Good Ideas = More Work

So, I realized that there were a couple things that I had done before with PurlMUSH that I was going to have to re-do. The first, and one of the most important, is building the cnf parameters into a hash that can be changed using an @config command. As well, I still haven't written the code to have .cnf reloaded when the game does an @reload. This is important...that way a MUSH admin can change config options on the server-side, @reload, and they take effect. A practical example of this would be turning building on.

At the same time I was thinking about that, I realized that we should probably have a config script that nicely prompts the user for things like IP, hostname, name of the MU*, etc. This will gently and pleasantly write the mush.cnf file for them and move them speedily along the path of getting the game up and running. Oooh, here's an idea...have the config script prompt them for a pw for God(#1) and do the md5_base64 encoding on it right into the initial db. In fact, if we made it a requirement that the config be run to write the initial db, that would guarantee a bit more security on the God character. Of course, you could also just have an old db/cnf file that you drop in and away you go...theoretically.

I also remembered that I used to have @module as a command in the original codebase. That allowed you to load in code from an expansion module. I am not sure if I want to go that route again, but I might....the idea is great, but the problem of course is that once you load it in, it's remarkably hard to unload it afterwards. Have to think about that.

Made a few cosmetic changes to the file structure, specifically changing the name of the db file, the executable, and the library file. Did this just to give it its own flavour, more than anything else. mud.db is now mush.db. mud is now Startpurl, and mudlib.pl is now mush_lib.

I also got brave and wrote an initial README. I will post it in another blog posting.