Download it here.

Version 0.92

Released on 2nd March 2010.

• Fixed a bug with the hide_password parameter
• Fixed a bug with font selection
• Fixed a bug with handling telnet ECHO

FMud is a simple web based Flash mud client. A running demo, feature list and installation instructions are available on the FMud project page.

A running demo, feature list and installation instructions are available on the FMud project page.

Download it here.

Version 0.9

Released on 16th June 2009.

• Client can again be resized by altering the height and width parameters in the embedding page
• More improvements to ANSI colour handling, removed bold text
• Removed embedded font due to Flash Player display bug
• Font can now be selected from any installed font
• Added option in preferences to disable the keep last command feature
• Added new parameters; font, font_size, hide_password, name, pass

See the included README file for an explanation of the new parameters.

I’m still hoping to rewrite some parts of the client for a 1.0 release, time permitting, but hopefully this release should be an improvement in the mean time.

Next up will probably be a remake of my aliases tutorial with improved sound and maybe some better examples.

This first video is just a brief introduction looking at the interface and preferences options.

A running demo, feature list and installation instructions are available on the FMud project page.

Download

Version 0.8

Released on 11th February 2009.

• Line breaks should be handled better now
• Colour parsing improved, including MUSH style bold text
• Added support for clear line
• Added support for Terminal Type subnegotiation - client identifies as ‘FMud’.
• Bitstream Vera Sans Mono font now embedded as the default
• Removed option to specify font and size in the embedding page
• Client is now fixed at 720 x 560 dimensions
• Added option to toggle command stacking with ‘;’

The next version will have a complete rewrite of the telnet and ansi handling. What started off as a quick hack has gotten increasingly unwieldy as I’ve added more options and it’s at the point now where I really need to redo it the proper way. Once this is done I will probably call it finished and release version 1.0.

A running demo, feature list and installation instructions are available on the FMud project page.

Download

Version 0.7

Released on 7th November 2008.

• Fixed major bug when using FMud with Linux
• Removed display_height parameter. The dimensions of FMud are now calculated automatically from the height and width set in the embedding page
• Added policy_port parameter. This allows you to specify the port where the socket policy file is served. However, this file will be ignored if there is a master socket policy file on port 843
• Added support for aliases, triggers, macros and scripting with javascript. See this post for details
• A log of the output window can be saved in plain text or HTML format
• Updated README and FMud.html files

Saving and loading features require Flash player version 10.

A running demo, feature list and installation instructions are available on the FMud project page.

Download

Version 0.6

Released on 15th October 2008.

1. Removed extra spacing from between lines in the output window.
2. Settings are stored locally between sessions in a “Flash cookie”.
3. You can now set the dimensions of FMud in the embedding page.
4. Added ability to set default font, font size and window title.
5. Updated README and FMud.html files.

Please see the README for information on the new parameters that need to be set in the html page. If you drop this release into your existing html page it will NOT work correctly.

A running demo, feature list and installation instructions are available on the FMud project page.

Download

Version 0.5

Released on 3rd September 2008.

1. Display code rewritten to improve performance and reduce memory use.
2. Support for command stacking using ‘;’ character.
3. Changes to ansi parsing to improve display of bright text on some mush servers.
4. Some minor changes to colours and appearance.
5. Application height reduced to 680 pixels.
6. Support for extended ascii characters added.
7. Split screen mode removed.

Flash can use a lot of memory, but FMud has always seemed very inefficient. I had put this down to the string handling and the garbage collection and had accepted it as perhaps “just the way it works”. Unfortunately it means that after an hour or so of use FMud can take up so much memory that it causes slowdown on some systems. I didn’t think this was too crippling as I’d always seen FMud as a gateway client; something to put on a website as a quick and accessible way to try out a game. However, these issues had put me off developing it further as a fully fledged game client.

Essentially the FMud display works by reading data from a socket and appending it to a text control using the htmlText property. The data from the socket is parsed for colour codes and they are replaced with appropriate html tags. Unfortunately as more data is appended and the display grows the memory use climbs as well.

I had tried everything I could think of including limiting the size of the display buffer, rewriting the string handling and even destroying and recreating the display window, all to no avail. It seems that the text control is never marked for garbage collection while the application is running, so regardless of what you do with the text every byte received by the client is retained in memory.

The solution was so simple I am not sure how it had eluded me for so long. I had focused all my efforts on trying to improve the performance of appending text to a control whereas what it needed was a different approach altogether.

Instead of appending data from the server to a text control, FMud now buffers data from the server creating a new text control for each line which is then added to a display container. This way each line exists as a discrete object so once it is removed from the display the memory is recycled by the garbage collector.  So far this approach appears to have dramatically reduced memory usage.