commands/speech modes

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This is a feature request:

Some MUD variants (like most of the Talkers), specially those who tend to
give more emphasis to the social aspect than the "game" aspect of a MU*,
have a "default behaviour" regarding commands which is the opposite of
what's seen in a "traditional MUD" (and what we have on tzmud). While on
tzmud actions are usually made like:

help
 there is no help
look
 You see a dark room.
say Hello!
 You say "Hello!"

, on those other MUDs, the default is speech, not commands:

help
 You say "help"
look
 You say "look"
say Hello!
 You say "say Hello!"
.help
 there is no help
.look
 You are in a dark room
.say Hello!
 You say "Hello!"

I hope the examples above explain what I mean...
What do I want? A configuration item on tzmud that lets the MUD owner
choose between "commands mode" (the default) and "speech mode" (what I just
described). The implementation should be quite trivial, so if you accept
this enhancement request but don't want to spend your time with it, I can
code it myself and submit a patch (even if I don't promise to have the same
coding style as you...).

Original issue reported on code.google.com by marcos.m...@optimus.pt on 27 Apr 2010 at 8:20

[GoogleCodeExporter]

It sounds interesting.

I could see it as a server configuration, but it might also work as a 
user-level setting:

look
 You see a dark room.
set talkmode
look
 You say "look"
unset talkmode
 You see a dark room.

I have not looked at implementing either one. If one way is of more use to you, 
code
it the way you want to use it. I'm happy to look at a patch, and will most 
likely
merge it.

Original comment by miss...@hotmail.com on 27 Apr 2010 at 9:07

• Changed state: Accepted

[GoogleCodeExporter]

should be:

look
 You see a dark room.
set talkmode
look
 You say "look"
unset talkmode
look
 You see a dark room.

Original comment by miss...@hotmail.com on 27 Apr 2010 at 11:34

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Well, having both would be great, but the most important is to have a "world 
default"
so people can have, on a dotty, what they expected without having to find out 
"set
talkmode". 

I'll try to implement the configuration setting first, then the "set talkmode"
setting. I don't know when will I have the time to look into code, tho...

Original comment by marcos.m...@optimus.pt on 28 Apr 2010 at 9:10

[GoogleCodeExporter]

It was a really small patch (python FTW ;-)), only briefly tested but seems to 
be
working, here it is... I hope it is OK to be accepted.

PS -> this patch adds the configuration setting, not "set talkmode". I still 
have to
see how "set" is implemented in tzmud to do that part... 

Original comment by marcos.m...@optimus.pt on 28 Apr 2010 at 12:48

Attachments:

• dotty.patch

[GoogleCodeExporter]

It looks Ok to me.

Is "dotty" a standard term, or could we call it "talkmode" or 
something else a bit more descriptive?

Original comment by miss...@hotmail.com on 28 Apr 2010 at 6:01

• Changed state: Started

[GoogleCodeExporter]

"dotty" is a kind of "slang" term, usually to describe MUDs that have (only or 
by
default) the ".help" behavior. There's some of that documented on wikipedia, on 
an
old version of a page (then trimmed down because wikipedia folks felt the page 
had
too much information): 

in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talker&oldid=128225471 :
"Whilst talker bases had a variety of names for their codes, there were 
essentially
only 2 base codes from which all other codes were based, this being NUTS (also 
known
as "dotty" because of its use of a . before each command) and ew-too."
[...]
"NUTS-style talkers generally had completely different users to ew-too style 
talkers.
People who used ew-too loved them and refused to use anything else, and 
similarly
those who were used to the simpler commands of NUTS, and the "dotty" elements, 
loved
NUTS. Whilst ew-too users were known as spods, NUTS users were not. In spite of 
the
vast majority of adult (18+) talkers being NUTS-style or "dotty" talkers, the 
vast
majority of NUTS talkers were all ages."

Sometimes those are called "NUTS-like" or "NUTS-style" because NUTS was the 
original
talker base in which this style of commands were used (inspired on the BBS's).

Despite all this, NUTS and its derivatives actually have a command to change 
from
this style to the more traditional style: 
.mode
Now in COMMAND mode.
COM> mode
Now in SPEECH mode.

So, I think that calling it "command mode" and "speech mode" might not be a bad 
idea.

There, you have the background, now the choice is up to you ;-) It makes no
difference to me, all I want is the feature ;-)
for those MU*s. 

Original comment by marcos.m...@optimus.pt on 28 Apr 2010 at 6:37

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This issue was closed by revision r371.

Original comment by miss...@hotmail.com on 29 Apr 2010 at 10:12

• Changed state: Fixed

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks for the patch. I used it as a basis for my implementation.

Please let me know if this does not work the way you want it to.

You will need to create a new key in your conf.py

speechmode_default = True

Original comment by miss...@hotmail.com on 29 Apr 2010 at 10:35

[GoogleCodeExporter]

As mentioned under issue 36, speech mode right now does not
require dot for special commands. That is ...

@wizardcmd and !admincmd work, but
.@wizardcmd and .!admincmd do not work.

When creating the patch for this feature, I thought about
requiring dot for admin and wizard commands, but it seems
excessive to me. It doesn't seem like something people will
want to talk about much.

But, I think it might be good to allow .@cmd and .!cmd also
-- in addition to plain @cmd and !cmd.

Any objections to that?

Original comment by miss...@hotmail.com on 21 May 2010 at 10:51

• Changed state: Started

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This issue was closed by revision r391.

Original comment by miss...@hotmail.com on 22 May 2010 at 1:44

• Changed state: Fixed