On Fri, 18 Aug 2000, Sammy wrote:
> My proposal is an editor composed of simple gui building blocks, and using a
> simple scripting language to allow more powerful configuration editing by a
> mud's coding staff. The top-level config script would be zone-level and would
> call the mob/room/object/shop script, which could call lower level scripts
> like an extra description editor. It wouldn't need a fancy language parser,
> just something that woulld allow semi-intelligent decision making. The gui
> building blocks could stay pretty basic and probably wouldn't ever have to
> change. The idea was that with a starting stock circle script set and a short
> HOWTO on modifying it to handle things like the 128-bit mod and other popular
> changes, it would be very reuseable. I had even considered writing some
> scripts for stock rom/envy/etc to make it more widely useful.
>snipped script<
That looks pretty good, though some of the repeats (like exits)
should also follow the min/max restrictions. Also, how to deal with what
would otherwise be hardcoded 'constants' - like sector type defines &
names, or room flag names and values...Otherwise, that looks decent.
Really, it wouldn't be a big issue to write these 'gui' building blocks as
activex controls, and then the biggest issue will simply be usability...
That is, it's easy to make them pop up, but it makes things look
poor. At the same time, it's hard to integrate them into the app so
they'll be coherent. I think the best thing to do, perhaps, is to expand
some on the dialog structure in your script - for example,
exits/descriptions/etc should probably be in a single dialog box with a
listbox containing all extra descriptions, aside from just the exdesc
keywords and text. Same, perhaps, for the exits.
.
.
.
An aside, I dug up an old project I was working on for a specific
mud which I never had the time to finish - an editor of all things. If I
were to remove the non-stock options and do a little fix-er-uper work
(like getting that stupid map to finally work!), would anyone be willing
to do a bit of work on the scripting?
What I've got right now is just the following:
http://www.imaxx.net/~dughi/other/cbreak/sc1.jpg
That's just one form out of, well 3 right now, that were supposed
to fit into a tabbed box - which I also haven't done yet, only wrote up
the child frames and some of their functionality (most of it is
vaporware).
Think that's a decent look & feel for stock-type editor, or no?
I would just post out the code now, but that was way back when I
was trying to make the jump from windows3.11 API-type coding to windows 95
with MFC. I will give out the code, resources, etc, when it actually has
something usable though - no doubt :) Sides, as I indicated, most of it
right now is vaporware.
I just hate embarassing myself. Hubris and all that.
PjD
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