A lot of the new functionality hasn’t had much testing so if you come across any problems please let me know and I will try to fix them ASAP. Bear in mind that MXP is only partially supported and life is probably too short for me to expand it much beyond what is in place now.

Skinning

There is now an images directory at the same level as the swf which contains png images for each of the buttons and one named ‘skin.png’ which can be used to overlay the entire client to provide a more custom graphical look. Simply replace the button images and skin file with your own graphics. I’ve included some plain buttons and a basic skin.png image you can use as a template. Unfortunately the buttons don’t support different states but this was the only way to do it and have the images loadable at run time.

You can also adjust the spacing of the output and command windows relative to the edge of the container in order to better accommodate your custom skin. This is done using flashvars in the embedding page, see the README for a list of the new parameters.

MSDP Support and External Interface

The client will negotiate MSDP and can accept basic MSDP_VAR and MSDP_VAL data which is then passed to the container in the receive_msdp function. Each line from the server is also passed to the container using the receive_text function:

function receive_msdp (msdp_var:String, msdp_val:String):void
function receive_text (txt:String):void

In addition, FMud implements the following callbacks from the container for sending data back to the server:

function send_msdp (msdp_var:String, msdp_val:String):void
function send_text (txt:String):void

In theory this should allow you to build a GUI in javascript on the embedding page around FMud and communicate back and forth.

This was requested by a couple of people but it’s not something I have much experience with and is basically untested so please let me know if it isn’t working as intended.

MXP Support

FMud now supports SEND, A, GAUGE, COLOR and IMAGE tags, as well as SUPPORTS and VERSION. Context menus using send are also supported. Querying of specific tags using SUPPORT is not available, instead the client will send the full list of supported tags regardless.

Only temp secure mode (4) is supported so you need to send ESC[4z before each MXP tag. There is no negotiation.

Simple !ELEMENT definitions are also supported with a single attribute only, for example you could define the element ‘x’:

<!el x '<send href="&text;|l &text;" hint="move &dir;|look &dir;">' att='dir'>

You could then send the following shorthand tag:

<x 'over the hill'>hill</x>

Which would be parsed as:

<send href="hill|l hill" hint="move over the hill|look over the hill">hill</send>

When clicked this link would open a context menu with two options, “move over the hill” and “look over the hill” which would send the commands “hill” and “l hill” respectively.

Support for up to four gauges is built in using the names gauge1, gauge2, gauge3 and gauge4. You need to specify caption and color attributes for each gauge and then send the data using the entities curr# and max#, for example:

<GAUGE gauge1 caption='Hit Points' color='red'>
<GAUGE gauge2 caption='Mana' color='blue'>
<GAUGE gauge3 caption='Move' color='yellow'>
<!ENTITY max1 100>
<!ENTITY max2 100>
<!ENTITY max3 100>
<!ENTITY curr1 56>
<!ENTITY curr2 78>
<!ENTITY curr3 24>

The gauges are shown above the input bar so you’ll need to adjust the position of the output window accordingly.

Tags are not case sensitive and !ELEMENT and !ENTITY tags can be shortened to !El and !En. You can use Hex or standard HTML color names with the COLOR tag. Embedding multiple tags within !ELEMENT definitions probably won’t work and embedding tags within tags probably won’t either.

Unicode Support

This is another feature that has been requested a few times now and I’ve implemented what I think is the correct algorithm to decode UTF-8 but I’ve had difficulty finding a live mud to test it on so if anyone uses this on their server please let me know how it works.

You can get the new version from the downloads page. Make sure you check the README for updated flashvars information as well as some more explanation on policy files as this seems to be what trips people up the most.

These were quite different projects with Avalon wanting something similar to the client I did for Maiden Desmodus whereas The Two Towers had an existing javascript based web client they just wanted recreated in Flash for use on game portal sites.

Although the T2T client appears to be just a simple reskin, it was probably the more challenging project as I had to implement MXP !ELEMENT tag parsing which is something I’ve always avoided in the past when working with MXP.

You can see the T2T client up on Newgrounds (among other Flash game sites) and the Avalon client (named Lumiere) is now live on their site, although it’s not quite finished yet.

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.