Monthly Archives: April 2010

The Rest of Shandril’s Saga

A little over half a year ago I posted some comments on Spellfire, book 1 of Shandril’s Saga.

I finished the second and third books, Crown of Fire and Hand of Fire. In retrospect, that was a bit of a mistake.

The next two books had all of the flaws of the first book, while repeating the same events and situations over and over again. There were so many dimensionless throw-away characters that it was hardly even worth remembering their names.

Essentially what these books were was a three-chapter plot drawn out into two full-length books. I thought Robert Jordan could drag a story well beyond its useful life, but Ed Greenwood is even more hardcore about it.

It took an act of will to finish Hand of Fire. One can only read about so many near-identical attacks on a caravan before falling into a coma, and it almost seems like the whole point of the book was to use the word ‘blandreth’ as much as possible.

It’s sad when the main characters of a book are so shallow and boring that you hope they’ll die so you can stop reading about them. Two stars for Crown of Fire and 1.5 for Hand of Fire. I hope Greenwood’s Elminster books aren’t this bad.

Zones Converted and Connected

Nauraki was actually the first one to give zone permissions when the Basternae 3 project started, but the converter wasn’t working well enough to convert them way back then. These zones by Nauraki have been converted:

The Plateau of the Temple
Court of the Muse
L’Ristrizzen (Drow Elf HT)
Phiadnae Flats

The Village of Shadowfall by Zaeru has also been converted.

I’ve started connecting zones to the surface and underground maps. Here’s what’s connected so far:

Village of Stoneward
Cavern of the Worms
Ice Tunnel Shaft
Thannik’Tzil (Thri-Kreen HT)
Kobold Village (Kobold HT)
The Minotaur Stronghold
Sarmiz’Duul
The Buffalo Tribe (Barbarian HT)
Kragthor (Ogre HT)
Phiadnae Flats (Minotaur HT)

That leaves a little over two dozen more that are approved and converted that need to be connected.

None of these zones have zone markers on the map. I’m not sure whether I want to place zone markers — it might be more fun to leave them off and force exploration. The number/strength of reasons for and against zone markers are about even, so that’s something to be decided later. My guess is that hometowns will be marked and other zones won’t.

None of the hometowns have player spawn points set yet, so everyone still starts in the Kobold village. Once all of the zones we have area attached I’ll worry about adding repops.

More Fixes

* Fixed a crash bug with automatically combining piles of coins when a corpse containing them decays or when someone drops them.
* Item auto-pricing has been enabled.
* Fixed a bug that would cause forage to always fail.
* Changed messages for a few commands.
* Coins were not saving in player files. This has been fixed.
* Fixed the deposit and withdraw commands. Banks are working now.
* Made the economy command immortal-only.
* Added spellbook and light support to the compare command.
* Changed adding objects to a room so they are added at the beginning instead of the end a room. This fixes an issue that caused the second mob killed in a room to end up as 2.corpse instead of 1.corpse.
* Changed adding mobs to a room so they are added at the beginning instead of the end of the room. This means that the second troll to walk into a room will now be 1.troll instead of 2.troll. This is the behavior everyone should be used to.

One thing that’s nice about the Basternae 3 engine is that a player-issued command is incapable of crashing the MUD directly. The only crashes that can and will happen are when the database gets corrupted or otherwise out of whack. Autonomous mob activity and object/room/weather updates are the only places that contain any danger anymore, and those are getting sorted out pretty quick.

In the past week, average uptime has increased from 2d7 hours to 2d20 hours.

Hurry up, break it while you still can!

By the way, “turbo level” mode is on — which means you gain ten levels for every one level you would normally gain. Should help with testing.

Connecting Rooms Made Easy

In Bast1 and Bast2, when a zone was added, one had to edit both zones, adding an exit to each room. When a zone was moved or connected in a different direction, the old exits had to be deleted and replaced with exits in the new direction.

This wasn’t too bad, but I always found it annoying having to edit *two* files. Worse yet, if you weren’t very familiar with a zone it could result in poking around a bit before you found what exit connected where.

This could also create “hanging” exit data when one zone was unload or disconnected from another without deleting both exits. Many of the Bast2 zones have exits pointing to the old map even though those room numbers don’t exist. This doesn’t break anything, but it’s ugly data.

Well, the “old way” of connecting zones still works on Basternae3, but I’ve also added a very simple way of connecting zones. It’s a ZoneConnections text file in the area directory that gets loaded. It has nothing more complex than:

First Zone’s Room Number, Exit Direction, Second Zone’s Room Number.

So, for example, one line reads
“200,south,1200”

This means that when the MUD boots and it loads that line of the file, it creates an exit leading from room 200 south to room 1200, and also creates an exit in the opposite direction, leading north from room 1200 to room 200.

If either of those two zones does not exist or is not loaded, the exit is not created.

This is a fun little solution that makes it way easier to connect zones to the world map, so you’ll see zones on the map pretty soon.

Editor Version 0.53 Update

This editor update is mainly about making it easier to edit load commands and object values.

Here are the changes:

Reset Editing

* Object, room, mob, equipment slot, door state, and direction selector buttons have been added to the reset editing screen to make it easier to choose values.

Object Editing

* Added select buttons for weapon damage kind and weapon type to the object value screen for weapon.
* Added totem type (sphere) selector to values screen for totems.
* Added target room selector to values screen for teleports.
* Added liquid type selector to values screen for drink containers.
* Added room and exit direction selectro to values screen for switches.

Walkthrough Mode
* The purge command has been implemented in walkthrough mode (clears objects and mobs from the room).
* The load command has been implemented in walkthrough mode (lets you load an object or mob into the room).

Other
* Added more info to the help file.

As always, save early and often if you’re working on a serious zone project, and let me know any glitches or suggestions for improvement.

You can download the new version of the editor here.

Client Version 0.17 – Attack of the Programmer Art

This update adds worldmap support.

Here are some examples:

Map Window Screenshot 1

Plains between the southeastern swamp and the blast crater.

Map Window Screenshot 2

On the road in the western forest.

Map Window Screenshot 3

Underground near the river crossing.

Map Window Screenshot 4

East of the mountains where the desert runs north into tundra and then glacier.

Map Window Screenshot 1 in Wintin

As a reference image, here’s the first map location in WinTin.Net

I guess the first three aren’t too bad aside from some tile banding and edge mismatches, but the fourth one looks like hell. I could do better if I spent more time on creating the tiles, but there’s probably a pretty solid limit to what I can do. If you’d like to try your hand at replacing some of the uglier tiles, you’re certainly welcome to.

If you download and install the client, there’s a “tiles” directory that contains the graphics for the map tiles, the equipment screen background, and the health/move meters. They’re loaded at startup, so if you replace any of the images with those of the same name and dimensions, they’ll be used instead.

This doesn’t do much good yet since no zones are attached to the map yet, but they will be soon.

You can download it here.

EDIT: I tried the client on Fedora 12 and it gave some library mismatch errors, so I created a static build. The new Linux build was created on Ubuntu 9 and ran fine for me on a clean install of Fedora 12. Let me know your results if you try it.

Tossing A Few Bugs In The Fire

I spent a while doing various fixes.  Here’s what it added up to:

* The dice command has been fixed.
* The visible command has been implemented.
* Drag corpse has been fixed.
* Fixed an issue where mobs would sometimes fail to ride mounts they’re supposed to be on according to the zone file.
* Fixed or improved a handful of immortal commands.
* Fixed or improved messages for a bunch of commands, including track, whirlwind, report, sleep, split, practice, disembark, forage, and train.
* Fixed a bug with moon phases that caused the world data file not to save.
* Made some fixes to and enhanced carve corpse.
* Fixed a problem that would cause people to show up on the who list more than once.
* Fixed an issue that would prevent a player from being able to follow a mob.
* The compare command has been fixed.
* Fixed a problem that would sometimes cause renting to fail.
* Fixed a problem that was preventing shops from being associated with their shopkeeper mobs when they load.

Client Version 0.16 Update

I spent some time with window layout, changing where windows open so things aren’t stacked on top of each other.  Now they open in locations that make more sense when you run the app.  You can still move windows elsewhere or close them if you want.

I also worked on the group window.  Now it should display info about the group you’re in, if any.  Here’s what it looks like now:

Basternae Client v0.16 screenshot

All of these extra windows — status, group, room, and equipment — don’t refresh unless the server sends data to refresh them.  The status window works pretty well because it updates every time the prompt is sent and the room window works pretty well because it updates every time you enter or look at the room.  For equipment and group windows, it’s only when you type the “eq” or “group” commands, which may not be often at all.

At some point I’m going to make these update more regularly, probably on a timed interval for the group window, and probably when you “wear” or “remove” equipment for the equipment window.

You may notice from the screen layout that the client works best on systems with a resolution of 1280×800 or higher.  You can probably use it on systems with less, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

You can get it here.

I’ve also posted a Linux binary. It was built on an Ubuntu 9 system and requires wxGTK. I haven’t learned how to create a .deb or .rpm installer package yet, so it’s just a gzipped tar. Please report any problems/glitches.

Testing With Multiple MUD Clients

Tiu mentioned in a comment the other day that text was all goofy and formatted wrong via telnet, so I did some investigation.

Bad:
Using telnet from a Linux box, everything looked screwy just like he said.
Using telnet from a Windows box, everything looked screwy just like he said.
Using Gnome-Mud, everything looked screwy just like he said.

Good:
Using Tintin++ from Linux, everything looked OK.
Using WinTin.NET (normally my main client), everything looked OK.
Using Mudlet, everything looked OK.
Using the Basternae Client (becoming my main client as it evolves), everything looked OK.
Using Zeta Telnet everything looked OK, but is in black-and-white.

Plain old telnet reacted differently to a carriage return / linefeed pair than MUD clients did.

After figuring out what the deal was I changed line endings in the server code and it looks like all terminal programs behave correctly now. Your mileage may vary.

A Pile of Bug Fixes — And Help Needed

I came up with a pretty good pile of fixes over the past day or two. Here’s the list:

* Fixed a crash bug in checking fall chance for mobs.
* Fixed a crash bug with creatures that leave no corpse (undead, elementals).
* Fixed a crash bug with decaying/disintegrating containers.
* Fixed an intermittent crash bug with removing a character from memory after they log out.
* Fixed a nasty bug where a player’s race wasn’t being saved.  This meant you would come back as a Human after logging out.  Ewww.
* Fixed a bug with memorization that prevented displaying which spells were memorized.
* Fixed a bug with memorization that caused classes to receive the wrong number of spell slots.
* Non-mana classes no longer start with mana.
* Fixed the fraglist command.
* Fixed the consent command, making groups possible.
* Fixed a problem with being able to see other players in the same room.
* Fixed message for the follow command.
* Fixed a bug with the ‘look self’ command.
* Fixed the ‘drop all’ command.
* Fixed selection of elementalist classes during character creation.
* Message added to the group all command.
* Change password from menu is working now.
* Delete self from menu is working now.
* Improved logging so we always see what caused a crash.
* Fixed disappearance of room title when brief is turned on.
* Fixed the way max hitpoint values were sent to the client.  This was causing hitpoint meters to be inaccurate for anyone without a race-modified constitution of exactly 100.
* The spells ‘sense spirit’, ‘elemental sight’, and ‘spirit sight’ are working now.

There are still a few major bugs on the table (especially that nasty death bug) and quite a lot of spells to work on, but the MUD engine itself is getting noticeably more stable, going from 1d3 hours average uptime to 2d7 hours. Of course, that is with close to no players and it’s players what finds glitches. Thank you to Potius, Zrun, Tiu, Veytre, and others who have reported issues before.

If you’d like to help a bit with testing and bugfinding, I could use it. Send me an email at my Yahoo address and I’ll set you up with an immortal-pro-tem and you can poke around and find me some more work to do. 🙂

Version 0.15 Client Update

I’ve spent some time on the client. Here are the changes for version 0.15:

* Fixed a bug with alias saving and loading.
* Added hotkey saving and loading to alias save/load.
* Improved room/map window, adding zone name, exits, and better word wrap for room description. It doesn’t show color yet, though.
* Added some fixes to the equipment window and it works now. It doesn’t show color yet, though.

In the process of working on the equipment window in the client, I fixed a bug on the server with the equipment command and one with the wear command.

You can download the new version here.

As always, let me know if and which bugs you find.

Fun With XSL

One of the good things about having data stored in XML files is that you can use XSL stylesheets (templates) to format the data into HTML.

I created two basic templates, one for races and one for classes, and linked them to the data files used by the MUD. They don’t have any fancy formatting, but they do display the data in a Human-able format.

The result is that the class and race webpages link to the data files being used by the MUD. This means that you can view info about each race and class exactly as it’s being loaded. If we change something in the data file, such as adding a new spell or adjusting a race’s dexterity, the web page that is displayed is updated automagically.

This means that the pages for each race/class will essentially maintain themselves. Neat, eh?

Cimmerian Abyss

I’d like to take this opportunity to blatantly advertise Cimmerian Abyss, an Ultima Online server put together by my friend Ed Zed (who some of you may know as Potius).

Check it out here:

http://cimmerianabyss.com

If you like it, don’t forget to click the ‘donations’ link. 🙂

Zones From Dubar

We’ve kind of hit the jackpot here. Dubar, one of the most prolific zone writers in the history of MUDdom, gave permission to use his zones. Here’s what I’ve converted:

Air Plane Load Grid
The Buffalo Tribe (Barbarian HT)
The Granite Spire
Autumnglen (Centaur HT)
The Fields of Elysian
The Goblin Camp
Gagga’Jobo Caves
Malch’hor Ganl (Goblin HT)
The Market of In’Goboda
The Outer Goblin Outpost
The Stables of Malch’hor Ganl
The Tunnels of Goober
Ice Tunnel Shaft
The Mik’Mak Caverns
The Forest of Neeble
Kragthor (Ogre HT)
The Mountains of Tentro

That’s a mighty fine haul, and they all converted without any issues. Now we need to figure out where to connect them. Thanks Dubar. 🙂

Version 0.52 Editor Update

The one we’ve all been waiting for — the editor version with custom action editing.

Changes include:

* Added ‘edit custom actions’ button to objects and mobs that lets you add triggers and scripts.
* Updated help files to include screen shots and more info for some topics, and updated the zone guide section of the help.

You can download it here.

Custom Action Editing

I’ve got custom action editing working in the zone editor now.  Here’s an example:

Custom action editor screen

To create an action, you select items from the drop down list to build a sentence describing the trigger and the resulting action.

After you have an trigger added, you can add additional actions by selecting the item in the list and clicking “add subaction”.  You can see examples of this in the screenshot.

There are also “find” buttons that help you locate the various items you can use as arguments.  Even though you can just type values into the text boxes, this can be handy when you want to make sure you have the right item or have gotten the spelling right on the spell to cast.

This will be available for mobs and objects in the next release of the zone editor.

Custom Actions: Our Version of Scripting

Some MUDs, including Basternae 2 and those derived from the Envy family tree, support MobProgs.

Some MUDs, inlcluding Basternae 2 and those derived from the Diku/Envy family tree, used custom C code (“spec_fun” code) to add special abilities to mobs and objects.

MobProgs are useful, but they can be a pain to edit because they’re pretty “scripty” and most editors don’t have any data validation.

Special functions require the direct attention of a programmer for things that aren’t necessarily complex enough that they should require code.

What I’ve come up with for Basternae 3 is something I call “Custom Actions”. They can be applied to mobs, objects, races files, and class files. It’s sort of an action template definition that will be easy to edit using the Basternae Editor’s GUI (when I finish it). The general idea is that there are triggers with one or more actions that can be associated with them.

Editing will be done using a sort of “Mad Libs” style interface. You’ll build descriptions of triggers and actions using buttons and drop-downs. For instance:

“When the mobile is attacked”:

“Say” “Tough luck, buddy, I brought my posse with me.”
“Wait” “two seconds”
“Create mob” “8192”
“Create mob” “8193”
“Create mob” “8194”
“Wait” “one second”
“Say” “Now you’re gonna get it!”

“When in combat”:

“Cast spell” “fireball” “4% chance”

“When a player tries to leave the room in direction” “north”:

“Prevent action”
“Say” “You’re not invited to this party.”

“When room contains object” “23” (a corpse):

“Destroy object” “23”
“Echo” “The ravenous bugblatter beast devours another corpse.”
“Wait” “3 seconds”
“Interpret command” “burp”

Here’s a list of the triggers and actions I’ve come up with for the first version:

———-

Each trigger has a percent chance of executing.  Each trigger also has a data field that may or may not be used depending on the type.

Trigger Types

Action: When someone uses the command

Value contains the command name.

Combat: When in combat

Value is not used.

Death: When killled or destroyed

Value is not used.

Engage: When combat is initiated

Value is not used.

Entry: When entering a room

Value is not used.

Exit: When exiting a room

Value is not used.

ObjectInRoom: When room contains the object

Value is the index number of the object to react to.

PlayerEntry: When a player enters the room

Value is not used.

PlayerExit: When a player leaves the room

Value is optional and is the direction to pay attention to.  Blank means watch all directions.

Random: A random chance

Value is not used.

ReceiveItem: When receiving an item

Value is optional and is the index number of the object to react to.

ReceiveMoney: When receiving money

Value is optional and is the minimum amount of money needed.

Speech: When someone says

Value is the word or phrase to react to.

Action Types

Each action has a data field that may or may not be used depending on the type.

Attack: Attack the player who caused the trigger to fire.

Value is not used.

CastSpell: Cast the spell

Value is the name of the spell to cast.

CreateMobile: Creates a mobile

Value is the index number of the mobile to create.

CreateObject: Creates an object

Value is the index number of the object to create.

DestroyObject: Destroys the object

Value is the index number of the object to destroy.  First the room is checked, then the mobile’s inventory.

Delay: Wait for this many seconds

Value is the number of seconds to wait.

Echo: Echo text to the room

Value is the message to be printed to the room.

GiveObject: Give player an object

Value is the object index number to give to the player who caused the trigger to fire.

InterpretCommand: Interpret the command

Value is the command line to be interpreted, i.e. “kick troll” or “jump”.

Move: Move in direction

Value is the direction to move in.

PreventAction: Prevent the action (only works with action and player exit triggers).

Value is not used.

Say: Say something.

Value is the phrase to be said.

Teleport: Teleport to another room

Value is the room index number to teleport to.

TeleportPlayer: Teleport the player who activated the trigger to another room

Value is the room index number to teleport the player to.

TeleportAll: Teleport all players in the room to another room

Value is the room index number to teleport the player to.

UseSkill: Use the skill

Value is the skill specified, i.e. “hide” or “kick”.

ZoneEcho: Echo text to the zone

Value is the text to be shown to everyone in the zone.

Destroy: Destroy self

Value is not used.

———-

One of the good things about the way it’s been coded is that triggers and action types can be added very easily.  The actual in-game implementation of it has yet to be done, but that should be easy enough.

If you think of anything that you could imagine doing in a zone that these commands won’t allow you do do, let me know, either as a comment on this post, or email me if you want to chat in more detail.  My name is xangis and I use Yahoo for my email.

Version 0.51 Editor Update

Here’s another editor update:

Object Editing Changes

* Added spell editing to certain types of objects (wands, staves, potions, scrolls, etc.)  The spell can be selected from a drop down list, or typed in manually for custom spells that aren’t in the editor.  That means you can declare spells that don’t exist yet and when they’re added to the game they’ll work.

Object Spell Editor Screenshot

* Default object template is now carryable and usable by anyone.

* Added some text labels to the object edit dialog.

* Changed object item type to a drop down list — no typing nonexistant object types into the box anymore.

* Fixed a crash bug with certain item types (drink container and missile weapon).

* Changed affect edit box to only allow selecting items in the drop down list — no keying in affect types that don’t exist.

* Value edit window now reflects currently selected object type even if the object hasn’t been saved yet.

Area Settings Editing Changes

* Changed justice type to only allow selecting items in the drop down list — no keying in justice types that don’t exist.

Here’s a link to the download.

Zones From Gargauth

Gargauth (also known as Baghtru) was nice enough to grant the use of his zones.  There’s a pretty good collection:

The Village of Stoneward
The Village of Friehold
Mosswood Village
Ixxillian (the Enslaver hometown)
The Training Academy
The Temple of Strife

Most of them converted without issue, but I had to make some minor fixes to the editor to import certain bits (it didn’t translate the Umber Hulk race yet, for instance).

While I was tinkering with the converter I sorted out quest importing, so quests translate and load now.

I also figured out a good way to handle setting spells on scrolls, wands, staves, and potions and modified the converter to perform that translation.  The next version of the editor should have spell editing on objects added.

The last major hurdle remaining with the zone format and editor is the whole equivalent of mobprogs / special functions / custom actions.  I’ve been braining on that for a bit, but haven’t started to put anything into action yet.

More Zones Converted

I made a few changes to the converter because it liked to choke on mismatched ANSI codes, i.e. if you had an &+Y in the description for an exit and didn’t have an &n at the end, it would flip out.

I also made a few modifications that would make it spit out warnings instead of giving up when it couldn’t convert certain parts of a zone — namely the special procs.  This means that zones can be converted without having all the special procs available.  That’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing.

After these changes, I’ve converted the zones “Sarmiz’Duul” by Zaeru, “The Hostel of Drakkenwood” by Sarim, and “Tower of Darkness” by Lortar.

Incidentally, this is the 300th post on the Basternae blog, so I’ve been averaging about 100 a year.