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Programmer needed
13 years ago
Update: Added a graphic ( http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7827248/ )
MUCKs and MUDs are great, but MU* clients suck balls.
Very few MUCK clients are fully functional, and most stick to the Big Wall O' Text format and haven't moved with the times - The GUI is straight from Windows 3.1 and nobody is planning to change that.
I have a GUI and a few ideas for making things better, but having worked with COBOL, DBASE IV, MODULA II, MASM and a handful of scripting languages, I've come to the conclusion that I'm a really bad coder.
I'm looking for someone (Or several someones) who can code and implement the UI while I handle the art stuff.
This would be a GNU style project where everyone puts in a hideous amount of time for no compensation apart from their name in the credits and of course, a brand new, horribly buggy MU* client that takes years to get fully operational, that people will whine about for the next ten years because it doesn't have that one obscure feature they love.
Features for the client:
Client side icons of your friends so you can attach an avatar using a trigger
Client side threading for paged/whispered conversations
Right click on avatar to set friend/foe/gag/room description
Attach details to a person, e.g. notes, birthday, sex, species etc.
Incoming text is formatted into clean, easy to read text bubbles to make it easy to see where one pose ends and another starts.
Background images for the text area so you can set them per-room using a trigger, or per-character to make it easy to multi-play without mavving to the wrong account.
Smart text input. One bar takes commands and parses them, and the other pre-appends "Say" automatically unless you start the line with : or ; (or user defined words like (spoof) or @emit)
Dockable minipanels for server spam, Scream Channels, pages, tells, whispers
Reply button for pages/whispers. Never Mav again!
Inline images - When someone posts a URL to an image, it generates a thumbnail and you can click to embiggen
Stack-a-block trigger writing! Make simple or complex triggers by simply sticking the next action in! e.g.
[When I see... (Bob)] [Anywhere] [Change the (word) to] [bold] [blue] [(black) background] and [play (bingbong.wav)] and [end of trigger]
Or
[When you type (ws)][capture][All the text][until I see (*****************)][(2) times] [and then] [send to miniwindow named (WhosInHere)] [And then] [send (WS)][Every (2) (minutes)]
...Which would automatically update a list of everyone in the room and put it in a mini window.
And so on.
MUCKs and MUDs are great, but MU* clients suck balls.
Very few MUCK clients are fully functional, and most stick to the Big Wall O' Text format and haven't moved with the times - The GUI is straight from Windows 3.1 and nobody is planning to change that.
I have a GUI and a few ideas for making things better, but having worked with COBOL, DBASE IV, MODULA II, MASM and a handful of scripting languages, I've come to the conclusion that I'm a really bad coder.
I'm looking for someone (Or several someones) who can code and implement the UI while I handle the art stuff.
This would be a GNU style project where everyone puts in a hideous amount of time for no compensation apart from their name in the credits and of course, a brand new, horribly buggy MU* client that takes years to get fully operational, that people will whine about for the next ten years because it doesn't have that one obscure feature they love.
Features for the client:
Client side icons of your friends so you can attach an avatar using a trigger
Client side threading for paged/whispered conversations
Right click on avatar to set friend/foe/gag/room description
Attach details to a person, e.g. notes, birthday, sex, species etc.
Incoming text is formatted into clean, easy to read text bubbles to make it easy to see where one pose ends and another starts.
Background images for the text area so you can set them per-room using a trigger, or per-character to make it easy to multi-play without mavving to the wrong account.
Smart text input. One bar takes commands and parses them, and the other pre-appends "Say" automatically unless you start the line with : or ; (or user defined words like (spoof) or @emit)
Dockable minipanels for server spam, Scream Channels, pages, tells, whispers
Reply button for pages/whispers. Never Mav again!
Inline images - When someone posts a URL to an image, it generates a thumbnail and you can click to embiggen
Stack-a-block trigger writing! Make simple or complex triggers by simply sticking the next action in! e.g.
[When I see... (Bob)] [Anywhere] [Change the (word) to] [bold] [blue] [(black) background] and [play (bingbong.wav)] and [end of trigger]
Or
[When you type (ws)][capture][All the text][until I see (*****************)][(2) times] [and then] [send to miniwindow named (WhosInHere)] [And then] [send (WS)][Every (2) (minutes)]
...Which would automatically update a list of everyone in the room and put it in a mini window.
And so on.
My only question is how easy it will be to separate text from different people. As far as I've understood the MU* "protocol" is so horridly simple it might be hard to get the information necessary.
I've also done some text parsing recently in C with Flex/Bison although again if the protocol isn't structured enough it might not help.
Are you going for cross-platform support?
Like ^Dave would tag the icon onto anything Dave does or says. And you can just click to tag things as e.g. rooms, like everything including and after ^(Emerald City Tavern \(\#\.*\)), which will handle places you go regularly, unless GCMP is enabled, in which case you can just use the room/player/object codes to determine what's what.
I would love to help, but I just don't see myself having the current experience or knowledge to help.
I'm slowly getting into C# and whatnot at work. Already decent at JS, though. Could work as a web UI with a backend that connects to the muck.
Another idea is to use an existing client and modify it accordingly, some existing ones have their source code available, like the very good MUSHClient which I have been using for nearly a decade. It's written in C++.
But again, me personally I don't program. I haven't for 11 years and I was no good at it back when I used to do it more regularly!
But if you ever need some UI help (e.g. making of mockups, creation of screen elements and icons, prototyping of button images or whatever, or you just want to use any of my concept here - No use hanging onto it!) I'm totally there.