Blinking Characters!

Hi Nick & Fiendish,
Incredible you are so active after so many years!

Short story: i used Zmud but i fall in love with regular expressions and lua (even though i have to learn a lot about the latter) so i decide to use MUSH.

You've done a so GREAT work guys...

PROBLEM: I'm playing a Diku MUD (Tempora Sanguinis II) that use special codes for colours and ""effects"" on characters (like underlined, inverted [background colour became the character colour], BLINKING, ..)

It is enough you put the string "" $cxyzz "" before the string and you'll get something different.

"zz" is the ANSI colour (from 00-15)
"y" is the background colour
"x" tell the MUD if you want something special

FOR EXAMPLE: $c0015 is bright withe character on black background
Sc5009 is BLINKING bright red character on black background.
BUT ... instead of a blinking character on MUSH i get an ITALIC character

Please Guys you've done a Majestic work here, i'm sure for you is a matter of a snap and few seconds to solve this matter.

PLEEEEEEAAAAASSSEEEEEEE!

It isn't. Also that kind of statement belittles someone else's hard work. I can't speak for Nick, but I'd prefer that you not say things like that.


With that out of the way...

Blinking text is an abomination.

Putting aside that I hate blinking text, it isn't a snap to solve. Normally text is drawn to a device context (ie. output window) and that can sit there for hours without changing. To make it blink you have to set up a timer, and remember the exact parts of the window that should blink, and then redraw them every second or so.

With a lot of text coming in from a MUD, and with timers having a low priority, the blinking might be intermittent at best. Maybe making it work properly would slow down everything else, to other people's annoyance.



One of the reasons it works so well is because of design decisions. Like, omitting blinking text. ;)

Hahahaha... thank you Fiendish!
I have to say... i read the forum a lot, and i like very much your direct way! No joke here!
So,yeah, i apoligize: don't mean disrespect Nick works (and your also!).



:) Honesty is the fuel of the best relationship.



Dear Nick, i'm so pleased you both answer so quickly!
Not a problem. I admit i suspect it was not that easy.
But, for a reason i cannot fully understand, i thought it was something you can recall from some API like Direct 2D or some sort of similar things.

So don't worry, i have a lot to do with complex branched regular expressions and Lua.

But, if you let me add something completely optional and, really, not so important, i would like also to ask about the "Buttons".

In the past i used this possibility only for marginal things and i remember those take away some part of the available screen, so there are also drawbacks.

But,... for what i remember it shouldn't be so difficult to introduce because Visual Basic and other operative system resources should put them on a silver plate.

Am i wrong?

P.S. love you guys!

What buttons are you asking about?

The likes you can find in applications like Excel (you create and manage those with VBA).

Are graphical rectangle you can "left-press" with your mouse pointer and you get the instructions required like in an alias.

The only difference is instead of remembering the alias and write it, you simply click on the "button".

Usually you create few of such a "buttons" because you then have to place those on the left (or right) side of the screen, or locked those up in the command bar.

But, if you create too many, you'll run out of available screen very quickly.

Oh. You used a definite article, so I thought you had specific buttons in mind, but I guess not.

HUGE! More than expected.
Thank you.