Web Portal

TeenyMUSH's web portal just went live at http://teenymush.dynu.net:8000. Two days of coding and its alive but very basic.

A little status update,

• The server now successfully runs two MUSH games and a com system that I wrote eons ago. Come play Tao/Othello or Connect 4. 
• Sockets have been implemented via a restricted SOCKET_PUPPET and SOCKET_INPUT flag. Data can be retrieved via a "!" listen as opposed to a the standard "^" listen, or the input() function. Simple weather retrieval has been coded in MUSH code on my dev site.  
• @lock key evaluation will be done shortly.
• A re-write of how data is passed back and forth is mostly complete. This will make it easier to determine the enactor and which program the code is being executed under.
• A honey pot environment has been created. hosts/users can be banished to the honey pot with no one to bother. Hopefully they will get bored and move on verses trying to connect a non-restricted host. 

TeenyMUSH

      This is an implementation of a TinyMUSH like server in Perl and MySQL. The server can be used to create a ASCII based virtual world. Users can telnet into the server and interact with other users in a world of their creation. Customization of the world does not require modification of the internal server code. Typically users will use a client program such as TinyFugue to connect to the server to make the interaction easier.

Connecting
      Typically users will use a client program to connect to the server. Many different clients have been created over the years from TinyFugue, Potato MUSH Client, or Plantain MUSH Client. You provide the client with an internet address and port and the client will connect. At that point you may connect to an existing character or a guest character via the connect command. Connecting via the guest character would be accomplished by typing 'connect guest'. The TeenyMUSH development site may be found at teenymush.dynu.net at port 4096.

Interacting
     Players may interact with other users by using the say, page, go commands. The say and page commands lets players talk with people in the same room or even distant locations. The go command lets users travel from one room to another.

Building
     Users can create rooms or objects to help better describe the environment in which they wish to interact in. Rooms and objects can be extremely simple to overtly complex. Usually the owner of the world will pick a theme and users are asked to create within the bounds of that theme.

Programing Language
     TeenyMUSH supports a lot of the commands supported by TinyMUSH servers. Typically the commands start with a '@' followed by the name of the command. For example, to create an object one would type '@create TeddyBear' if they wanted a their own TeddyBear. The TeddyBear could then be embellished with a description by typing '@describe TeddyBear=You see a small fluffy TeddyBear'. See the on-line documentation for additional commands.

Focus
    While many of commands supported by this server mirror TinyMUSH's commands, the focus is more on providing users with a program language which is readable and more powerful. Reading something coded in MUSH code can be a daunting task. Writing something complex can be just as daunting or nearly impossible. While I would have preferred to have implemented these features in a TinyMUSH server, my skill sets prevent me from doing so in a reasonable time frame.

Arbitrary Features

• Mysql Support. The internal database is done within MySQL. This solves many database corruption issues and Mysql provides lots of commands to help backup and maintain the database.
• Crash recovery. Perl provides a nifty eval command which can be used to catch crashes without shutting down the server.
• Dynamic code loading. Find a bug in the code or want to load a new version of the code? Change the code and reload it while everyone is on-line and no one will notice.
• Sockets. The server supports using sockets controlled by MUSH code. Example code has been created to query the current weather conditions, remote WHOs from other servers, and other tidbits of information.

Status

     Code development started in April of 2016 during my spare time. The ability to connect and talk to users was up and working within a week. The first real "program" used MUSH sockets to provide weather information from wunderground's telnet based weather server. The first ported game using unmodified MUSH Code was Connect 4. It was completed on March of 2017. It was followed by a port of Othello a week later. Tweaking of code continues to provide better support for other programs. 

Download

     The code can be downloaded at http://github.com/c-hudson/teenymush. Getting a working server running from the code hosted at GitHub will be problematic. The process is not documented, nore has a script been provide to build the server. Hopefully this will change in the near future.

Requirements
     The development MUSH currently runs on a Raspberry Pi 2 with a very limited database and player base. It should run on anything that supports Perl and Mysql without much trouble (hopefully).