| This article displays in: Protocols | |
|
Table of Contents
1: MSSP: MUD Server Status Protocol 1.1: Introduction 2: The MSSP Protocol 2.1: Server Commands 2.2: Client Commands 2.3: Handshake 2.4: MSSP definitions 2.5: Example MSSP handshake 2.6: Variables and Values 3: MSSP Plaintext 4: Specification 5: Extended Variables 6: links 6.1: Clients 6.2: Codebases 6.3: Directories 6.4: Discussion 6.5: Servers 6.6: Snippets Navigation
|
MSSP: MUD Server Status Protocol
Introduction
MUD listings are often out dated and lack accurate information. Verifying that the one submitting a new MUD is a member of the MUD's administration can be quite tedious as well. The MUD Server Status Protocol seeks to address these issues by providing a transparant protocol for MUD crawlers to gather detailed information about a MUD, as well as dynamic information like boot time and the current amount of online players. It also makes submitting a new mud entry very simple because it only requires a player or admin to fill in the hostname and port. This document provides a technical description of the MSSP protcol. The MSSP Protocol
MSSP can be implemented as a Telnet option RFC854, RFC855. The server and client negotiate the use of MSSP as they would any other telnet option. Once agreement has been reached on the use of the option, option sub-negotiation is used to send information about the server to the client. Server Commands
IAC WILL MSSP indicates the server supports MSSP. Client Commands
IAC DO MSSP indicates the client is willing to receive server status data. IAC DONT MSSP indicates the client doesn't support MSSP. Handshake
When a client connects to a server the server should send IAC WILL MSSP. The client should respond with either IAC DO MSSP or IAC DONT MSSP. If the server receives IAC DO MSSP it should respond with: IAC SB MSSP MSSP_VAR "variable" MSSP_VAL "value" MSSP_VAR "variable" MSSP_VAL "value" IAC SE. MSSP definitions
MSSP 70 MSSP_VAR 1 MSSP_VAL 2 Example MSSP handshake
server - IAC WILL MSSP client - IAC DO MSSP server - IAC SB MSSP MSSP_VAR "PLAYERS" MSSP_VAL "52" MSSP_VAR "UPTIME" MSSP_VAL "1234567890" IAC SE Variables and Values For ease of parsing, variables and values cannot contain the MSSP_VAL, MSSP_VAR, IAC, or NUL byte. The value can be an empty string unless a numeric value is expected in which case the default value should be 0. If your Mud can't calculate one of the numeric values for the World variables you can use "-1" to indicate that the data is not available. If a list of responses is provided try to pick from the list, unless "Etc" is specified, which means it's open ended.
The same variable can be send more than once with different values, in which case the last reported value should be used as the default value. It is up to the crawler to decide how to exactly process multiple values. It's also possible to attach several values to a single variable by using MSSP_VAL more than once, with the default value reported last. This would look as following: IAC SB MSSP MSSP_VAR "PORT" MSSP_VAL "80" MSSP_VAL "23" MSSP_VAL "3000" MSSP_VAR "CREATED" MSSP_VAL "1996" IAC SE The quote characters mean that the encased word is a string, the quotes themselves should not be send. MSSP Plaintext
Since it's not feasible for every mud to implement telopt negotiations a plaintext alternative is available. Whenever a new connection enters the command: MSSP-REQUEST a Mud supporting MSSP Plaintext should send the following: \r\nMSSP-REPLY-START\r\nvariable\tvalue\r\nvariable\tvalue\r\nMSSP-REPLY-END\r\n If a variable has multiple values you can use multiple tabs: \r\nMSSP-REPLY-START\r\nvariable\tvalue\tvalue\r\nMSSP-REPLY-END\r\n Specification
Mud Server Status Protocol Includes official variable set. Extended Variables
MSSP Fields Freely edited. links
Clients
GnomeMud (Requires compilation with --enable-debug-logger=TRUE) TinTin++ (Requires using '#config {debug telnet} on' to display MSSP output from a MUD server.) Codebases
AckFUSS (As of version 4.4.0.) AFKMud (As of version 2.1.2, June 27, 2009) SmaugFUSS 1.9 (As of May 14, 2009) SWRFUSS 1.3 (As of May 14, 2009) SWFotEFUSS 1.4 (As of May 14, 2009) PlainText (As of Sep 9, 2012) Directories
Kiasyn's MUD crawler TinTin++ MUD crawler Discussion
MSSP Discussion Forum Servers
azereth.game-host.org:6400 cruentus.genesismuds.com:7070 home.gotr00t.us:3000 slackhalla.org:4321 slothmud.org:6101 Snippets
MUD Telopt Handler |
