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File Name : readme.txt
Description : The "READ ME" file for Glad.
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Copyright 2000-2001 Richard Woolcock. All rights reserved. This document may
be copied and distributed, but not modified or appended to in any way.
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In March 2000, Erwin Andreasen made a post to The Mud Connector with the first
ideas for a contest - to see who could construct the best mud in 16K or less
of source code. He later tidied up the rules and gathered a group of judges,
all of whom had considerable mudding experience. I decided to take part in
this contest, creating Gladiator Pits.
After submitting my entry, I started tidying the source code up. Eventually
I decided to go the whole way and turn it into a proper little codebase and
this - Glad 2.0 - is the result. Other than the new combat system (which I
wasn't able to use in my competition entry due to size restrictions) the game
is basically the same, but from a development point of view the code is more
advanced and better organised.
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About the mud
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The Gladiator Pits is a player-vs-player deathmatch game set in a fictional
fighting arena. Players are given a number of points which they can use to
customise their characters before engaging in one-on-one fights against other
characters.
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About the codebase
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Glad is a fairly small, bare-bones codebase containing slightly over 7000 lines
of code. It contains socket code, a combat system, loading and saving of ascii
player files, context-sensitive help files, and various other features. The
codebase is not designed for newbie mud coders, but is ideal for those who just
need a little help to get started.
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Documents included with this distribution
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glad_license.txt The legal license for the Glad codebase.
glad_history.txt The revision history of the Glad codebase.
readme.txt This document.
setup.txt How to set up your own copy of the Glad codebase.
software.txt The software naming convention used within the Glad code.
faq.txt Frequently Asked Questions - and their answers.
commands.txt A description of all the commands in Glad.
statistics.txt A description of all the character statistics in Glad.
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About the copyright dates
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Although Gladiator Pits wasn't started until April 2000, some of the code used
within it comes from snippets I wrote in 1999. The files containing those
snippets are therefore copyrighted from 1999-2001 rather than 2000-2001.
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About the version numbers
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The codebase name "Glad" did not exist until version 2.0, however I consider
the original Gladiator Pits which I submitted into the 16K MUD competition to
be Glad 1.0 and the tidied up versions of it which I later submitted to be
versions Glad 1.x. Glad 2.0a has been almost a complete rewrite, thus I have
given it it's own full version number. Bug fixes and minor corrections will
result in the letter going up by one (Glad 2.0b, Glad 2.0c, etc) while actual
functionality updates will result in the secondary version number incrementing
and the letter resetting to 'a' (Glad 2.1a, Glad 2.2a, etc). Only in the case
of a near-complete rewrite of the codebase will the primary verson number be
incremented, and that will result in the reset of both the secondary version
number and the letter version (Glad 3.0a, Glad 4.0a, etc).
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Useful links
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1. SITES OF SPECIFIC INTEREST TO THE GLAD CODEBASE
1.1. My website.
http://www.kavir.dial.pipex.com/index.html
1.2. The Gladiator Pits section of my website.
http://www.kavir.dial.pipex.com/glad.html
1.3. The Glad 2.0 section of my website.
http://www.kavir.dial.pipex.com/glad2.html
1.4. The 16K MUD competition.
http://www.andreasen.org/16k.shtml
1.5. Firetop Mountain (inspiration for the combat system).
http://www.gamerz.net/~fm/
2. GENERAL MUD SITES
2.1. The Mud Connector.
http://www.mudconnect.com/
2.2. The Mud Center.
http://www.mudcenter.com/
2.3. Top Mud Sites.
http://www.topmudsites.com/
2.4. The Mudzine.
http://www.mudzine.com/
2.5. The Mud Journal.
http://www.themudjournal.com/
2.6. Kyndig.com.
http://www.kyndig.com/
3. USEFUL SOURCES OF MUD INFORMATION
3.1. The MUD-DEV archives.
http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/
3.2. Imaginary Realities.
http://imaginaryrealities.imaginary.com/
3.3. The Mud Timeline.
http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/mudtimeline.html
3.4. The MUDdex (mud history).
http://www.apocalypse.org/pub/u/lpb/muddex/
3.5. The Mud tree.
http://camelot.cyburbia.net.au/~martin/cgi-bin/mud_tree.cgi
4. PROGRAMMING INFORMATION AND RESOURCES
4.1. ANSI/ICO Standard C.
http://docs.zf.jcu.cz/win/programming/c/c-faq_comp.lang.c/s11.html
4.2. Make - a tutorial.
http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/Make/
4.3. Beej's Guide to Network Programming.
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~beej/guide/net/
4.4. Network programming under Unix systems - part I.
http://users.actcom.co.il/~choo/lupg/tutorials/internetworking/internet-theory.html
4.5. Network programming under Unix systems - part II.
http://users.actcom.co.il/~choo/lupg/tutorials/internetworking/internet-programming.html
4.6. Debugging with GDB.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/texinfodoc/gdb_toc.html
4.7. Brainbench - Test your programming ability (my transcript number: 1281560).
http://www.brainbench.com/