06 Mar, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
For god's sake.. just use an existing forum software package that stores stuff in a database, and code an interface from the game to the database, so they're both accessing the same data.

Best of both worlds, easy to setup and keep running, even if your game is down. Plus, you can choose which boards to expose… so some can be web-only and others can be game-only, as you like.

Most importantly, you aren't re-re-re-re-re-inventing the wheel yet again.
06 Mar, 2013, Davion wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Most importantly, you aren't re-re-re-re-re-inventing the wheel yet again.


Ya, you also want to pick a simple forum software. Picking some of the more complicated ones just means you have to write a more complicated MUD front-end. So look for flat posting and simple bbcodes.

Also, I wrote a basic forum interface when I worked on MUD Con V. It's in channels.[ch]. It works more like a channel system that organizes conversations into forums, but it could be adapted easily, I'm sure. IIRC, I based it off an actual in-game forum I wrote. If I can find the code somewhere, I'll post it.
06 Mar, 2013, Lyanic wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
Davion said:
quixadhal said:
Most importantly, you aren't re-re-re-re-re-inventing the wheel yet again.


Ya, you also want to pick a simple forum software.

The irony…it burns.

Note: Certain people aren't intended to understand this.
07 Mar, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
Another tip, if you go down the external forum interface path…. don't put your SQL code directly in your MUD.

Write all your forum backend SQL messy-code in a script using some nice easy-to-work-with langauge (python, perl, ruby… NOT C), and have it listen on a socket for requests from the MUD (listen on localhost, not the main interface!).

Why? First, the MUD code to send commands to sockets, and fetch replies from them, is already there. You're just adapting it to a specific purpose. I wouldn't even put SQL in the MUD at all.. just a dead-simple command language like "HEADERS <forum-name> <date> <count>" or "REPLY <post-id> <message>".

Secondly, you will probably want to update your forum software over time, as they release bug fixes, or add new features. You probably do NOT want to have to go back and re-edit your MUD code to accomodate future SQL schema changes. You also might, someday, want to switch backends, and rewriting all the SQL access code for a new backend (in C) sucks. Doing it in perl is often a one-line change of code, and then a bit of messing around with some of the queries.
20.0/24