After playing with afkmud a bit I want to put overland into my smaugfuss 1.8 codebase. I noticed in the overland snippet that it is still showing raw files so I wondered if the overland snippet is updated for the newer g++ versions of smaugfuss.

Is there any thought to having overland in the regular download?

At some point I will be updating the snippet to include the png support and to make sure it works properly with the latest 1.9 package. It won't be going in as part of the download though since overland has actually been cited as a major reason people DON'T use AFKMud. It's actually far more likely that I'll end up taking overland out of the codebase and making it a snippet install. None of this is going to happen any time soon though.

I never thought i'd like overland until i tried it. I think its pretty neat and would like to add it to my game. Can't wait til it's released for 1.9, but I know you're busy though. Aren't we all?

Are people forced to do an overland map? Can't they just do all normal areas? In that case you could leave overland in and just have an option to disable it, instead of completely taking it out, making more work for you to snippetize it and maintain all that, and more work for people who want it.

No, you're not forced to use overland at all. But it seems that people don't like it being there even if the maps stored in memory are cut to 1x1x1 to save the space. Apparently there are a lot of "purist" types who would prefer the code simply not exist when it's not going to be used. Overland is a serious pain in the ass to try and remove completely.

My thoughts are that people haven't actually played with it and seen how it exactly works. I know it was a turn off for me when I first downloaded afkmud a couple years ago. I log in and my admin was in the middle of nowhere on a non-existent continent and I didn't really know what to do after that. I just thought the 'whole' game was going to be like that and I didn't try to read the docs. I looked at the code, saw it was different from smaug and thought that I didn't want to mess with learning how to use another codebase so I didn't mess with it anymore.

Now that I see the usefulness of overland I think it's pretty neat. The only things I would have a problem with would be forest areas that you actually wanted in, you'd have a big white # in the middle of a forest in overland. Kinda takes away the fun of hidden exits and areas etc. Same thing with caves I guess.

If that's the only issue, then it can be easily solved by making the default presentation not an overland but a room system. But maybe it just is that people see it as a concept and go "eww, yuck, no" without even turning on the game.

Maybe I wasn't entirely clear.... the default presentation isn't an overland setup. It sounds like that just happens to be where Admin was standing when it last saved. If that's the only problem then I can always move Admin to a standard room.

Oh, that's even easier! If people get freaked out by seeing the overland, then it seems like it would be a good thing to change; people who want the overland will look into it (they have to in the current system anyhow), and everybody else can remain blissfully ignorant if they choose to do so.

My suggestion would be to have a couple areas linked like smaugfuss 1.9 starts out with. In the immortal zone maybe have a room just on overland and tell them to read the docs in areaconvert (This might be in, I just haven't checked it yet). Put the immortal in the immortal zone and then let the players log in and have at least a couple areas (IE like stock smaugfuss) that they can get the hang of the game from.

I was thinking that entry.are doesn't have an exit to anywhere so if a new admin starts it up, creates a player he can't advance or anything or check the game. Just link a few areas together to start out.

In general though, AFKmud is more advanced then smaugfuss. A new admin will have trouble anyways getting it started let alone know what to do with all the functionalities of the program. I don't believe it to be a beginners mud as much as smaugfuss is a beginners mud but it does have some neat stuff in it though. I really like it although I am much more comfortable with the smaugfuss code.

Are there any smaugfuss 1.9 (David's version) codebases out there with the Overland installed using the .png format?

What do you mean David's version?

I nearly converted to AFK a number of times and have worked on a number of AFK games that never made it to completion. The reasons why i never took to it was not because of overland, but because to me some aspects of the game systems were too complex for my small brain to understand, and ultimately it was less effort to work up from smaug rather than work down from AFK.

Its funny that people cite overland code as an issue when they are very happy to keep other code they are not going to use, polymorphs, vampires as well as other unfinished features that are still in the smaug code. It is sort of a shame that smaug is not modular as it would be nice to have a compile with or compile without overland check in the makefile.

Actually that might make more sence to do, altho it will be a lot of work form someone in the short term, having it as an define option at compile time means that the code can be maintained easily from the fuss team yet it does not have to be used by anyone who deos not want to. But knowing how complex that snippet is from install experience, i would hate to have to be the one who actually puts in the effort to install it that way.

You have no idea the insane amount of work it would be to properly set it up to make overland a compile-time Makefile option. The system is pretty well embedded into a lot of the low level stuff of the code. If someone wants to go for it and submit an updated snippet for 1.9 that makes this possible, I'd have no objection.

Oh i know exactly how insane it would be, certainly not something for the faint of heart LOL.

Granted it has been ages, but a few times over the years, I have took the time to strip out Overland as well as (Only once) made it a define option lol. I have no intentions of doing it again though lol, and of course that code was long ago lost to me deleting stuff once I was done messing with it .

Actually, making it a compile-time (and ONLY compile-time!) option isn't too hard... it's extracting all the tendrils of the code that's the tricky part. If you can get two identical code bases, one with overland, and one without, you can just have diff generate the #ifdef version for you.

test.c

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
  printf("Hello %s!\n", "one";
  printf("Hello %s!\n", "two";
}

test2.c

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
  printf("Hello %s!\n", "one";
  printf("Hello %s!\n", "uhhmmmm";
  printf("Hello %s!\n", "three!";
}

diff -barP -D EXTRA test.c test2.c >test_both.c

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
  printf("Hello %s!\n", "one";
#ifndef EXTRA
  printf("Hello %s!\n", "two";
#else /* EXTRA */
  printf("Hello %s!\n", "uhhmmmm";
  printf("Hello %s!\n", "three!";
#endif /* EXTRA */
}

So, the code on the right-hand side gets included if EXTRA is defined, else the left-hand code wins.
AFAIK, you'd have to generate the diffs using a loop, since I don't think it will do recursive in this mode.

If you have things checked into CVS, you can have cvs generate a diff between versions/branches as well.