Well, I finally got to do the much needed Text Widget rewrite. Some features are still missing, as the splitscreen and copy-n-paste but that will follow soon. The speed so far looks very promising and I hope to get to the rest of the features soon. I also rewrote the ANSI-Parser due to a change in the class relations. It seems to work perfectly, but it still needs some testing. If you want to take a look at it, checkout the CVS. Peter

Installing xpertmud from source is now as easy as "emerge xpertmud", the ebuild honors the "python" and "ruby" USE flags, so you don't have to install any unwanted language.

Well, it already has been a year, so we decided to make a CVS snapshot available for download. The release is named 3.1preview1, and, unfortunately, there are still lots of known and unknown bugs in it :(. (This one even ain't alpha quality...)

Workarrounds for the most common issues are presented in the Release Notes.

Ben just postet a nice Xpertmud install tutorial for SuSE 8.2. Thank's a lot, ben :-) We're looking forward to your scripting stuff...

Before starting to code major changes, we decided that another bugfix version of xpertmud should be out. The beta1 fixes various bugs (like crashes when connecting to some mud servers and ANSI color issues). And it should also fix some build problems that were reported. So if you've had problems with the alpha, we strongly encourage you to try this version.

Oh, and a little tip: If you got an error with python when building xpertmud, tell configure where your python 2 binary is. On some redhat versions, for example, it's --enable-python=/usr/bin/python2.2. Python version less than 2.0 will not work.

There's a bunch of new screenshots. And we're just starting with a complete efficient rewrite of the ANSI Widgets. So CVS HEAD may be broken for some time from now on. If you want to get the last stable state use cvs up -d -r UNBROKEN.

Reading some news about Qt/XEmacs and other scriptable editors I realized that the Xpertmud codebase offers all the technology to write the next generation scriptable editor. A vi and xemacs substitue. If you are a developer and like to share visions, read the Vision document. If you don't know the design Xpertmud offers, read the Xpertmud Design Overview first.

If you have anything to say, please fell free to mail us, post in the forum or join the mailing list.

In case nobody noticed :-) Xpertmud Win32 has been shipping for some time now. Hit the download page and get it (it's at the bottom of the sourceforge download page). There's a (very short) installation instruction included (what-you-need...), but there are a few more very important things to be mentioned:

• You need python or perl. If you don't know both, I recommend python.
• Goto www.python.org. Download the latest python. Install it.
• Goto our download page. Hit Download. Get xpertmud-win32-3.0alpha2.zip.
• Unzip the file! Find xpertmud.exe with your file manager, start it!
• If the client states: library blabla cannot be found, don't panic. Probably it's just a wrong default language. Head into Settings-Configure_Xpertmud-Scripting and set the default interpreter to the one you installed. Exit Xpertmud, start it again, and all should be fine.
• Browse the online docs. #help or %help will help!
• Head into File-Edit_Bookmark, select Start_Interpreter from the scripting tab, then choose your interpreter. In the Connections tab hit add, enter your mud's connection (23 is the telnet port), and hit OK. Then File-Save. Save it. Before anything happens *grin*. Now hit Connection-Connect and ... MUD!
• If you've got feedback or questions, ask us(!!!)

This second alpha release features a enhanced btech plugin as well as some bugfixes in the overall behaviour. If you're playing the btech mux, update to this release is strongly recommended.

Changes:

BTech plugin:

• TextParser (Python-Only) for the 3065 mux
• Weapon-Widget
• Speed-Widget (more usefull than I thought :-)
• Enhanced Contacts Widget

Core:

• slightly modified input line behaviour :-P
• Pressing Alt doesn't give Focus to MenuBar
• Temporary workaround for scripting bugs:
  Changing scriptinterpreter on the fly not possible (!)

Good news, this is the first kde3-enabled release. There's no new documentation yet, and it still has some bugs, but while playing it's stable enough to go on many, many hours without problems (The bugs are mainly when switching scripting engines and while shutting down).

There's the new plugin engine, containing a simple example plugin and the new battletech plugin we're currently working on. Then there's the new scripting mouse api, which you can learn by looking into battletech.pl and searching for "registerMouse". And last but not least the key event layout slightly changed to be able to stay compatible with the upcoming Win32 versions.

Look on the download page to get your mud experience. And go on muddin'.