3D Mud Client

Inno? Hrm, I don't know. Was it included with the mud files
I downloaded for the generic 3d mmorpg mud?

Normal maps for bump mapping was what I was thinking about, as
regards your question. I noticed the graphics on the mud were
a bit older than what's currently available for games, and wondered if this
was just because
you didn't have the time to put them in or if the ability to do so,
was just not available? Bump mapping and normals is a big feature, and of
course pixel shaders and vertex shaders. But heck if i know how to do
any of that, at this point.

I can, however, make fast normal maps. I have access to a really nice piece
of software for making normals called Crazy Bump http://crazybump.com it's
free and speeds up map making considerably.

When I log in the server, my PC fan kicks on and it doesn't stop the entire
time.
Are muds just more intense than say World of Warcraft or is it due to the
.jpgs you've employed for some of your graphics or is it a load of scripts?
I'm not very familar with alot of this, I'm just learning the syntax and the
programs
to make these kinds of things now. Any way that can be avoided?

Another odd thing that keeps happening: When i first download and use
the mud, the text chat is all nice and shiny. However, i end up with
a programming language in the chat box the next time
i log on, it looks like every event is listed as it happens. i see the
coords
as i move, ,the NPC commands for when they spawn and when they
talk, etc.

Inno? Hrm, I don't know.

Was it included with the mud files
I downloaded for the generic 3d mmorpg mud?

Skinhat>
Its an install maker at:

http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

You use it to make your own client installs.

bvegh>
Normal maps for bump mapping was what I was thinking about, as
regards your question. I noticed the graphics on the mud were
a bit older than what's currently available for games, and wondered if this
was just because
you didn't have the time to put them in or if the ability to do so,
was just not available? Bump mapping and normals is a big feature, and of
course pixel shaders and vertex shaders. But heck if i know how to do
any of that, at this point.

I can, however, make fast normal maps. I have access to a really nice piece
of software for making normals called Crazy Bump http://crazybump.com it's
free and speeds up map making considerably.

Skinhat>
I did at one stage have normal maps. The 3d client uses the 3d library GLScene (glscene.org) allows for it. You can see in the pic of the bunny:

http://glscene.sourceforge.net/wikka/Rendering

But I think I removed it from the client. Could readd it next version if needed.

bvegh>
When I log in the server, my PC fan kicks on and it doesn't stop the entire
time.
Are muds just more intense than say World of Warcraft or is it due to the
.jpgs you've employed for some of your graphics or is it a load of scripts?
I'm not very familar with alot of this, I'm just learning the syntax and the
programs
to make these kinds of things now. Any way that can be avoided?

skinhat>
Maybe it uses the CPU more than other games and your fan is trying to cool down.

bvegh>
Another odd thing that keeps happening: When i first download and use
the mud, the text chat is all nice and shiny. However, i end up with
a programming language in the chat box the next time
i log on, it looks like every event is listed as it happens. i see the
coords
as i move, ,the NPC commands for when they spawn and when they
talk, etc.

skinhat>
You probably switched off 'strip 3d tags' in the control dialog. Check out:

http://mudclient.skinhat.com/node/91

skinhat>
I did at one stage have normal maps. The 3d client uses the 3d library GLScene (glscene.org) allows for it. You can see in the pic of the bunny:

Could readd it next version if needed.

bvegh>
oh that'd be awesome. Bump maps make it so you can show the landscape incremently, also, don't they? That way the computer doesn't have to load so much of the landscape at the same time, lowering cpu and memory usage, which in turn allows for more detail, correct? But if I can't edit the game, that won't help my situation. Sadly. i mean, i can save new models over old models, but I can't access the functions, or add fight styles, implement things like rain and so on.

skinhat>
You probably switched off 'strip 3d tags' in the control dialog. Check out:

bvegh>
Oh yeah, I did do that. I remember doing that now, when i tried reinstall, i also retried wizard and clicked that off. could that hamper being able to use the wizard?
the wizard is available for windows on the mud, isn't it?

bvegh>
oh that'd be awesome. Bump maps make it so you can show the landscape incremently, also, don't they? That way the computer doesn't have to load so much of the landscape at the same time, lowering cpu and memory usage, which in turn allows for more detail, correct?

skinhat>I think it just adds bumps to a model and so reduces frame rate compared to a non bumped model which is why I might have removed it.

I forgot the url of the bunny. Its at:

http://glscene.sourceforge.net/wikka/Rendering

bvegh>
But if I can't edit the game, that won't help my situation. Sadly. i mean, i can save new models over old models, but I can't access the functions, or add fight styles, implement things like rain and so on.

skinhat>
To use whats already there you'd need to set up SWLPC on Linux. A good way to use it is say Knoppix running on VMWare which is the way I do it at home. That way you can have Linux running while running Windows. Its like having two machines running on one PC.

skinhat>
You probably switched off 'strip 3d tags' in the control dialog. Check out:

bvegh>
Oh yeah, I did do that. I remember doing that now, when i tried reinstall, i also retried wizard and clicked that off. could that hamper being able to use the wizard?
the wizard is available for windows on the mud, isn't it?

Skinhat>You mean the wizard client (http://mudclient.skinhat.com/wizardclient)? You'd give this client to your wizards so that they can easily idle and also edit scripts while gamers would use the normal 3d client.

also, if i can get rid of some of the trees in the landscape and buildings in the cities, i could implement bump maps without such a hit on framerate, yes? how do i modify auto generated text, such as the sentences that say "You see footprints leading to the west" ? Does the mud load the entire 3d world at once? Not in increments? This might explain why it takes a hit on framerate. There must be a way to modify that as well, so that it isn't necessary for everything to load at once

also, if i can get rid of some of the trees in the landscape and buildings in the cities, i could implement bump maps without such a hit on framerate, yes? how do i modify auto generated text, such as the sentences that say "You see footprints leading to the west" ?

Skinhat>
This text is generated by the swlpc mud so you would modify the mud to change that.

bvegh>
Does the mud load the entire 3d world at once? Not in increments?

Skinhat>
You have a choice. You can have permanent 3d objects (eg the terrain) or you can have objects only appear when you are near (eg a table). These are specified in parent maps (http://mudclient.skinhat.com/wiki/Parent_Maps). STATICPOSITIONs are for those things which are permanent while STAGGEREDPOSITIIONs are for object that will disappear when you move away from the object.

Note also the mud can make a thing appear. For example the 3d tag {otable,+} would make a table appear near the centre of the room.

This might explain why it takes a hit on framerate. There must be a way to modify that as well, so that it isn't necessary for everything to load at once

Skinhat>You mean the wizard client (http://mudclient.skinhat.com/wizardclient)? You'd give this client to your wizards so that they can easily idle and also edit scripts while gamers would use the normal 3d client.

Bvegh> I mean, does it work on windows platforms or do i need to install linux ?

The wizard client is windows only.

i'm installing linux as a program, as described at this link:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/beginners-guide-run-linux-like-any-other-program-in-windows.html

will that work for swlpc?

Ubuntu might be the best one as it is based on Debian. I know SWLPC usually works fine on debian based distributions (eg Knoppix). Have had SWLPC working on Red Hat.

k doing that now

I've never used Ubuntu so I cant help you much with it. But Knoppix I'd be able to help you with.

knoppix? i'll get it instead then. lol i just downloaded all 693 megabytes of ubuntu lol
off to knoppix, if you're sure that'll work on my windows system? i had a problem with puppy linux. it kept insisting it needed to find "RecordNow!" before it could install. wtheck?

Ubuntu is more modern I think. Dell use it for there linux machine so is worth using. Depends on if you think you can manage using Ubuntu without my help.

i'll go with your idea. :) knoppix is almost done. for some reason, these all have the same icon as "record now!" is this some weird windows thing? i hope it doesn't also expect me to have record now before it'll install. :/

well it says that the linux file i downloaded KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso and added to the folder with the OS files, is not a valid virtual machine. what's that mean? it won't boot up linux. got another way?

wait, i got it running. i downloaded virtual box inztead. it won't let me type the letter between r and t when the vm iz running. it popz up the windowz info on the computer verzion i'm on. z=that letter between r and t.
okay, zo, i'm on linux knoppix. i zee mountain zcenery and a box with a blinking curzor.
not very intuitive. muzt offer in commandz? how do i boot up zwlpc?

it appearz to have modified the key for the letter between r and t, whether i'm running linux or not. oy. time to check the keyboard mapping. i wonder how that happened

erm, that's odd. i just rebooted comp and it works fine now.
anyway, not sure how to get files booted up on knoppix, but
will see if i can find the info myself.

Have you got vmware working? You can set vmware to read the .iso file and boot knoppix while running windows.

Heres a download link to the trial version of vmware:

https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?eval=workstation-w

Unfortunately its not free but is free to try. Another way to go is by an old PC and convert it to Linux. I bought an old 200MHz laptop for $100 and installed Knoppix on the hard drive (instead of booting from CD).

i downloaded it and installed it with virtual box (it's a virtual machine)
problem is, it's now saying "FATAL: No bootable medium found". It WAS working, before i rebooted the comp

looks like i'm going to have to go to the file for knoppix and tell it every time, to open in virtual box. : /

does that mean i will lose all my data, every time i log off?

In the virtual machine I set CD-Rom 1(IDE 1:0) to the .iso file and seems to boot ok when I click 'start virtual machine'.

so how do i run swlpc in knoppix?

This has a brief description:

http://mudclient.skinhat.com/swlpc

You'll need to copy the swlpc-2.0.6-3D.tar.gz file onto knoppix. To do that you need to make sure knoppix is on the network and then set up a samba server. The samba server will allow windows to see you knoppix drive on your windows neighbourhood network.

Not sure how much you know about Linux to be able to do this.

i put the mud folder in the shared folder on desktop and set the security on it so both can use it. the install file for swlpc is there but i don't know the command to get linux to locate it in the shared folder, unzip and execute it

You might need to do it the other way round and make your knoppix drive your shared drive then in windows copy from c:/program files/mudclient/muds/swlpc-2.0.6-3D.tar.gz to your windows drive. Might be hard to see your windows drives from knoppix. Probably a way to do it but not sure. Once you have it on your knoppix drive then follow the steps in the url I just gave.

all i have in knoppix besides a pretty background, is a command line type of box. like a dos box, with a prompt following the word Knoppix@Knoppix:~$

the shared folder is so anything can see it,share it. i don't get how i'm supposed to access it if there's no commands to give it in the first place. how's this thing work?

i have no clue how to get anything on it. i need to know the commands for it

Most muds work on Linux so probably worth learning the basics. This has some of the basic Linux commands:

http://www.tacpa.org/notes/linux/basic.html

'vi' is useful to learn for editing scripts in SWLPC if you are running it from telnet.

it can see the shared folder but won't let me see what's inside the shared folder. i'm assuming this means i need to actually use the command box to open the folder and find the swlpc tar.gz file?

erm, i can see the inside of the folder but the tar.gz file that's right there in the folder, doesn't show up because it isn't a folder, it's a zip file.

anotehr comment. there's absolutely nothing on the desktop of this linux install.
where's all the bells and whistles? i've seen bootable disk linux and it has tons of desktop icons and so on. it works almost like windows. this thing is so plain and bare, it's like it isn't much more than a dos prompt.

You should see something like this.

Not sure what you are doing wrong that makes it only show the dos prompt.

that's nice! well mine was an old green tinted picture of mountains with a dos window on one side and 3 drop down menus, none of which did anything/ nothing on the desktop. no guis. the colinux thing didn't work either.
part of the problem is, i'm running a wireless network and colinux needed access to the net or at least access to
windows, locally. it included 3 different ways to do this, included tap adapter, serial, or pcap, none of which my
isp networking gurus wanted to touch with a ten foot pole (not linux savvy).
knoppix claimed i only had 8megabytes of video memory, i think that's one of the reasons it only installed the dos
box, which wouldn't accept any of the linux commands i gave it anyway.

the people who make these programs assume everyone is totally familar with their geekspeek, so you end up
with these huge products that eat up the life cycles of your computer but don't actually do anything
cause you don't know what the freak you're doing and can't translate their instructions. :D

i redownloaded virtual machine and i'm going to try puppy linux. wish me luck

lol well as luck would have it, virtual machine server is saying i need to install IIS again because it says, it's broken. :D

ah yes, fun

Do you have a low spec PC?

what's a low spec ?

Pentium 4, 3.20 ghz, 2 cpus
1 gig ram
1890MB page file available, 574MB used page file
Directx 9.0c
NVIDIA Geforce 7600 GS, 512 MB Total memory

Heh, very high spec. Strange you are having problems.

Like the GeForce 7600 GT, the GeForce 7600 GS is based on NVIDIA’s G73 GPU. If you recall, G73 is built on TSMC’s new 90-nanometer manufacturing process and functionally is a scaled down version of the G71 GPU powering the GeForce 7900 GT/GeForce 7900 GTX. We referred to it basically as half of a G71 GPU in our GeForce 7600 GT Performance Preview article, as it sports half the pixel shaders as GeForce 7900 GT (12 versus 24), half the ROPS (8 versus 16), and half the memory interface (128-bit versus 256-bit). Basically the only portion of G73 that isn’t sliced in half are the vertex shaders. NVIDIA equips G73 with five vertex units, whereas G71 has eight.

The best news of all for the GeForce 7600 GS is that NVIDIA’s made no compromises to the G73’s core architecture for GeForce 7600 GS, all the pixel and vertex shaders found in GeForce 7600 GT carry over intact, nothing’s been disabled. All NVIDIA has done is lower the clock speeds to make GeForce 7600 GS cards cheaper to produce. For instance, the GeForce 7600 GT requires high-speed GDDR3 memory running at 700MHz, whereas the GeForce 7600 GS is able to get by with cheaper 400MHz DDR2 modules.

not sure what all that means, but it sounds good. lol
i guess i need a quad and a few more gigs of ram. lol
right after i buy that space cruiser and visit other galaxies far, far away

I wanted Rhodes 3D and Shattered World work on lower spec machines so didn't develop it on a high spec machine. I think developing on a high spec machine can tempt you to not worry so much about frame rate.

tell me about it. i was invited to the beta for Lord of the Rings Online. That thing was so cpu greedy. They had a horse you could ride from one stable to another. It was on auto run, and you couldn't control its direction or speed. It was running pretty darn fast. As a result, the computer couldn't keep up with the new data loading as the horse ran down the path. So the horse would lag out, run off the path into the field, run off the side of bridges and jump off into ravines which resulted in "You died. Game loading." type messages.

It had to be run with almost all the bells and whistles turned off. that's not a game, it's a lag fest. I think they fixed it since then, but probably not enough for most comps.

dang it, it won't update my server unless i reinstall IIS and IIS is not free for my machine even though it came with it to begin with. It won't upgrade the existing software. i dun like microsoft sometimes.

What do you mean you virtual machine needs IIS installed? I thought your virtual machine would be knoppix.

well this is the deal. i'm installing virtual machine server.
it requires that i have IIS, it says IIS is broken or not there.
i can't access knoppix at this point without a virtual server,
so how would it be my virtual machine without a virtual server?

I use the VMWare workstation as per

https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?eval=workstation-w

Never used the vmware server. Not even sure what its for.

well it doesn't work anyway, so that's the end of virtual machine server idea. i do have a copy of linux on disk with all the gadgets, but i'm not sure how it works or how to use it so that i don't lose all my data, every time i boot off. i'm also not sure what version it is, and it seems my daughter's comp was changed to 64 bit color to accomodate it. if i change to 64 bit color, computer life's gonna get alot harder.

so are you absolutely sure the wizard.exe for the generic mud, doesn't work in windows and it's only accesible due to swlpc, which won't work on windows? i went net surfing for software that could port linux programs to windows.. .. what a mess. i've already tried the virtual server idea, what a mess.

i don't want to give up on this 3d mud. it has so much promise, but yowzers, this has been 2 days of frustration

Do you mean wizardclient.exe?

Strange you can't get vmware workstation working. Never had problems with it.