Mudlet GUI: 28-Feb-2011

After several more hours playing with the links, and no progress to show for it, I decided to cut my losses and give up.  They work well enough for creatures and equipment, so I'll just disable the other links and wait until Mudlet adds proper MXP support.  I've too many other things that need doing, and progress on the mud is starting to lag behind, so I really can't justify any more time tinkering just add links to the help files.

On the GUI front, I've enlarged the font on the blur, adrenaline and movement icons, to bring them more in line with the MUSHclient plugin.  I've also got the movement icon correctly changing the colour of the text label based on the the movement type (walk, jog, run, etc).

I also discovered a minor bug, with the map using the yellow dot instead of the blue dot for other players - that's been fixed.

Finally, you can now target things by clicking on their miniavatar.

(click image to enlarge)

I've also been working on my MSDP snippet - I've got it communicating with the client, now I'm working on the variable table.  It should only send variables when they change, so each player needs a table that can hold multiple variable types.  This was much easier in C++, but most muds are written in C, and I want something that can be widely used.

Mudlet GUI: 25-Feb-2011

Following suggestions from Vadi and Heiko, I was able to get the moon icon to correctly rise and set behind the map.  After doing that I decided to shift most of the label creation into the onConnect() function, to tidy it up a bit.

The links still aren't quite working if there are two on the same line - but at least now the first is correctly displayed:

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Mudlet GUI: 23-Feb-2011

The map borders are now separate images that are drawn onto the background, as is the sunrise image (the trail that the sun/moon follows).

I've added the sun/moon icon above the maps, along with the current time.  There's still a slight problem with the sun/moon being drawn over the map when it rises and sets, I need to find some way to draw it behind instead (so that it appears to rise up from under the map, and set back down below the map).

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Mudlet GUI: 20-Feb-2011

I've now added the proper colours for the health, mana and primal energy bars:

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I also moved the initial GUI setup into an onConnect() function, and done some more work on avatars.

Mudlet GUI: 19-Feb-2011

After a lot of messing around I managed to create a new SEND format that includes RGB colours - although it doesn't yet work properly for XTerm 256 colours, it does at least work with regular ANSI:

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Note that the foreground colours are used for rare, uncommon, common, epic and mundane, while the background colours are used for artifact, relic, mythical, legendary and magical.  The default background colours are all "none", as I don't personally like having text with background colours, but from a functional perspective it could be very useful for players who (for example) are only interested in collecting rare artifacts, etc.

You can see a little white label at the bottom of the text window containing the text "look collar".  That's actually the mouseover message - my mouse pointer doesn't show up in the screenshot, but that's what you get when you hover over a link.

Mudlet GUI: 18-Feb-2011

Mudlet doesn't support MXP, but it does allow you to turn text into clickable links.  With a lot from help from Vadi, last night I managed to simulate MXP links.  I actually send the data in a slightly different format for Mudlet, to make it easier to parse, but the results are much the same:

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The underlined text is all clickable, and you can hover over it with the mouse to see what happens when you click.

I'm still having a couple of problems though - the first is the colouring (which is stripped), and the second is the link extending beyond the highlighted text.  If these can be resolved, Mudlet will be able to take full advantage of my mud's MXP features.

On another note, I managed to get the function keys working.

Mudlet GUI: 17-Feb-2011

I've been busy working on the mud recently, but as the Mudlet GUI is so close to completion I thought I'd put some more effort into it.  I've now got the hotkey buttons along the top working - at least as clickable buttons.  I'm still trying to work out how to use keybindings for the function keys.

(click image to enlarge)

Mudlet GUI: 07-Feb-2011

Thanks to both Vadi and Oneymus, I was able to resolve the issue with the miniavatar gauges.

I've now added the four icons below the target avatar (in the bottom left), which were previously just part of the background image, and have adjusted the labels on the spell icons.  Rather than repeating the same code over and over for drawing black outlines around the text labels on the icons and bars, I created a generic outline_text() function.

I also took the opportunity to clear the avatars, icons and energy bars from the static background image, now that they're all drawn properly.  I had forgotten the frames for the avatars, so I added those while I was at it.  Thus when you start up Mudlet you get this:

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And when you're connected you get this:

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I still need to add the hotkeys at the top and the sun/moon icon (and time) above the maps, as well as the mouseover and clickable stuff, but it's nearly there.

Mudlet GUI: 06-Feb-2011

As Mudlet doesn't support MSP, I've added sound triggers to the MSDP package for my psuedo-ATCP.  It generally works, although as far as I can tell Mudlet doesn't support playing multiple sounds simultaneously.  This means that combat sounds tend to cut off the (longer) weather and terrain sounds.

I've also added the target avatar and associated health bar in the bottom left, although the icons below it still need their text labels.

Finally, I've added energy bars below the miniavatars on the right (below the two maps), and here I've run into a problem - it seems that while hideWindow() hides labels, when used on a gauge it instead displays it as if it were empty:

(click image to enlarge)

Hopefully I'll be able to find a workaround for this - perhaps by shrinking them, or moving them behind something else.

Mudlet GUI: 2-Feb-2011

I've not worked on the GUI for a while, but decided to do a bit more on it tonight.  I resized the regular avatars so that they're all 64x64, and now display the PC's avatar in the top left corner.  I then added the spell icons underneath, although they don't have the pie-shaped timer like they do in the MUSHclient version:

(click image to enlarge)

I also went through the script and made sure all the files were loaded from relative paths.

The primal energy bar at the bottom is something I started working on previously (after posting the last report) but didn't finish - it doesn't yet differentiate between safe and regular primal.