I've been looking through some of my old snippets and depending on how long it takes me to get a Linux box running, I am probably going to overhaul them a bit and rewrite some of the directions on how to install them. This mainly has to due to a few emails on questions about the installation processes, but also because I don't like looking at poorly written documentation on my part. So, as soon as I get time to rebuild a computer out of the old Athlon Thunderbird system I have, plan on seeing me a little active in the snippet area. I don't plan on writing new things, just updating my old stuff, but who knows--I can get bored very quickly with what I am doing, and you may just see something.

I am mainly saying this because this is the easiest outlet I think I can get to the community (even though I plan on getting on to the MUDCon in April) because it seems the SMAUG list is basically dead. I know that Samson has been housing the snippets for awhile as well, and I graciously thank him for doing so (not that it strained the bandwidth much over there at Arthmoor!). If you are running any of my snippets, I'm going to be keeping a changelog/journal on my process here:

Thanks everyone, and sorry to anyone whom had trouble installing my snippets off poorly late-night written documentation on my part. I plan on fixing that!

Of your snippets, I'm currently only using the Zone Echo Snippet, though it never worked quite right for me and I've been meaning to 'fix' it, but you've produced a couple of others I was very interested in and just ahven't ever quite gotten around to implimenting (including your news snippet) so I'll be watching to see what you come up with.. I especially like the part there about getting bored easily, and look forward to the possibility that you might come up with some new ones too.

Zecho? I could not tell you how long ago I wrote that, and it was the first snippet I ever wrote. Its probably nearly 5 years old (if not that already), but yeah, I can always rewrite it. That's something that should only take a few minutes (but I'm sure you already have done that . The only real reason I haven't done this already is because I haven't had access to a Linux box to mess around with. If I got off my lazy ass and had done it awhile ago, I would probably already have had this done. But that's how the cookie crumbles. Hopefully this weekend I can piece it together.

Thanks a lot for informing me though, that'll be the first one I take a look at . I'm actually going to be releasing the code under a Creative Commons license instead of my modified BSD. It seems to work properly with SMAUG, and the GPL (not that I care).

Sort of, what I ended up doing was basically pulling your snippet altogether and making my own version by copying and modifying the mpechozone function. So it works just fine now for me, though I'd still be very curious to see if you come up with a better way.

My solution ended up looking like this:

void do_zecho(CHAR_DATA *ch, char *argument)
{
    char       arg1[MAX_INPUT_LENGTH];
    CHAR_DATA *vch;
    CHAR_DATA *vch_next;
    short      color;

 if(!IS_IMMORTAL(ch) || IS_NPC(ch))
 {
  send_to_char("Huh?\n\r", ch);
  return;
 }

 if(argument[0] == '\0')
 {
  send_to_char("Zecho what?\n\r", ch);
  return;
 }

if( ( color = get_color(argument) ) )
   argument = one_argument(argument, arg1);
DONT_UPPER = TRUE;
for( vch = first_char; vch; vch = vch_next )
   {
    vch_next = vch->next;
    if( vch->in_room->area == ch->in_room->area && !IS_NPC(vch) && IS_AWAKE(vch) )
      {
	 if ( argument[0] == '\0' )
   	    act( AT_ACTION, " ", vch, NULL, NULL, TO_CHAR );
         else if ( color )
            act( color, argument, vch, NULL, NULL, TO_CHAR );
         else
            act( AT_ACTION, argument, vch, NULL, NULL, TO_CHAR );
      }
    }
    DONT_UPPER = FALSE;
}

for( vch = first_char; vch; vch = vch_next )
   {
    vch_next = vch->next;
    if( vch->in_room->area == ch->in_room->area && !IS_NPC(vch) && IS_AWAKE(vch) )
      {
     if ( argument[0] == '\0' )
           act( AT_ACTION, " ", vch, NULL, NULL, TO_CHAR );
         else if ( color )
            act( color, argument, vch, NULL, NULL, TO_CHAR );
         else
            act( AT_ACTION, argument, vch, NULL, NULL, TO_CHAR );
      }
    }

Not that it really matters, but the only problem I had with this (and the reason why I altered it from its original state) is that the CHAR_DATA list contains all of the mobiles loaded into the game as well as the characters. It probably doesn't really matter in the long run, though. The codebase I was running on was literally hacked apart several times over, so I wouldn't doubt it working on mine, and not on others.

I actually mentioned this a while ago:
http://www.smaugmuds.org/index.php?a=topic&t=1037

Funny thing is that I do try to stay on top of the posts at the AFK forums too because sometimes things mentioned there pertain to SmaugFUSS too, and yet somehow I guess I'd missed that one.

I just got Ubuntu installed on my system (found an old hard-drive that I was able to take control of), and I've updated all of my smaller snippets so far. I've also whipped up a quick new one for emoting that is based on what is running in Smaug 2.1 (on Realms of Despair) and my semote snippet. Here's where I'm going to dump the raw code until I have enough time to write instructions.

There is no license on those yet but they're under this Creative Commons license.

very cool, thanks Noplex!