24 Oct, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 1st comment:
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Note to moderators: Technically this post belongs under Protocols, but that only has sub-forums, not a forum of its own. If it's possible to give Protocols its own general forum, could you please move this post there? Thanks.

I've recently been looking into adding MSP support (primarily for my blind players, as several of them have requested it).

The telnet negotiation sequence only seems to be supported by ZMud/CMud, which I don't have (nor do any of the players I've asked), so that makes it hard to test, although I'm pretty sure it's working (the mud recognised a valid response from one player, although he was idling so I couldn't confirm what client he was using).

However it also sends the character 'Z' to the screen when using GMud (which quite a few of my players use), and one of my players even complained that the negotiation killed his echo. MUSHclient does support MSP, but not the telnet negotiation sequence, so I'm going to need an option to switch MSP on and off anyway - which makes me wonder if it's even worth bothering with the negotiation part.

Has anyone else here added MSP support?

If so, did you implement the negotiation, an in-game toggle, or a combination of the two?

Do your players have to choose all or nothing, or can they configure which sounds they hear?

Did you create your own sound files, or is there somewhere you can download premade soundpacks?
24 Oct, 2009, Davion wrote in the 2nd comment:
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You can now post in the 'Protocols' section. I've also moved this thread here ;).
24 Oct, 2009, Kline wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Google-fu reveals there are many places for small soundpacks/clips (sorry, headed out the door now or I'd provide links – thats how I got the sounds I use, though). Dystopia X-Mas Edition has a good MSP implementation that works well with my Z/CMud (yes, I own both). So you might want to look at what's done there if you're hitting any snags. As far as I remember, it's a global on/off per player – not selectively ignoring some sounds/music and using others. However, it implements a handful of sounds and music per zone.
24 Oct, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 4th comment:
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The player complaining about local echo being disabled is likely using windows telnet, any kind of telnet negotiation will switch windows telnet into character mode, so probably not a MSP related issue.

I wrote a MSP script for tintin some weeks ago: http://tintin.sourceforge.net/scripts/ms... which should support responding to the MSP telnet negotiation. I'm quite sure mushclient allows writing telnet handlers as well, not sure about other clients.

As far as I know players choose all or nothing, but there's nothing stopping a mud from adding a sound configuration menu, or a player from setting up their own sound triggers. It's common though for muds to provide soundpacks for download.

Sounds like a cool idea to create a collection of free sounds that are useful for muds, though I'd assume it has been done before?
26 Oct, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 5th comment:
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Kline said:
Google-fu reveals there are many places for small soundpacks/clips

I searched around and found a load, and was promptly told by my blind players that the quality sucked :P One of them then provided me with a load of better quality sounds, so I've been playing around with those this weekend. I must admit, although I've never really found the idea of sound in muds particularly appealing, it's actually quite cool - and I can certainly understand now why the blind players are so keen on it.

Scandum said:
The player complaining about local echo being disabled is likely using windows telnet, any kind of telnet negotiation will switch windows telnet into character mode, so probably not a MSP related issue.

Well I decided to drop the negotiation for now. I may put it back at some point as a configurable option.

Scandum said:
I wrote a MSP script for tintin some weeks ago: http://tintin.sourceforge.net/scripts/ms... which should support responding to the MSP telnet negotiation. I'm quite sure mushclient allows writing telnet handlers as well, not sure about other clients.

The posts I read on the MUSHclient forums seemed to suggest that it wasn't possible without changes to the client itself, and the plugin I tested MSP with certainly didn't do so. However the players will already have to add the plugin and download the soundpack, so asking them to type 'config msp' as well isn't really a big deal IMO.

Scandum said:
As far as I know players choose all or nothing, but there's nothing stopping a mud from adding a sound configuration menu, or a player from setting up their own sound triggers.

I decided to add an 'msp' command which allows the user to toggle different categories of sound, such as combat, mob spawning, shapechanging, etc. I've been wondering whether I should let people further differentiate between only hearing sounds for their own actions or also for those of other people, but I think I'll leave it as it is for now and see how it pans out.
26 Oct, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 6th comment:
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KaVir said:
I must admit, although I've never really found the idea of sound in muds particularly appealing, it's actually quite cool - and I can certainly understand now why the blind players are so keen on it.

Nick Gammon shows off some features of MUSHclient and along the way demonstrates a MUD's use of sounds and music; I think it's actually quite nice. See more information on this thread; scroll down a bit to find the Youtube video, or go to the direct link. (sounds around 2:30 or something like that).
28 Oct, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 7th comment:
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The rapidly expanding soundpack got way too big (over 50 MB), so the player who provided it has now converted the sound files to MP3 format. However I've been looking at the soundpacks of other muds for comparison purposes, and they all seem to contain WAV files. Is there some reason for this preference? Some compatibility problem I'm overlooking?

I noticed that the tintin MSP plugin only supports WAV files when running under cygwin, but other than that the implementations all seem to support both formats.
28 Oct, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 8th comment:
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ever since I played my first SWR mud I've been interested mildly in MSP. Unfortunately every mud I've ever seen it on used sound much more sparingly than I would prefer. I wonder how difficult it would be for players to add their own sound triggers.
28 Oct, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 9th comment:
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Igabod said:
ever since I played my first SWR mud I've been interested mildly in MSP. Unfortunately every mud I've ever seen it on used sound much more sparingly than I would prefer.

I think it's rather like colour in that respect: different people like different amounts. Some prefer minimal usage for highlighting important information, while others prefer extensive use throughout the game. Thus - as with colour - I decided to make it configurable.

Igabod said:
I wonder how difficult it would be for players to add their own sound triggers.

Actually I was talking about that with some of my players last night. I've got a simple "display" command which echos the specified text back to the client (it also accepts variables in the same way as a customisable prompt). There's no reason why a player couldn't add simple triggers that display the !!SOUND() calls for their own sound files, thus avoiding the need for creating another plugin.

The downside is that it would only work in situations where they could set up a consistent trigger. For example, if they wanted a sound for when they were knocked off their feet, they'd need to add separate triggers for each sweep and knockback message.
28 Oct, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 10th comment:
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KaVir said:
I noticed that the tintin MSP plugin only supports WAV files when running under cygwin, but other than that the implementations all seem to support both formats.

You can run mp3s with cygstart on Cygwin, which the script does, though I recall that cygstart doesn't play mp3 files that run for less than 1 second. Not sure if this affects other clients.
28 Oct, 2009, Mudder wrote in the 11th comment:
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Adding sound triggers for zMUD is pretty easy. Though I only ever used them for letting me know when I was done stat rolling. ;)
29 Oct, 2009, Antron wrote in the 12th comment:
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adding sound to triggers is handy, I use it in my mud that i mostly idle on and am the only player on 90 percent of the time–this is a mud we just use as a chat room for development projects on another server. I'm almost always windowed out so i need an audio alert to let me know when another imm logs in. mushclient makes it really easy to set a sound alert. it also has a checkbox to only play the sound if the window doesn't have focus, but if i were to trigger every action with sounds i would probably want the option to only play sounds while window HAS focus, since i don't want sounds when i am checking my email or whatever.

My 2c
29 Oct, 2009, Koron wrote in the 13th comment:
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Mudder said:
Adding sound triggers for zMUD is pretty easy. Though I only ever used them for letting me know when I was done stat rolling. ;)

Amusingly enough, this is also the only time I've used sounds in mudding, though instead of a sound trigger, I just used #beep.
23 Nov, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 14th comment:
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Scandum said:
You can run mp3s with cygstart on Cygwin, which the script does, though I recall that cygstart doesn't play mp3 files that run for less than 1 second. Not sure if this affects other clients.

Several people reported such a problem, so I ended up providing a mixture of wav and mp3 files (wav for the really short sounds, mp3 for the longer ones). However I've run into another issue - it seems that most clients allow you to play multiple wav files simultaneously, but they can only play one mp3 at a time.

Thus for example if there's the sound of a massive thunderstorm playing, it would be cut short by someone smacking you in the face, which is a bit of a shame.

I'm now wondering if I should just go back to pure wav format (I currently allow people the choice, but the non-simultaneous play sells the experience rather short, and I think most people can afford a big one-off download).
23 Nov, 2009, Mudder wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Koron said:
Amusingly enough, this is also the only time I've used sounds in mudding, though instead of a sound trigger, I just used #beep.

I used #beep too, but I changed the default noise around to random things depending on my mood. Currently using sounds from "Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy."
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