w 1003

1001

Room 1001.%rYou are in room 1001. It could look better. What a let-down! This rooms has no alabaster walls, no mystic fireplace, no marble floors.

n 1000

1002

Room 1002.%rYou lounge around in room 1002. The floors are carpeted with a sort of wool-nylon blend, so favoured in caverns these days. There is a corridor to the east.

w 1000 e 1005

1003

Room 1003.%rThis rooms looks as if it has been rough-hewn from the very granite that forms the basis of the world itself. Unfortunately the general effect is submerged somewhat by the presence of many audio CDs stuck to the wall with sticky tape.

e 1000

1004

Room 1004.%rThis is the training room. One day you might receive all sorts of interesting training here. Perhaps you might even purchase shields and armour. But not today.

s 1000

1005

Eastern corridor (room 1005).%rThis east-west corridor looks like it could be interesting to follow.

w 1002

Try editing the file in a text editor and re-saving with different line endings (eg. DOS rather than Unix).

Fiendish USA Global Moderator Mon 27 Feb 2017 12:24 AM #14

MJohnHBerry said:

And finally I go back to Visual Studio and get this:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=28ssny0&s=9

An error message saying that the compiler cannot find errno.h isn't a problem with the source. It's a problem with your install of Visual Studio. Either re-install, fix the install, or go find where your errno.h file actually lives if it's actually sitting somewhere and tell VS where to get it.

MJohnHBerry USA Mon 27 Feb 2017 02:11 PM #15

@Nick
I was able to get it to run. I wasn't able to figure out how to get the 'telnet' command on Cygwin though. After Googling it, I found that the 'inetutils' package is supposed to have the command in it. I can't find that package in Cygwin's setup though. So, you was right, I had an older version. I did get it to run, and I just used Windows telnet to connect. However, it turned out like this :
[IMG]http://i66.tinypic.com/2pr89xl.jpg[/IMG]
I'm not sure if that's because I'm connecting with Windows telnet and not Cygwin..or what. But it's online. And is it only made to let Me, the host log in? Or can I put it online and let others join in as well?

@Fiendish
Following the instructions in BetterMUD brings me here, where everything seems to work, except the 'make link' command. And also, does the 'make link' command make an .exe, like Tinymudserver's 'make' command does? Because It doesn't exactly say how to open BetterMUD after you make it.


Sicx@SICX /home/bettermud
$ cd /home/bettermud/bettermud

Sicx@SICX /home/bettermud/bettermud
$ make
g++ -I/usr/include/python2.6 -I../Libraries -Xlinker -export-dynamic -g ../Libraries/SocketLib/*.cpp -c;
g++ -I/usr/include/python2.6 -I../Libraries -Xlinker -export-dynamic -g ../Libraries/ThreadLib/*.cpp -c;
g++ -I/usr/include/python2.6 -I../Libraries -Xlinker -export-dynamic -g ../Libraries/BasicLib/*.cpp -c;

Sicx@SICX /home/bettermud/bettermud
$ make libs
g++ -I/usr/include/python2.6 -I../Libraries -Xlinker -export-dynamic -g ../Libraries/SocketLib/*.cpp -c;
g++ -I/usr/include/python2.6 -I../Libraries -Xlinker -export-dynamic -g ../Libraries/ThreadLib/*.cpp -c;
g++ -I/usr/include/python2.6 -I../Libraries -Xlinker -export-dynamic -g ../Libraries/BasicLib/*.cpp -c;

Sicx@SICX /home/bettermud/bettermud
$ make bettermud
make: 'bettermud' is up to date.

Sicx@SICX /home/bettermud/bettermud
$ make links
make: *** No rule to make target 'links'.  Stop.

Sicx@SICX /home/bettermud/bettermud
$ ./bettermud
-bash: ./bettermud: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

Sicx@SICX /home/bettermud/bettermud
$ make link
g++ -I/usr/include/python2.6 -I../Libraries -Xlinker -export-dynamic -g *.o /usr/lib64/libpython2.6.so -lpthread -ldl -lutil -o bettermud
g++: error: /usr/lib64/libpython2.6.so: No such file or directory
make: *** [makefile:46: link] Error 1

Sicx@SICX /home/bettermud/bettermud

Oh.. uh.. am I supposed to have Python installed to use this? I thought it could use Python as a scripting language to quickly make quests, etc.

How does one implement a scripting language into C++ like that? Would that defeat the purpose of me choosing C++ for it's speeds if I bog down my system with a bunch of Python code?

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Mon 27 Feb 2017 08:58 PM #16

Quote:

However, it turned out like this :

Do what I do and use MUSHclient to connect to it. This is the MUSHclient forum after all. The line endings lack a carriage-return.

You could make the code replace %r with \r\n but you get a much better experience with a proper MUD client.

Quote:

Oh.. uh.. am I supposed to have Python installed to use this? I thought it could use Python as a scripting language to quickly make quests, etc.

Looks like that particular server expects the Python libraries.

Quote:

Would that defeat the purpose of me choosing C++ for it's speeds if I bog down my system with a bunch of Python code?

Well, Aardwolf has Lua as a scripting language and that runs OK. You use scripting for things like quests. The "core" code (doing fights, checking for input etc.) is still in C++.

Using a scripting language simplifies adding quest objectives and so on, rather than having to recompile the server every time (and then shut it down to get a new version).

Quote:

And is it only made to let Me, the host log in? Or can I put it online and let others join in as well?

The whole point of a MUD server is to allow multiple connections. If you "port forward" your router to your PC your friends could join in.

Worstje Netherlands Tue 28 Feb 2017 11:30 AM #17

If a game is written in Lua, Rust, Lisp or Python does not have to make a MUD server slow in the terms you are thinking of slowness for: lines slowly coming in, heavy combat slowing stuff down, etc.

To double back to Evennia which I mentioned before... It is Python-based. The biggest game based on it (ArxMUSH) has over 100 simultaneous connections during its peak times and I haven't noticed any noticeable slowdowns. (Well, save for reboots / script reloads, but that is sensible.)

Remember that machines now are way faster than they were 10 years ago. And those were way faster than the machines 10 years prior to that. You can get away with a lot more than you used to. (And investing that extra slack into a language and/or codebase that makes things easier for you isn't a bad thing, imho.)

Today, the language is not typically going to be the biggest issue; just scraping up the low-hanging fruit in all the code (meaning slownesses in the most commonly run codepaths) will likely be enough to keep you afloat just fine.

Obviously, everything depends whether you use the processing power properly, but that is no different when you use C(++). Not caching algorithm data and results like A* path finding or the calculation of pi are going to tax your machine immensely.

Do you really need all the efficiency you think you need? Food for thought. :-)

MJohnHBerry USA Thu 16 Mar 2017 05:59 PM #18

I've been studying and doing more tutorials. And have gotten more involved in the Evennia community as it has a solid group of people in active development for generally the same thing that I'm interested in. Good bunch of people there, too. But here is the end-game for my dream. Now I just need the know how...

http://i67.tinypic.com/2vcvqps.jpg

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Thu 16 Mar 2017 08:58 PM #19

A lot of that is done with miniwindows, and possibly telnet negotiations to send things like map data. It is non-trivial, believe me! :)