You can now use gifs in your Mudlet UI

Video link

Try it out by dragging this link onto Mudlet, or with this on the input line:

lua installPackage"https://github.com/vadi2/gifs-demo/raw/main/gifs-demo.mpackage"

That said, gifs are pretty expensive to play – so don’t go too wild with them.

You can now use background music in your Mudlet UI

Lua music and sound API got a huge overhaul by mpconley in this update! And we don’t use such words here lightly – this update opens a lot of possibilities in the audio arena.

You can set music/sounds to fade in or out, adjust the volume on them individually, choose at which time should the playback start, select how many times it should loop (infinite? sure!), or even tag sounds with a similar category so you can control them en-masse.

Crazy, huh? Just as an example, you can now background ambience music when in area/zone A… and later when changing to a new area/zone replace the ambience music with another one. You can tag all sounds as ‘battle sounds’ and stop them all at once when the battle is done. Lots of things you can do now with this!

This functionality is coming over from MCMP support that already exists in Mudlet – so if you’re a game admin and would like this for your game, go for it.

Configurable shortcuts

Don’t like that Alt+D disconnects you from the game? You don’t have to put up with that anymore! Thanks to Delwing, all shortcuts used by Mudlet are now customisable via Settings:

Better stylesheets

demonnic has done so many nice things in this release that it’s hard to pick one, so if I had to settle on one this would be it – Geyser stylesheets! They allow you to create a managed stylesheet to make it easier to set and change properties, as well as inherit properties from another stylesheet, making it easier to manage multiple styles at once. Great tool for a UI builder.

If you’ve used CSSMan previously, this is a worthy replacement! 

c/d/hecho works on labels

cecho(“Hi! This text is <red>red, <blue>blue, <green> and green”) – cecho is pretty familiar to us all, isn’t it? If you want to get your text onto a miniconsole, this is a very popular option. But why only miniconsoles and not labels as well? demonnic wondered that too, rolled up his sleeves, and fixed it – you can now use c/d/hecho functions on labels!

Scrollboxes

Ever wanted to create scrollable lists with labels Mudlet? Say a list of players, or wares in a shop? While it was quite doable with miniconsoles, it wasn’t the case with labels. Edru got to work fixing that and createScrollBox() is the result. Think of it as a container that you can put your labels into and if there’s not enough space, you get scrollbars – both horizontal and vertical directions work.

Credits

Thanks to all coders who made this amazing release happen: Chris Mitchell, Damian Monogue, Gustavo Sousa, Kebap, lithiumFlower, Manuel Wegmann, Mike Conley, Nils Schimmelmann, nsweeting2, Philipp, Delwing, Slobodan Terzić, Stephen Lyons, Tim Johnson, Vadim Peretokin, and 噢哎哟喂.

Thanks to all translators who are enabling Mudlet to speak their language: Alan Sneath , Hsin-Hsiang Peng, ifelse, Leris, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi, mohammed hossam, Tostaito, Vadim Peretokin, and vingi.

Changelog

A lot of very handy improvements come with this update – too many to mention above. Scour the changelog below for good gems:

🆕 added:

• Geyser.StyleSheet for managing stylesheets with inheritance
• `getBackgroundColor()` to get the background color of a label/miniconsole/etc
• `getLabelStylesheet()` to get the label’s stylesheet
• `windowType()` to find out if something is a label/miniconsole/etc
• Asteria as a known game with Discord Rich Presence
• beginning of Arabic translation
• color `echo aliases for testing triggers (`cecho, `decho, and `hecho)
• fadein, fadeout, and start to MCMP
• failure reasons to `installPackage` and `installModule`
• discIRC server password support
• mirror generic_mapper download path for chinese player
• overline support to c/d/hecho, ansi2decho, and c/d/hecho2ansi functions
• string.patternEscape for escaping special Lua pattern characters
• Map deletion functionality (option in settings as well as `deleteMap()`)
• `getProfileStats()` to see # of triggers, aliases, etc from Lua
• `map.pauseSpeedwalk()` and `map.resumeSpeedwalk()` + mpp alias to generic mapper
• auto-enable dark theme for dark mode desktops
• Close profile button
• Main window shortcuts can now be customised
• offer to update editor theme as well when dark theme is enabled
• first-time placeholder text for aliases
• missing cursor and selection functionality to Geyser.MiniConsole
• additional 2string functions for stripping formatting codes from c/d/hecho formatted text
• allow to resize animated gif to label size
• allow transparent labels through right click map menu
• ANSI Esc code support for MSDP

✨ improved:

• c/d/hecho to work on Labels
• Lua API for Sound and Music
• variable icons by using a color which works in both light and dark modes
• add a QSpinWidget for adjusting special exit weight in exit dialog
• add door symbol display to custom exits lines and to stubs
• add MUME information blurb
• add ScrollBox Gui Element
• allow profiles to be individually resized when multi-playing
• Announce how to undo it when hiding the input line buttons
• be explicit with all our callable with 1 arg class constructors
• Better extension selection in map save/load dialogs
• better map.echo in map.find_me
• code editor to show virtual characters better
• do not try loading or saving password securely when storing them portably
• Enhance labels to allow animated gifs
• get Label Size hint and Geyser.Label adjustSize
• shorten duplicate area name msg
• ansi2decho now supports italics, underline, and strikethrough
• c/d/hecho now support strikethrough
• c/d/hfeedTriggers, d/hecho2ansi functions now support bold, underline, italics, and strikethrough
• expose cecho2ansi and have it work for non-ansi color names as well
• infra Win10 fix dependency installation script to handle nulls in PATH
• control characters now have the choice of being displayed or hidden
• error messages to `fg` and `bg`
• provide alternative representations of most control characters

🔨 fixed:

• ansi2decho to respect custom colors
• buttontoolbar resizing on start
• datetime:parse and :calculcate_UTCdiff to account for DST
• empty newline on send with no command separator
• faulty regular expression error message
• hidden container not attaching when reloading
• linewrapping for really long words without spaces in Western languages
• missing space in telnet negotiation warning
• aborting profile close to work right
• replace throwing ambiguous error or appending to entire console if nothing is selected to replace
• strange disabled items in darktheme right click
• clear speedWalkPath and speedWalkWeight in generic_mapper upon completion
• correct placement of const in a function declaration/definition
• Don’t show hidden Geyser.CommandLines in Adjustable.Containers
• don’t show tab character in code editor
• get dark-desktop detection working also on FreeBSD
• get menu shortcuts and their key sequences working all the time again
• get replays working again
• prevent unwanted and unneeded copying of an item in a container
• small size of exit stubs (alternative 2 “blobs on stubs”)
• color trigger buttons not showing colors
• control character mode being used uninitialised
• documentation for scrollbar related functions
• make logging have a per profile persistent control method
• compact input line crash when it’s translated in other language
• correctly save fore/background color and transparency of labels in JSON map files
• diatrics in code editor on Linux
• enable Multi-view as soon as second profile is started and show all profiles when it is active and further profiles are started
• enable restoration of editor toolbars even if both get hidden
• flatten XML to prevent issues clearing settings on older Mudlet versions
• MXP Sound/Music Tags not functioning with U Attribute
• prevent bogus NAWS and window resize events on tab changes
• use better form for a couple of translatable texts

Enjoy this update!
Vadim.

Dark theme toggle

edru2 added a dark theme to Mudlet! You can how select it in settings:

vadi2 followed the option up with a feature to follow your system setting and to also update your editor theme.

Discord button customisation

atari2006tim worked on the Discord button! Games can now tell Mudlet what their Discord invite is, and once they do so - Mudlet will show a button that'll take the player to straight to the game's Discord server 😃

Adjustable text wait timer

SlySven has done work on the text wait timer for games that lack Telnet GA or EOR signalling and made it configurable in settings. By default this timer was 0.3s, which you can now lower or increase as needed.

Why do we even need to have it? Well because not all games are telling Mudlet when they are done sending all text. That's exactly the meaning of GA. Games that do implement GA have no timer at all. Thus the better solution is, of course, to encourage games to implement GA!

Lowering the timer runs the risk that not all text will be received from the game before showing it on screen, which could 'break' your triggers for that particular line. Increasing the delay reduces that risk, but then of course the experience is compromised.

Lua, Rainforest tests

Quality is an important area of Mudlet, and alongside the newly created QA team, vadi2 has worked on automating Mudlet to run our Lua tests! Now whenever an improvement is done to our Lua functions, a copy of Mudlet is launched automatically in the cloud and all existing Lua tests are run to ensure nothing breaks. This also gives a safety net to anyone working on Mudlet that should they break something on accident, it'll get caught. That said, the safety net needs to be expanded to cover all tests - so we'd love for volunteers to help strengthen it.

That's not all on the quality story, either! vadi2 also worked on setting up visual tests that ensure the Mudlet interface itself - one you see and play with - is tested. Similar to Lua tests, automation launches Mudlet in the cloud and follows a script to click around on buttons and observe that they do what they ought to do. It is relatively intuitive to setup these tests, and we'd also love it if we had more volunteers to help flesh them out:

📢 Vote on best improvement

We announced earlier a trial to pay a bit of money for the top 3 most popular PRs - well it's kicking in with this release! Head over to the form to vote on your favourite improvement in this update.

Anyone who submits an improvement to Mudlet is eligible for a spot on the poll. That said, this is still an experiment we're trying out so we might change or scrap it in the future if it doesn't work out.

Credits

Thanks to all coders who made this release happen! atari2600tim, Damian Monogue, Kebap, Manuel Wegmann, Mike Conley, mudlet-machine-account, Nils Schimmelmann, Piotr, Slobodan Terzić, Stephen Lyons, Tim Johnson, Vadim Peretokin, and 噢哎哟喂.

Thanks to all translators dutifully carrying the flags: Alan Sneath (alsneath), ifelse, Kamil Tunkiewicz (zeddicus), Leris, Marco "M0lid3us" Tironi (wiploo), vadi2, and vingi.

Changelog

There's a lot of improvements in this Mudlet update besides the top 5 listed above, so dig into the changelog below to find goodies:

🆕 added

• --mirror option for logging output to console
• option to show errors view from the toolbar
• customization of Discord button using invite URL from GMCP or Lua
• dark theme toggle to preferences
• events when a speedwalk() is stopped, paused, or finishes (reaches the end)
• IDManager and named tempTimers/event handlers from script
• option for secure IRC connections
• resetDiscordData() function
• what color formats are acceptable in places it is missing in Geyser ldoc comments
• clear error console functionality
• Custom right click menu items for command lines
• Gmod busted tests
• Save/Load map as .json from preferences dialog

✨ improved

• map context item names
• [CodeFactor] eliminate (some of) our C style casts
• allow wait for more network packets to be adjusted
• cleanup room_exits.ui file
• Clear edit forms for deleted items
• Create map / Load map dialog will be again present for empty map
• Create room at right-click position
• Do not trim whitespaces in tab completion
• icons not coloured status text for normal exits in exits dialog
• icons not coloured status text for special exits in exits dialog
• only enable IRE driver GA bugfix for IRE games (unnnecessary newlines with GA)
• Properly announce Discord failing on length 1 texts
• shorten welcome message for new aliases & triggers
• simplify dlgRoomExits() invocation
• sync mpackage modules
• Unregister fonts upon package/module uninstall
• update bundled NotoColorEmoji font
• use constants to index into special exit columns in dlgRoomExits

🔨 fixed

• CodeQL warnings
• copy2decho() on empty lines
• copy2decho, copy2html to work for all international text
• Discord logo dimensions on profiles screen
• Export Triggers title bar to be more generic
• Adjust height of command box when cycle through history
• cleanup: remove some warnings in uses of QKeySequence
• correct a missing override that showed up during CI
• disable more controls in preferences when there is no host
• don't show jibberish when Adjustable Container title bar is too short + add position as option for setTitle
• eliminate a load of warnings about missing-field-initializers
• Lua functions for tempKey and tempAlias work again
• modules no longer get emptied if reloaded during saveProfile()
• only provide NAWS information from main console
• remove spaces in initializer brackets
• remove stray debug messages
• repair prevent all controls from being hidden feature
• settings button will be available again before you connect to a profile
• try and make connectExitStub(...) work as per the API
• update default Zombiemud port
• update PCRE download source to one that still exists

Infrastructure

• add 'Chancel' as an allowed codespell - it's an area in Lusternia
• Add 'nd' as an allowed word
• add knowledge for debug symbols in builds
• added label for port in Github Codespaces
• close out p tag in text label
• danger checks in JS
• disable Windows builds in GHA
• fix Windows changelog generation now that we have quotes
• fixed autoupdate workflows to trigger checks
• git ignore 3rdparty boost and cocoapods
• give a danger-friendly PR title to Crowdin updates
• Improve ptb changelog generation
• make sure to fail Windows builds in case the packaging step failed
• More adjustments to the changelog styling
• read error log correctly from Windows installer tool
• remove unrendered emoji characters from changelog script
• remove unused mUserDefinedName in code
• update appveyor signing password
• updated Lua tests documentation
• Lua tests to run in CI automatically

Legends of Jedi

A new game joins Mudlet’s connection screen!

Legends of the Jedi is a text-based roleplaying experience that immerses players in a multiplayer world where they can rewrite classic Star Wars stories with their own heroes, villains, battles, and endings. Over the course of each two-year timeline, the game explores all the key eras of the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

 

Take and hold planets as an Imperial Stormtrooper, command the Rebel navy and liberate the galaxy, pursue targets as a bounty hunter, or shape things on a larger scale as a member of the Galactic Senate. Maybe you’ll even be one of the few born with force sensitivity, destined to be trained by Jedi or Sith.

 

The game offers an extensive crafting system for engineers to supply weapons, armor, and ships to the galaxy. Develop new, cutting-edge armaments to give your side an edge, or open a shop in a bustling commercial district and become wealthy as part of a powerful engineering conglomerate.

 

LOTJ offers full PVP in both ground and space combat, governed by a set of rules to minimize griefing and ensure that all kills have sufficient in-character cause.

 

What role will you play? The legend awaits!

Smoother map scrolling

ktunkiewicz took a stab at improving the mapper once again – and fixed the map scrolling to work like you’d expect it to, regardless of the zoom level:

Now it feels like it should on any map app

Command line improvements

SlySven and chrio worked on improving the command line – it’ll now no longer ‘jump’ a little bit the first time you use it, and line wrapping. There’s new commands to visually select text in the command line, too!

Command line wrapping before

Improved command line wrapping after

256 colours harmonized

Mudlet’s rendering xterm256 colours will now look similar to other MUD clients thanks to Kilbukas:

(old) Mudlet 4.12 and below

(new) Mudlet 4.13+

If you’ve thought colours looked a bit better, this would have been why!

Custom profile colour

Speaking of colours, MrZaus added an option to customise the profile colour on the connection screen!

createMapLabel improved

The createMapLabel function now allows you to choose the font, text, and background transparency for map labels – giving you more flexibility in creating nice-looking Mudlet maps.

Map labels can go above and below rooms

Custom right-click actions

While you previously could have made specific text in the window clickable, you couldn’t add to the general right-click menu that showed up. Say, for example, you wanted to select some text, right-click, and do something with the selection? Well, now you can thanks to addMouseEvent, getMouseEvents and removeMouseEvent by Kilbukas.

This joins existing functionality where you can add custom right-click menu actions to the mapper already.

Credits

Thanks to all coders who made this release possible: atari2600tim, chrio, Damian Monogue, Ian Adkins, Kamil Tunkiewicz, Kebap, keneanung, Manuel Wegmann, Matthew Wagner, MrZaus, Piotr, Richard Moffitt, Slobodan Terzić, Stephen Lyons, Tomas Seniunas, and Vadim Peretokin.

And of course all the translators who are translating Mudlet into their native language: Alan Sneath (alsneath), eplis, Hsin-Hsiang Peng (Hsins), hyperi (osakki), Jim Lu (kimiwajim), Leris, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo), olen, Sirith (Senareil), vingi, VVsxmja, and 晉豪許 (gridwing).

Changelog

4.13.0 was skipped as it had a small bug in ansi2decho() – so we’ve fixed it up before getting it out to you.

Check out the changelog below, quite a few goodies for scripters in here:

🆕 added

• ability to define custom color in profile buttons in connection dialog
• closestColor() function for finding the best match out of color_table
• selectCmdLineText() to make command line text selected
• get and set state of push-down-buttons
• Legends of the Jedi as a default game
• mouse menu actions to windows
• notarization to macOS builds
• pause, stop, and resume functions to complement speedwalk()
• selectCaptureGroup() will work with named capture groups
• shortcuts to navigate editor between triggers, aliases, etc

✨ improved

• adjusted the 256 color conversion to match other clients
• descriptive window title now shows for the alias/trigger/script editor
• fix incorrect height adjustment of the command line
• fixed a fair bit of typos in code comments and texts the player sees
• Give the Mudlet icon to new profiles that were just copied
• improved line-breaking in the command line
• improved zip comment generation for package exporter
• Improvements to command line font handling
• Mudlet on macOS won’t give security warnings anymore
• optional fontName, text and background transparency in createMapLabel()
• Optional part of package exporter UI expands if there is space on macOS
• Remove experimental label from the package exporter
• Revise: improve debug messages when negotiating compression
• Revise: make exporter temporary files be a sub-directory of a Mudlet one
• Show an error in stdout when script failed to load from XML
• Small optimization added for incoming text data
• Update fontsize as soon as it is selected in preferences
• Update: add some more dictionaries to the list

🔨 fixed

• –profile CLI option will now work as expected in a lot more cases
• fix json map room symbol loading
• Fix markdown headers and images not playing well together
• Fix setBorderSizes() when called with 4 arguments
• Fix: newly created profiles will remember their connection info
• Make f work with variable named ‘str’
• mpackage zip comments are preserved correctly for international text
• Package manager/exporter now work fine with non-Latin letters
• prevent addCustomLine from crashing without custom line points
• prevent crashing from double-click on connect button
• Reset autowrap limit when changing the font size, if autowrap is enabled
• Revise: fixup some package exporter results messages

Just a fraction of the work that went into the release

Brand new package manager

Edru has been busy revamping how Mudlet interacts with packages! First up, the new package manager, as seen below, allows you to see a package’s description with additional details like images, links, styling with markdown, etc.

How do these descriptions arrive in new packages? Where do they come from? Well, we’re glad you asked:

Brand new package exporter

Edru has revamped the package exporter as well, making it much easier to create, update and (re-)export packages as well as add a description and other information to them:

Want inspiration for creating your own package descriptions? Check out some of these popular extensions for Visual Studio.

Scripting news

File watches are now in Mudlet! Wilk’s work allows your scripts to get notified whenever an external file is changed. This enables some interesting possibilities, such as editing code outside of Mudlet and having it show up live. (link to 45sec video demonstration)

Another great feature for multiplayers by SlySven is an improvement to the central debug console, which will now say which profile an information came from.

Leveraging that momentum, SlySven has also improved the multiplayed profile tabs so they can now be re-arranged as you desire.

Credits

Thanks to all coders who made this release happen – Andrew Eisenberg, Andrew Waters, atari2600tim, Chris Mitchell, Damian Monogue, Gustavo Sousa, Kamil Tunkiewicz, Kebap, Manuel Wegmann, Mike Conley, mudlet-machine-account, OzlynnJeez, Piotr, Serity, Stephen Lyons, and Vadim Peretokin.

Thanks to all translators who contributed to keeping the translations up to date: Alan Sneath (alsneath), Hsin-Hsiang Peng (Hsins), Leris, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo), Matthieu (Jack_potta), and vingi.

Changelog

added:

• AdjustableContainerRepositionFinish event, change in AdjustableContainerReposition event

• file watch functions (addFileWatch, removeFileWatch) and event (sysPathChanged)

• getPackages and getModules functions

• brand new package manager to view your installed packages

• brand new package exporter to share your Mudlet things with others

• dreplaceLine, hreplaceLine as well as support for windows other than the main one

• getConnectionInfo() will now also say if you’re currently connected or not

improved:

• getOS() extended to include extra version (and for GNU/Linux, distribution) return values.

• new keys without a name will automatically get assigned one

• StickMUD will have the IRE mapper script installed by default for new profiles

• Discord toggle for Clessidra will work right away, without needing to connect first

• area parsing in XML files is now more resilient

• mudlet will no longer freeze when exporting really large packages

• top buttons in Mudlet are no longer monospaced

• profile tabs in multiplay mode can now be re-arranged by dragging

• debug console will now show which profile a message comes from

• clicking on the line # in the code editor will let you type in it

• mapper right-click menu will no longer hide custom items if you open it low

• saveJsonMap() can be used without a path, just like saveMap()

• you can add new variables in editor without having to click on one first

• cleaned up mapper right-click menu; it’ll only show items relevant to current selection

• unknown MSP elements will be skipped and Mudlet will do its best to play the sound anyway

• duplicate parent names won’t be included anymore when exporting/importing packages (but if you’d like to, you can right-click to do it anyway)

fixed:

• fixed crash when using MSSP with the * event handler

• clicking on a label/miniconsole in a floating userwindow will no longer steal focus from the input line

• changing tabs in multiview will no longer cause consoles to flash

• there will no longer be a line across the screen for a split moment when a new profile is opening

• searchAreaUserData() will work again when both key and value are provided for searching

• clicking on the timestamp will now visually select the whole line

• auto-complete will no longer try to complete on short words like ‘do’

• text will now longer be automatically deselected while typing with the spellchecker on

• –quiet command line explanation fixed

• cancelling a package download will now actually cancel it

• perm* functions are working well again

• getMapLabels() won’t crash when used on an area that doesn’t exist

• generic mapper update notifications will work well again

• miniconsole message if you don’t pass enough parameters fixed

• fixed nonsense message for when there’s no rooms in the map

• generic mapper will stop responding to the map opening after it’s been uninstalled

• code won’t run twice on setScript and resetProfile

• resize events won’t be emitted anymore if the size didn’t actually change

• getMapMenus() fixed

• small memory leak when JSON map export is aborted

infrastructure:

• added automation to auto-link Linux and macOS PTB to updater (#4861

• added tests for variable interface

• added support for building Mudlet in Docker on Linux

• added mpackage for testing cecho/decho/hecho and console transparency to tests

• added an automated check to verify improvements against Mudlet’s C++ style guide

• Qt 5.14.2 is now used for all official builds

After a (once again) forced updates hiatus of a couple of months, monthly Mudlet updates are back! Enjoy improvements to drag & drop and a much better mapper.

What is Mudlet?

Mudlet is a platform with which you can play multiplayer, pure-text online games – called MUDs, precursors to today’s online games. There are thousands of unique worlds online – download Mudlet for free on Windows/macOS/Linux, join one and enjoy!

New games in Mudlet

Cleft of Dimensions

Do you have a soft spot for an old SNES RPG? Are you a fan of retro gaming? The Cleft of Dimensions is an adventure-driven MUD with content inspired by a variety of classic video games. Do you want to jump on goombas? Maybe you’d rather immolate them with lava or bombard them with meteors. Then again, why fight when enslavement’s an option? If that doesn’t work out, you’ve got this motorcycle you could crash into them. The Cleft has 16 character classes, each with a distinctive playstyle.

 

Gameplay in the Cleft features exploration, puzzles, quests, and combat. At time of writing, the world contains 98 areas. Quests range from deciphering treasure maps and committing industrial espionage to seeking the blessings of the mana spirits or just going fishing. A remort system facilitates repeat playthroughs to find content you missed the first time around.

 

The Cleft opened in July 2000 and has been in active development ever since. We’re always innovating. Recent features include Discord integration and areas written with artificial intelligence. Check us out!

Core MUD

Core Mud is an interactive text MUD set on the planet formal star-charts refer to as Hermes 571-G, but that everyone in the know refers to simply as “Core”. Core is one of the most distant settlements known to mankind, most famous for its lucrative yet oppressive mines. But more than mankind can be found here; Core is a diverse group of 9 races in total, all vying for recognition or profits, or both, working for The Company, the megalithic entity running the colony itself. To The Company, everything is secondary to profits. It is up to you to determine how best to survive in this environment, whether that be through combat training, superior mining skills, or technical prowess.

 

Core MUD is always free to play and features a fun and supportive atmosphere. Roleplaying is encouraged but not mandatory. Mining is your primary source of income, but there are multiple ways to scrape together a few credits… or a few million. Core Mud also features an economy which is player-driven; players own merchandise shops featuring energy weaponry or useful tools, pubs featuring assorted alcoholic (of course) and non-alcoholic beverages, and clinics for healing, to name a few. Come join us today!

Want to add your game in here? It’s free.

Drag and drop link to install a package

Yes you read that right – just drag and drop a link onto Mudlet and it’ll download and install the package for you:

Carrion Fields UI

Alternatively, you can also drag and drop the package file itself and it’ll install as well.

New core dev team member, Delwing

Please welcome Piotr, aka Delwing / WilK to the team! Delwing has previously made the excellent web-based Mudlet map viewer, VS Code autocompletion for Mudlet, and with scripts for the Polish game Arkadia.

This time around in Mudlet, Delwing added room borders:

Along with a complete customizable map info panel:

And some very sleek-looking room selection:

You can also now customise the colour of the room character. Thanks to Delwing for adding these in, and looking forward to more!

SlySven has put a huge amount of work into the mapper as well – and it can now save/load in JSON as well. This is something that crowdmaps will find handy to integrate so changes to the map can be clearly seen as text.

View-only mapper

Thanks to ktunkiewicz‘s work, the mapper now has a view-only mode – instead of editing – and of course it starts off in view-only off the bat:

Map makers no longer have to worry about players messing the map up with an accidental click.

Profile autosave

We’ve listened and new profiles created on 4.11 will now save automatically by default! Something so simple can go a long way to a better player experience.

Named patterns

matches[2] and friends is a good workhorse in Mudlet, and now they’ve been joined by new friends – you can now use matches.mycustomname!

Before

After

Notice how the attacker and weapon are changing places, being either first or second – but that doesn’t affect our echo at all. Try this out for yourself, and find the docs for it here.

String interpolation

It sounds pretty complicated, but it actually makes things easier – a new function, f(), allows you to combine text and variables together in a more intuitive manner:

-- old way:
cecho("\nHello, "..matches[2]..", how is it going?")

-- new way:
cecho(f("\nHello {matches[2]}, how is it going?")

Coding improvements

Kebap has put a lot of work in and improved all of the “wrong argument type” errors to be much more descriptive, and they’ll now tell you what went wrong and where:

The function needs a name/id, but none was given

I have to say that on the technical side of things, this makes the code look much cleaner – if you’re curious, have a peek.

Additionally, whenever a function couldn’t do its job for some reason, it previously returned nil+message – the message will now show up in the Debug console as well, which can aid you in debugging:

Mudlet in Polish

Thanks to Delwing and Sirith, Mudlet is now available in Polish! There is a community of Polish games out there; now when a new player starts Mudlet for the first time, it’ll be in their native language.

Text games are a great way to learn a language, so if you were thinking of picking up Polish – now’s your chance!

macOS scrolling

Touchpad scrolling for macOS now behaves a lot more naturally, we hope you like it!

More updates?

Regular monthly updates were interrupted by one of our partners, Travis CI, suddenly turning their back on the open-source community. We’ve taken the time to migrate our macOS and Linux builds to Github instead, and in the process switched to using CMake for building in combination with a C++ package manager, vcpkg.

Regular, monthly updates are now back on track for the foreseeable future.

Credits

Big thanks to all coders who made it happen: Damian Monogue, Dustin Heywood, ethorondil, Gustavo Sousa, Jonathan Picazo, Kamil Tunkiewicz, Kebap, Manuel Wegmann, Matthias Urlichs, Mike Conley, Piotr Wilczyński, Stephen Lyons, tdk1069, Vadim Peretokin, and wiploo.

Of course, our fantastic translators as well: Alan Sneath (alsneath), Heimen Stoffels (vistausss), Hsin-Hsiang Peng (Hsins), Leris, lostnow, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo), Mi11et, Piotr Wilczyński, Sirith (Senareil), Vadim Peretokin, and vingi.

Changelog

added:

• ‘look’ command in generic_mapper can now be translated
• addCmdLineSuggestion() allows you to add words to the tab completion
• custom HTTP method requests are now supported (ie PATCH)
• debug console now shows warnings from functions (which are returned as nil+message normally)
• f() function for string interpolation, ie send(f(“My target is {target}”))
• functions are now accepted everywhere [[code here]] is as well
• generic mapper: new ‘lazy’ map mode to match room names only, ignoring exits
• getProfileTabNumber() to return the # of the current tab
• getWindowWrap() so you can make echo’s that don’t wrap
• registerMapInfo() allows you to customise the map info label
• launching Mudlet for the first time ever? The input line will now have a placeholder text saying where to type the text
• map info box is now customizable
• modules can now be loaded before scripts in a profile with the -1 module priority
• named captures are now supported in regex triggers (matches.)
• placeholder text for command fields to explain what are they for
• mudlet.org/it/for our Italian players
• room characters can now be custom-coloured
• rooms now have borders in the 2D view
• saveJsonMap() and loadJsonMap() now support the Mudlet map format in JSON
• setRoomCharColor() allows you to customise the colour of a room character
• showNotification() to show an OS (computer) notification
• sysDownloadFileProgress event to monitor download progress
• view-only mode in the mapper, which is on by default
• X11 (Linux middle-click) selection is now supported
• you can now install a package by dragging the URL onto Mudlet

improved:

• ‘deleteOldProfiles’ now deletes old modules as well
• ‘no map loaded’ will now differentiate between actually no map loaded, and not knowing where you are
• Adjustable.Container now deals with corrupted save files and table for save slots
• all “wrong argument type” errors are now gone, will give an actual explanation instead
• c/d/hecho text formatting can do italics and bold
• connection dialog now looks better in dark themes
• default background color is now transparent, not black, in c/d/hecho
• default, unused profiles no longer require a confirmation to delete
• event engine can now pass large numbers through OK
• exists() function will now error on a wrong input type
• expired timers are now periodically deleted when you’re offline, instead of in bulk when you reconnected (which made Mudlet freeze for a while)
• getMapLabel() now returns foreground/background colors and the image as base64
• GMCP package names are now parsed in a case-insensitive way, per spec
• installing a package by dragging it into Mudlet will now give a notification
• installPackage will now return true/false indicating if it worked
• internal: history code is now a single code path, not duplicated
• italics and emojis won’t overlap each other anymore
• line spacer pattern now uses a spinbox instead of a free-text line edit
• loading a map will now choose a better folder to start in
• more functions will now validate their arguments instead of throwing an error
• name search function can now be customised in the generic mapper
• new profiles are not preinstalled the “send text to all games” script anymore. There’s a better package available now https://forums.mudlet.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23023
• newline is now its own entry in the history buffer(edited)
• profile save is enabled by default on new profiles
• permGroup can now be used for keys
• removed all QPalettes from forms/dialogues, enabling stylesheets to cover more aspects of Mudlet
• response size limit is removed in HTTP calls
• right-clicking on a room will select it for the pop-up
• room selection now looks better
• scrolling is now smoother in general
• scrolling transition is smoother when screen splits using scrollwheel
• setFont() won’t work with unknown fonts
• settings dialog will now close when the button is released, and not pressed, as expected
• simplified unknown text for given encoding message
• small text under icons in the connection dialog is gone
• telnet options within subnegotiations are now ignored, instead of breaking output
• timestamps are now copied as well when they’re visible
• trigger patterns now have an explanation of where the text goes for newbies
• TTS won’t try to speak out <, >, and no text
• typing in the connection dialog will now highlight the relevant icons
• using Alt+O will now re-focus on the package manager if it was open
• you can drag left/right to increase selection after double or triple-clicking on a word
• you can now copy text from the update dialog
• you can now multi-select in the package manager

fixed:

• Adjustable container attached menu shows elements now on hover (or similar)
• crash with reloadModule()
• Discord link in Mudlet will now always work
• display() won’t freeze on Geyser labels anymore, can show _G as well
• export action isn’t enabled anymore in Variables view, as those weren’t exportable
• flyout labels will close when leaving the parent item
• generic mapper script: correctly handle ‘set player location’
• IRC ‘/quit’ no longer crashes Mudlet
• just one ‘about’ button will now be on screen, instead of many if Mudlet was left running for a while and an update was available
• Lua trigger conditions are now properly deleted when the profile is closed, fixing a small memory leak
• map labels for an area are now deleted with the area
• MXP playing MSP handles with no attribute names won’t crash anymore
• MXP tags with UTF8 strings are now shown correctly
• pressing Alt won’t steal focus from the input line anymore
• room exits that go off the map are now drawn
• some games appeared twice in the connection dialog
• speedwalk() in reverse mode won’t reverse the numbers as well
• tempTimer() won’t have a small memory leak anymore
• unhighlighting during control-selection now works OK
• module contents aren’t lost anymore if saveProfile() is called during load

infrastructure:

• CMake is now the primary source for macOS and Linux releases
• CMake build now generates translations properly
• PTB and snapshot builds now get separate icons
• Apple has stopped supporting macOS 10.13 – Mudlet’s minimum is now 10.14

What has happened in Mudlet in just the last month alone? See below. This of course doesn’t cover everything since the last release in November!

This release has been a long time coming, thanks to the vagaries of obtaining a new code signing certificate for our Windows builds. Consequently there are a lot of changes which made it into Mudlet 4.10. Let’s go over some of the highlights!

Extra command lines

To turn on a commandline in a miniconsole, see here. To create a stand-alone, free floating command line, see here.

Background images for miniconsoles

You know what else you’ve been waiting and asking for? Background images on miniconsoles! Edru has been on a roll!

This also means that the usual c/d/heho color formatting functions now accept transparency as a parameter. See here on how to set a background image.

This also means that you can try setting a background image for the main window as well – but you might find that games often hardcode the black background, so it’s not ideal.

Math in Geyser

Have you been struggling to get your Geyser elements lined up just right and wished you could nudge it over just a few pixels? Been avoiding Geyser and using another option so you could have math in your constraints? Well, now you can use Geyser and receive all of its updates and use math in your constraints.

This means for example if you have a 32×32 label you want to center you can do so by using Label1:move(“50%-16px“,“50%+10px“), or using “50%-16px” for both the x and y when making the label.

Other Geyser Improvements

Geyser.Label also allows you to use “nocolor” as the text color, which will then allow for coloring the text via CSS. It also picked up the Geyser.Label:rawEcho(txt) function, which skips over all the formatting assistance normally provided by Geyser.Label:echo().

Geyser.MiniConsole gains Geyser.MiniConsole:display() which works just like regular display(), but outputs in the miniconsole instead of your main display.

New color functions for feedTriggers

Multi-view forever!

Telnet CHARSET support

Game admins will be happy about this feature – it is now possible to automatically set Mudlet’s text encoding – for example, to be utf8 in case your game supports emojis – using the CHARSET protocol. Big thanks to Tamarindo from StickMUD for pulling that one in.

Music/sound in MXP

Tamarindo also went ahead and added sound/music support to Mudlet’s MXP implementation. That said, there’s a much more modern Mud Client Media Protocol that you should aim to use

Scrollbar improvements

macOS 10.13 High Sierra

Apple will stop supporting 10.13 High Sierra in November 2020, and Mudlet will have to follow suit. Thus Mudlet 4.10 will be the last version to support 10.13, which had a good run of 3 years!

Credits

Thanks to all coders that have contributed to this massive release: Andre Castellanos, Damian Monogue, Eraene, Fae, Gustavo Sousa, Ian Adkins, Jonathan Mohrbacher, Kebap, keneanung, Manuel Wegmann, Matthias Urlichs, Mike Conley, Stack, Stephen Lyons, and Vadim Peretokin.

Thanks to all translators to translated Mudlet into their language: Alan Sneath (alsneath), Anubisa, emeraldboy, Hsin Hsiang Peng (Hsins), Kae (itsTheFae), Leris, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo), rodeos, rodeos, Vadim Peretokin (vperetokin), vingi, and 王AQ (Anselmus).

This massive piece of work would not be possible without all of you

Changelog

added:

• ability to display room names on the map (no auto-align them yet)
• an event to catch all events – `*`
• background image for miniconsoles is now possible, same as labels
• background image for the main window is now possible
• English spellchecking dictionaries are now included
• game admins can now set encoding via telnet CHARSET (so utf8 for emojis)
• miniconsoles can now have commandlines in them
• music is now supported in MXP
• option not to highlight text (history) when pressing the ↑ button
• option to use your own pathfinding algorithm instead of the built-in one
• you can now create standalone commandlines now allow you to ask the player for info
• transparency in now supported by cecho/decho/hecho
• you can now use math in Geyser constraints, ie “50% + 3px”

added & improved functions:

• ansi2string() given a string with ANSI codes in it, remove them all
• cfeedTriggers(), dfeedTriggers(), and hfeedTriggers() to enable testing color triggers
• createCommandLine(), enableCommandLine() for creating custom commandlines
• enableHorizontalScrollBar() to show a horizontal scrollbar in miniconsoles as needed
• getClipboardText() and setClipboardText() for interacting with the clipboard
• getFgColor() and getBgColor() now report how many characters the same color applies to
• getHTTP() downloadFile’s cousin and allows you to pass custom headers, joins putHTTP(), postHTTP() family for consistency
• Geyser.Label:createRightClickMenu() to create menus in labels
• Geyser.MiniConsole:display() to display straight into a miniconsole
• Geyser.UserWindow:setStyleSheet(), setUserWindowStyleSheet() to adjust the userwindow title and borders – great for dark themes
• hecho() can now set the background color only, without affecting foreground
• isActive() and exists() now work with buttons
• keepcolor parameter to replaceWildcard() and replaceAll() functions
• purgeMediaCache() to remove MCMP & MSP media files
• setCmdLineStyleSheet() to customize the font, colors, position of the command line
• setMapBackgroundColor() to change background color of the map from the usual black
• setMapRoomExitsColor() to customize the color of room exits drawn on the map
• spairs() which iterates over a table in a sorted way
• tempAlias() and tempKey() now can take Lua functions and not just text
• tempAnsiColor() trigger now works as it should

improved:

• ‘errors’ button text is now capitalized
• a message is now shown when a replay ends
• Client.Media – package messages themselves are no longer case sensitive
• compact input line option is now per-profile
• errors console now shows a horizontal scrollbar when needed
• exit line in generic mapper is now case-insensitive, and a few other triggers improved
• in case of compiling Mudlet yourself without TTS support, TTS functions won’t error anymore
• links at the end of the line now won’t be clickable in the empty space
• more accurate row and column reporting through NAWS protocol
• Mudlet logo artwork, now sharper and better-looking. Dev and PTB builds are now clearly distinguishable
• Mudlet’s savefiles are now saved with a more sorting-friendly name
• Mudlet’s usual, development and PTB icons got improved
• multiview tabbars aren’t re-arrangeable anymore, as doing so didn’t re-arrange the views anyhow
• profile history in connection dialog now translates dates
• scrolling now uses the upper pane’s height, so you aren’t missing text when scrolling, or getting too much of it
• shrinking rooms in the mapper will keep everything in its place
• string.split() now works with many more characters
• stylesheets can now manipulate color of Geyser Labels
• tabs and tab stops in profile preferences now make sense, which is a bit friendlier for a11y
• upped the limit of regex capture groups in aliases and triggers to 33
• zooming the mouse in and out in 2D mapper will keep the position more stable

fixed:

• ‘map config’ alias in generic mapper now works
• appendBuffer() now keeps links, so copying text with links in it to miniconsoles works
• crash when closing a profile with toolbars
• crash when selecting/copying text
• crash trying to move too many rooms at once via right-click
• fixed MXP with values containing =
• Materia Magica’s MXP now works better with Mudlet
• multiview now stays when you change focus between profiles
• resetProfile() to work again
• static items in HBox/VBoxes won’t be resized anymore when the box changes size
• sysDataSendEvent will no longer reveal the password
• vertical scrollbar now moves when you scroll with PgUp/PgDown
• vertical scrollbar now shrinks in size as you get more text

infrastructure:

• added some useful defaults for Visual Studio Code’s C++ integration
• building with libzip 1.70.0 that lacks version numbers now works
• cleaned up IRC code
• debug output now spams a bit less for unprintable codepoints
• deleted Github Action for clearing whitespace (more spam than help)
• enabled Github’s new CodeQL security code scanning
• fixed crash importing map with custom exit lines on Qt 5.14+ (macOS)
• internal code that only works with the main window is now in a separate class of its own, making the programmers happier
• Lua binding code cleaned up and improved for consistency and code style, now more fresh!
• Mudlet can now be built & run remotely in the browser with Github Codespaces
• Mudlet can now be built in MSYS2 on Windows
• Mudlet’s wiki is now upgraded to latest and greatest
• new PTBs are only built on days where there are new changes
• updated Linux builds to use Qt 5.12.9

bashingTable = {
  horde = "an orcish grunt", "an orcish mage",
}

We’ve improved Mudlet’s editor and highlighting as well as even more improved art display. Also, you can now every day receive new Mudlet developments with our Public Test Build (PTB) version!

Public Test Builds

While these have been prepared for a few months now, PTB are finally mature enough to be mentioned here. You can now always play with the most recent Mudlet developments enabled, if you don’t want to wait for the next official release.

New PTB versions are built nightly, hence their icons are dark, whereas new developments start with a dim red sun light. See immediately which is which via distinct icons both before and after you started Mudlet.

Mudlet PTB will be installed right next to your regular Mudlet. Meanwhile, the original release version will stay unchanged, so you can always go back. Find the latest PTB on top of Mudlet’s snapshot website: https://make.mudlet.org/snapshots/?platform=all&source=ptb

Please beware: Even though we test new features, the PTB may actually still break sometimes. Please report any doubts or feedback to us, so we can fix things long before the official release happens. This is why we’re doing this: for better Mudlet quality.

Improved ANSI art display

While Mudlet 4.8 started CP437 support, we received a request for help in Mudlet forums. A player wondered why Mudlet would not display their game’s sweet ANSI art upon connection as expected. SlySven investigated and fixed the issue, even surpassing the original request:

Please feel free to let us know any display problems you may find with Mudlet in your games, so we can look into them as well. Or even better, send us a fix to review! ;-)

Highlight foreground or background only

Even non-tech-savy users can easily use triggers in Mudlet to highlight interesting words or phrases happening in their games. The default highlighting will use red foreground and yellow background color. 

With the new Mudlet version, you can now choose to only use one of them for highlighting and keep the other one as-is. In the example, keep the (maybe different) foreground colors, just use yellow background.

Editor placeholder text

Mudlet’s feature-rich script-editor (edbee) just learned a new trick: The initial comment “put your Lua code here” will vanish, as soon as you start typing. No more left over fragments at the beginning of your code scripts!

Credits

Thanks to all coders: Damian Monogue, Edru2, Gustavo Sousa, Kebap, Manuel Wegmann, Nicholas Molen, Stephen Lyons, and Vadim Peretokin.

Thanks to all translators: Alan Sneath (alsneath), Leris, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo), rodeos, and Vadim Peretokin for their work on this every day​.

Changelog

added:

• Public Test Build (PTB) versions of Mudlet for macOS and Linux
• New icons for Mudlet’s Public Test Builds and development versions
• IRE mapper automatically installed for Starmourn as well
• Lua code in Mudlet can now be translated in Crowdin
• Option to keep color highlighting, so you aren’t forced to specify both fore and background colors
• New sysWindowMousePress and sysWindowMouseRelease events for user windows

improved:

• A single echo’s size was raised from the 10k character limit in the last release to a million characters
• Check for updates will check for updates more regularly
• The generic mapper script will automatically run ‘find prompt’
• The generic mapper script will handle room titles with embedded mini ASCII maps on the side
• Geyser HBox/VBox are now much quicker
• Geyser now stores stylesheet in the object
• Mudlet’s website is now shown in the Discord line
• MXP support rewritten, now supports colours
• Faster in-script search in the code editor for big scripts – won’t search on first two characters anymore
• Support graphics on Durismud (mud.durismud.com)

fixed:

• Prevent crash when closing a profile that hasn’t successfully connected
• Event handlers continue running now after one of them had an error
• Locking and minimization on creation is working now as expected for Adjustable Containers
• Module sync can’t be enabled for mpackages, as those aren’t supported for syncing yet
• Improved pixel precision in Adjustable Containers
• Replays now process cr+null correctly
• Time units aren’t translated in the UI anymore, making it work for other languages
• Userwindows can now still show up if previously closed/hidden
• Ctrl+C breaking when you have played a lot

infrastructure:

• Linux builds now use Qt 5.12.8
• Removed unused code

{
  {
    {
      id = "330116",
      attrib = "t",
      name = "a spiny dogfish",
      icon = "seacreature"
    }
  }
}

--an empty and nil table
myTable = {}
--Im checking for only items in the room with an if statement just before the for loop
itemsInRoom = gmcp.Char.Items.List.items
for k, v in ipairs (itemsInRoom) do
  table.insert(myTable,itemsInRoom)
end --for
--Where I would display the name and id to the Geyser.Label 
 end --if

This is an amazing release that adds drag and drop packages, custom cursors, draggable labels and more! Mudlet is now more powerful than ever for building stunning, modern interfaces for MUDs.

Drag and drop packages

Thanks to Edru, who massively improved Geyser and Userwindows in the last update, you can now drag and drop packages into Mudlet to install them. Pretty simple!

Credit: Eraene’s DarkTheme

Along with this comes a sysDropEvent, so you can code a custom action when a file is dropped into Mudlet. If you’re a package author, remember you can make use of the sysInstall event to notify that your package has been installed. Enjoy!

Carrion Fields added

This game has put together a seriously impressive Mudlet package and we’re honoured to have them added to Mudlet officially! Double-click on CF in the Connection screen to play

Carrion Fields is a unique blend of high-caliber roleplay and complex, hardcore player-versus-player combat that has been running continuously, and 100% free, for over 25 years.

Choose from among 21 races, 17 highly customizable classes, and several cabals and religions to suit your playstyle and the story you want to tell. Our massive, original world is full of secrets and envied limited objects that take skill to acquire and great care to keep.

We like to think of ourselves as the Dark Souls of MUDs, with a community that is supportive of new players – unforgiving though our world may be. Join us for a real challenge and real rewards: adrenalin-pumping battles, memorable quests run by our volunteer immortal staff, and stories that will stick with you for a lifetime.

Adjustable Containers

Edru didn’t just stop with drag and drop – adjustable containers are in as well! What does it mean? It means labels/miniconsoles that you can move around and reposition just by dragging! No code needed.

Try this code in Mudlet:

testCon = testCon or Adjustable.Container:new({name="testContainer"})
testLabel = Geyser.Label:new({x=0, y=0, height="100%", width="100%", color="green"},testCon)

Search within the script

Dicene also added a cool feature – you can now hit Ctrl+F to search within the script only, not your entire Mudlet profile!

He didn’t just stop there either – you can now toggle whenever you’d like to search within variables, default off so it’s quicker:

CP437 encoding now supported

Thanks to SlySven, the CP437 encoding is now supported. Along with a custom font, Medievia makes use of this to draw amazing custom maps

Check out a few more screenshots.

Custom cursors

Yep, custom cursors are here! Curious? Download, drag, and drop this demo package into Mudlet to try all the cursors out

Big thanks to Edru for adding these in.

New API features

gcms added MXP as another format that you can get data / events from, just like GMCP. Check it out!

demonnic did a pass over the table functions – table.contains() can now check within multiple nested tables, and table.collect(), table.n_collect(), table.matches(), table.n_matches() to make working with tables easier.

Thanks to Edru, you can now manipulate the syncing of a module with enableModuleSync(), disableModuleSync(), and getModuleSync(), and add/edit the Scripts as you see them in Mudlet with enableScript(), disableScript(), setScript(), getScript(), permScript(), and appendScript().

Edru also improved on the userwindows – you can now choose whenever they should be popped out or docked at start, and if docked, which area should they be in. Autodocking while dragging can now be disabled, too!

A few more improvements are also present – see the full changelog below.

Geyser:show() fixed

As mentioned two months ago, we’ve fixed an issue where you could still :show() the child of a hidden container. If your UI relied on this broken behaviour, make sure to update it!

Script editor sizes

Alias/trigger/script editors are no longer huge by default, and they’ll remember their sizes as well. Thanks to dicene for covering this off!

Polish translation ⭐

Big thanks to mwarzec for translating the entirety of Mudlet into Polish! In his own words, it was possible thanks to:

home.. sweet home.. and no reasons to go outside..

Did I miss 4.7?

We skipped 4.7 because that was the April Fools version

Credits

Thanks to all coders who made this release amazing! atari2600tim, Damian Monogue, Edru2, gcms, Ian Adkins, Jim Tryon, Kebap, keneanung, Mike Conley, Richard Moffitt, Slobodan Terzić, Stephen Lyons, and Vadim Peretokin.

Thanks to all translators: DarkApocalypse , Dawid Chomaniuk (pd.chomaniuk), Jelle Z. (jelle619), Leris, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo), mwarzec, vingi, and thomazleventhal for their work in this.

Changelog

added:

• ‘sysDropEvent’ event that allows drag and drop over labels/miniconsoles/main window
• Adjustable Containers are now part of Mudlet. This means nice labels you can drag to move without having to code it
• CLI option –profile to load a specific profile on start
• copy2decho() and copy2html() utility functions
• CP437 encoding is now supported
• enableModuleSync(), disableModuleSync(), and getModuleSync()
• enableScript(), disableScript(), setScript(), getScript(), permScript(), and appendScript()
• getMudletInfo() to show debugging information about Mudlet
• Geyser.changeContainer() to change the parent of a label/window
• Geyser.container raiseAll/lowerAll()
• Geyser:setCursor(), Geyser:setCustomCursor(), and Geyser:resetCursor() (and non-Geyser equivalents) to set a custom cursor over a label
• mxp events and an ‘mxp.’ table for MXP content (similar to GMCP)
• set/resetMapWindowTitle() to change the name of the mapper
• set/resetUserWindowTitle() and shorter titles by default
• setFgColor() for Gauges
• setWindow() to change the parent of a label/window
• table.collect(), table.n_collect(), table.matches(), table.n_matches() to make working with tables easier
• you can now drag and drop packages into Mudlet to install them!
• you can now search just within the script, and not the whole of Mudlet, with Ctrl+F. Enter/Shift+Enter navigate results
• Mapper is a Geyser object now as well under Geyser.Mapper

improved:

• echo() is now limited to 10k characters on a single line
• Geyser:setOnEnter/setOnLeave() now support tables of arguments like other functions
• setLabelClick and others now accept Lua functions directly
• 3D mapper is only loaded when clicked on now
• Mudlet’s language is auto-detected and set for new players automatically
• Noto Font only included where it’s useful (Linux), smaller Mudlet size for macOS and Windows
• searching for variables in editor is now optional and defaults to off (faster search)
• setConsoleBufferSize() won’t allow you to set the limit to be bigger than your computer’s/processes memory anymore
• splash screens are now different for official / dev / public test build versions
• table.contains() can now check for multiple items
• tempComplexRegexTrigger() won’t throw an error if expiration is set to 0
• the collapse/expand icon for search is now sharper
• there’s now a frame around the search line in Mudlet
• trigger/script/etc sizes in the editor are now better by default and will remember their position
• updated algorithm for calculating the width of a character
• updated Noto Font to a newer version
• updater window now mentions ‘update’ explicitly
• UserWindows: you can now choose dockPosition on start
• UserWindows: you can now disable automatic docking
• removed getMudletLuaDefaultPaths(). This is a rare case where nobody at all was using the function and it wasn’t needed, so no backwards compat is broken

fixed:

• echoLink() fixed to show text right away
• logging in other languages will now record characters properly
• MXP now handles &text; tag correctly
• toolbar turning black on old macOS when 3D mapper window is opened
• many issues with Geyser Flyout labels fixed
• Geyser:show() won’t allow showing children of a hidden parent anymore

infrastructure:

• big thanks to TheFae for refreshing the frontpage and the downloads page on the website
• added use of Github Actions to automate infrastructure tasks (updating dependencies, translations, etc)
• added use of Github Actions to build Mudlet in macOS and Windows
• createButton() deprecated, now uses an internal wrapper
• text available for translation improved, some \n’s removed

This is just half of what went into this two-month release. Seems interesting? Join our team! All are welcome

Mudlet has regularly brought forward new standards towards the decades long standing art of text games, and will continue to do so with this release as well. We also have a few improvements and information for special groups of users.

Mud Information Broadcasts

Thanks to demonnic, games can now send short information bits to their players at any time, next to the regular text flow. While this has been possible with the GMCP standard for quite some time, those messages would mostly stay under the surface, and need to be handled by coders and UI packages alike.

This new MIB standard however will be displayed directly to players in their known Mudlet window and style. This can be used as an easy starter GUI for new games, but also allows additional types of content to be shown to users.

Sounds interesting? Check out the docs on how to get started.

Text gaming with younger players

As more and more new players are trying text games, we have received reports from concerned parents about some rather dark games out there. Therefore, to protect our young players, all new versions of Mudlet will come with an explicit profanity filter enabled from the start.

The filter will remove or replace a list of vulgar words and phrases from these games. We won’t go into details here. You know what we mean. Disabling the filter will not be a simple check box in preferences either, as children may still find these too easily. Instead, you will receive the secret code in our Mudlet Discord after a simple age check by using the command !code I am over 18 years old.

Simplified Languages

This month, the Chinese translation of Mudlet has received their golden star  as it approached 100% completion. Meanwhile, there is still some work to do on the Chinese variant used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. As all this political detail may be too confusing to foreigners, these languages are simply called “Chinese (Traditional)” and “Chinese (Simplified)” in the Mudlet language selector.

Mudlet continues to gain more and more international users due to the ongoing translation work. We will now also simplify away the histories of European colonization of the Americas by renaming British and (US) American English as well as Brasilian Portuguese languages in a same manner as just “Traditional” and “Simplified” respectively.

Attention on Summer Time changes (Daylight Saving Time, DST)

Due to a recently discovered issue with our autosaving code we recommend that anyone playing during a Summer Time change such that the wall-clock time goes backwards relative to UTC does not end a session for the amount of time of the switch – otherwise they risk a save made with the new time being ignored in favour of an older one with an apparently newer time. Thanks to SlySven for noticing this and working on resolving the issue as soon as possible.

Are you still on Mudlet 4.5.1?

Does your Mudlet say Mudlet 4-5.1.de on top? Go to mudlet.org/download to update it by installing a new version. Don’t worry – your profiles will stay.

You can find more information on this in our detailed blog post.

Credits

Thanks to all coders: commandore420, demonnic, Edna, Freddy, keneanung, meetorlov, Razor, shagwell, SlySven, syd, and vadi2 who made this release possible!

Thanks to all translators: Ghandi69, Leris, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo), Vadim Peretokin (vperetokin), vingi, and Ömer Albulak (albulak) for translating Mudlet into their own language.

Changelog

Added:

• Often requested wait() functionality is now in Mudlet API
• Atari ST was added to the list of supported platforms
• You may now use Mudlet as a client for folding@home research
• Enter cheat mode by entering a special key sequence
• Added a combat AI system. Please don’t leave it unattended

Improved:

• Mudlet’s energy consumption reduced to help fight climate change
• Scripts will now error if not formatted properly (right click – format all)
• Future-proofed Mudlet for use on quantum processors
• Turbo mode feature can now be activated easily by holding Alt while pressing F4 key
• Magical portals allow Mudlet users to play with negative latency
• Automatic script formatting will now minify code as well
• Comic Sans is the new default font for new profiles
• Adjusted magic smoke algorithm for better crypto farming

Fixed:

• Fixed a crash when player pressed the konami code
• Return nil+error if Garthok not successfully gnarfled
• Fixed accidentally sending login names and passwords to 4chan
• Limited packets to one every six feet of cable (approx. – YMMV)

Infrastructure:

• Mudlet TLS now uses only military grade Dual_EC_DRBG as the single cypher
• Games can now download the game data to the local machine to improve responsiveness and limit bandwidth usage

Geyser in Userwindows

Thanks to Edru2, it is now possible to put labels, miniconsoles, and the mapper inside userwindows! Userwindows in Mudlet are pop-up windows that you can drag around with your mouse, resize, or even move to another monitor. Previously, only miniconsoles could go into a userwindow.

Here's a demo of the chat capture EMCO working right inside a userwindow!

Sounds interesting? Check out the docs on how to get started.

Tooltips for labels and gauges

Continuing their roll, Edru2 added tooltips to labels and Geyser objects! You can now add a tooltip easily with mylabel:setToolTip("tooltip here"), check out some examples.

Stylesheet for the current profile only

Edru2 has also added setProfileStyleSheet() - an easy to use, drop-in replacement for setAppStyleSheet() that only affects the current profile and not all of the other ones as well. Super handy!

If you're a UI author, it is strongly encouraged to switch over to this new feature. You can easily handle old Mudlets that don't have this feature yet with:

local stylesheet = [[<em>my stylesheet here</em>]]

if setProfileStyleSheet then

   setProfileStyleSheet(stylesheet)

else

   setAppStyleSheet(stylesheet)

end

Explicit formatting for Geyser labels and gauges

Previously, if you wanted to format the way a label looks like, your only option was to use the format string every time you echo'd something to a label. No longer! Now there are explicit :setBold(), :setUnderline(), :setItalics(), :setStrikeThrough(), :setFont(), :setFontSize(), and :setAlignment() functions available thanks to demonnic's work on this.

Geyser child show fix in next update

Okay, that was a ton of Geyser improvements. Ready for one more?

In Geyser, when you hide a container, all of its children get hidden as well. Makes sense, right? However, there is a way you can still get a child to show - if you call :show() on it explicitly. This means that you can get a child of a hidden container to show up! This obviously doesn't sound right, and it affects things like anitimers working correctly.

We've fixed it - but in QA testing, we've discovered that a few UIs have been built that rely on this broken behavior to work: that is, getting a child to show up even though their container is hidden. As we don't want to introduce an update that fixes-but-really-breaks things, we've postponed this change until the next 4.7 release. Meanwhile, if you're a UI author, test this Windows / macOS / Linux version of Mudlet to see if your UI is affected and if you need to fix it.

All fonts unlocked

The setting for picking a main window font was previously only limited to monospace fonts, as those are the ones that we've optimised our custom-made text display for. As part of our internalisation work, we've added emoji and non-English letter support to the display as well - which now makes it good enough to be used with all fonts!

Non-monospace fonts in Mudlet still aren't perfect, and not all fonts are designed to be used for their letters, so beware. On top of that text games are still optimised for monospace fonts - those are easier to align text and columns with!

IRE Composer improvements

New function: unzipAsync()

Have a zip, need to unzip it? The new unzipAsync() function by Vadi will do that just for you! It also won't freeze Mudlet up while it's unzipping because it's asyncronous and multithreaded.

Notepad: now for all languages and emoji's

The notepad now will correctly store and load contents in utf8, allowing for all languages and emoji's to show up. Thanks to SlySven for making this work!

Mudlet $410 bounty for better screenreader support

We have an outstanding bounty of 410 USD to add screenreader support to our super quick, custom-made game text display widget - so visually impaired users can get game text read out to them. Interested in making some cash? Dive in, and join us on Discord to talk about it!

Are you on Mudlet 4.5.1-de?

Unfortunately due to a publication error, Mudlet 4.5.1-de will not automatically update to 4.6.0. Go to mudlet.org/download and manually install the new version. Don't worry - all your profiles will stay.

Credits

Thanks to all coders: atari2600tim, demonnic, Edru, Faenriis, mpconley, shacknetisp, SlySven, and vadi2 who made this release possible!

Thanks to all translators Gandalf07, Leris, Marco "M0lid3us" Tironi (wiploo), Vadim Peretokin (vperetokin), vingi, and Ömer Albulak (albulak) for translating Mudlet into their own language.

Changelog

added:

• Geyser objects (as well as the usual labels, miniconsoles and mapper) can now go into userwindows
• unzipAsync() function
• setLabelToolTip() and Geyser equivalents :setToolTip() functions

improved:

• tab order in connection screen now makes better sense (a11y)
• all connection screen input fields now have their names read out for a screenreader (a11y)
• Mud Client Media Protocol: Client.Media has been renamed to Client.Media.Default per protocol change
• notepad now works with utf8
• IRE Composer now handles \
• blinking text will now show up as italics (like in MUSHclient), as opposed to normal text like before
• all fonts can now be selected in main window settings

fixed:

• labels being really slow over the mapper window
• gmod not re-enabling modules properly on reconnect
• possible crash if you managed to close a profile without closing Mudlet while settings window was open
• module priorities not to get lost

Added a new option for customising the mapper’s “you are here” location marker, added notepad autosave, re-added stopwatches overhaul and fixed a possible crash when copying text in this update!

MSP (Mud Sound Protocol)

Thanks to Tamarindo from StickMUD, Mudlet now supports MSP! This allows the game to ask Mudlet to play sounds automatically (say, when you enter a room or start a fight). This is different from playSoundFile(), a function you can use in triggers/aliases to play sounds.

If your game already supports MSP, try enabling it today! If you’re a game admin and you only allow specific clients to enable MSP, add Mudlet to the list

Tamarindo also developed a more modern replacement for MSP (last updated in 2001) called MUD Client Media Protocol (MCMP) – something that is more fitting for 2020. If you’re interested in adding media to your game today, consider adding this.

Customisable room marker

SlySven added a feature to customise the room marker – there’s now several different styles as well as an option to create your own!

Overhauled stopwatches

SlySven put in a lot of work to improve stopwatches: they can now persist across sessions, be deleted/recreated as needed, adjusted on the fly, be given names and more. See all of the new functions in the API.

While stopwatches worked as expected, their functionality was very limited. Additionally, they worked differently from their real world counterparts which made their use not very intuitive.

Credits

Thanks to all coders: aaronjoslyn, CriusMacOldenly, demonnic, keneanung, mpconley, SlySven, and vadi2.

Thanks to all translators: finalcn, Garagoth, Leris, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo), Shoryu Shin (shoryu49), and wendeli alves (wilcoxjvkb).

Changelog

added:

• custom look’n’feel for the mapper red ‘you are here’ dot in settings
• support for more than 3 mouse buttons for the event engine
• overhauled stopwatches with a ton of new features
• portugese (brazilian) language for translation
• MSP (Mud Sound Protocol)!

improved:

• notepad content is autosaved every 2mins (previously, only ever saved on profile close)

fixed:

• crash on selection
• temporary aliases are now removed like everything else with resetProfile()
• font size in composer no longer huge

infrastructure:

• support for 64bit Discord libraries on Windows (Mudlet on Windows does not yet do 64bit, but it does on Linux and macOS)
• Mudlet now uses latest Qt 5.13.2 on Windows
• Travis CI configuration modernised

Requirements

Changes

• Added ml probe to probe items in a shop and gather description, crafter, and designer data. This will automatically probe items once every second until it has probed every item detected with wares if autoprobe is on.
• Added ml recall <item> to display an item's description, crafter, and designer.
• Added ml settings autoprobe <on|off> to toggle autoprobe settings. The default is off.
• ml find <item> now sorts the results by price and area.
• ml list <search> is now sorted by type (short name) and short description

Current Features

• Automatic harvesting of shop information
• Automatic cataloging of individual items, their locations, and price after use of the wares command.
• The ability to look up items using ml list <search>
• The ability to look up a specific item's locations using ml find <item short>
• The ability to probe an unprobed item in a shop using ml probe. This will automatically continue to probe unprobed items in the shop (as detected by the `wares` command) every second if autoprobing is on.
• The ability to recall the details of an item probed using ml recall <item>.
• Handle autoprobe settings using ml settings autoprobe <on|off>

Installation

1. Download the MerchantLord.xml from the most recent release.
2. Open Mudlet and select "Module Manager" from the dropdown menu
3. Select "Install"
4. Browse to the location you downloaded MerchantLord.xml, select it, and select "Open"

Roadmap

Mudlet

Web App

Feature Requests

Requirements

Current Features

1. Automatic harvesting of shop information
2. Automatic cataloging of individual items, their locations, and price after use of the WARES command.
3. The ability to look up items using `ml list <search>`
4. The ability to look up a specific item's locations using `ml find <item short>`

Installation

1. Download the MerchantLord.xml from the most recent release.
2. Open Mudlet and select "Module Manager" from the dropdown menu
3. Select "Install"
4. Browse to the location you downloaded MerchantLord.xml, select it, and select "Open"

Roadmap

Mudlet

Web App

Feature Requests

Requirements

Current Features

1. Automatic harvesting of shop information
2. Automatic cataloging of individual items, their locations, and price after use of the WARES command.
3. The ability to look up items using `ml list <search>`
4. The ability to look up a specific item's locations using `ml find <item short>`

Installation

1. Download the MerchantLord.xml from the most recent release.
2. Open Mudlet and select "Module Manager" from the dropdown menu
3. Select "Install"
4. Browse to the location you downloaded MerchantLord.xml, select it, and select "Open"

Roadmap

Mudlet

Web App

Feature Requests

This short update fixes text selection in Mudlet, improves the generic mapper script, and a few things in the background.

Fixed text selection

Crius MacOldenly from Accursed Lands has taken it upon themselves to rewrite text selection in Mudlet, and the result is really good! It now behaves as you’d expect.

Credits

Thanks to all coders: CriusMacOldenly, demonnic, keneanung, SlySven, and vadi2 for contributing to the code!

Thanks to all translators: Leris, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo), and vadi2 for helping translate Mudlet.

Changelog

added:

• ‘show moves’ alias to generic mapper script
• support for a ‘Public Test Build’ version of Mudlet (coming soon)

improved:

• table.is_empty() now gives a better error message
• text selection redone
• emoji rendering is a bit better (still working on it)
• showColors() now appends the clicked colour instead of replacing text in the input line

infrastructure:

• modernised cmake files

It might look like we haven’t done much for you in this release, as compared to the previous ones – but fear not, there’s been plenty of work in the background that’ll come to fruition in the future

This update now stores characters' passwords securely, improves selection (but more work to do there), adds ANSI colours to cecho and friends, and fixes the font spacing in the error console.

We know quality of the last few updates hasn't been amazing, and quality is something we pride ourselves in. We've worked extra hard this time to test everything!

Selection is not yet fixed, but better

Selection in Mudlet has gotten worse in the last few updates - we apologise for that. We're working on fixing that to work as you'd expect, and this update thanks to SlySven and vadi2 brings the following: selecting left to right works better, selecting to the end of line doesn't overselect other text and finally, selecting just one letter is possible.

There are still issues with selection, however: selecting many things up and down doesn't work well for example. We're working on fixing this, look for improvements in future updates.

Remember you can hold Ctrl while selecting to select entire lines at once!

Overhauled stopwatches

SlySven put in a lot of work to improve stopwatches: they can now persist across sessions, be deleted/recreated as needed, adjusted on the fly, be given names and more. See all of the new functions in the API.

While stopwatches worked as expected, their functionality was very limited. Additionally, they worked differently from their real worl counterparts which made their use not very intuitive.

Secure passwords storage

Mudlet previously stored passwords in an unencrypted binary file. While it wasn't a text file, and thus not so easy to look at, it still wasn't ideal. vadi2 fixed this in this update, and integrated the QtKeychain open-source library to enable Mudlet to store passwords securely on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The drawback of storing the password on the computer itself, however, is that if you use cloud sync for your profiles - the password won't the syncronised. You can go to Special Options in settings and change the password to be stored within the profile to make that work, if you'd like the password to be portable but visible in plaintext.

This piece of work was a necessary step towards custom locations for Mudlet profiles - necessary for cloud sync and portable Mudlet, so look for more in this area

ANSI colours

SlySven worked to make ANSI colours - ones you see in preferences - be available right in your scripts! This means you can create coloured cechoes (and more) with the exactly same colours you'd see in the game. Nice!

In the same vein, as you notice from the screenshot that demonnic worked to make showColors() sort colours! It now is a lot easier to pick out the exact colour you'd like.

Dark mode on macOS

Mudlet now automatically goes into Dark Mode if you've got that enabled on your macOS:

Enjoy!

Error console font

The error console font used to be... strange in the last few releases. We apologise for the lapse in quality here, and it is now fixed.

Generic mapping script

We've spent time improving the generic mapping script as well, making it easier to use and understand:

Doing map basic will show the room name and exits that have been captured, so you can tell if the script is working.

Credits

Thanks to all coders: demonnic, keneanung, Leris, Loon-Toon, SlySven, and vadi2 for making this update possible!

Thanks to all translators: 王AQ (Anselmus), Marco "M0lid3us" Tironi (wiploo), Leris, and vadi2 for keeping translations up to date.

Changelog

added:

• Geyser.Gauge:echo() can now do Geyser formatting
• generic mapping script: if you start the first area in your map without a name, the message asking for the name is now more understandable
• added getConnectionInfo() function
• character login passwords can now be stored by Mudlet securely in the credential manager, and are put there by default. There is still a toggle to go back to storing them unencrypted within the profile - this is handy if you want to use cloud sync
• ANSI colours are now available for use in cecho and others! They are automatically synced with preferences. See showColors()

improved:

• setRoomEnv(), Geyser.Gauge:setValue(), table.is_empty() give you an understandable error message if you don't give them right arguments, instead of technical gibberish
• generic mapping script: 'map basic' is now much more simplified and understandable, and tells you if it captured room name and exits correctly
• code editor will now indent with two spaces, and not tabs, when you press Tab (this sounds weird but it's a lot better)
• 'About Makers' is now a lot easier to translate
• generic mapping script: 'clear moves' alias now tells you how many commands were removed
• you can now reveal the character password in the Connection screen by pressing a little icon
• GUI.Client, Client.Map downloads will now follow redirects as necessary
• Mudlet's .dat map files can now be loaded from Client.Map as well
• default font size for new profiles is slightly bigger and looks nicer
• stopwatches got a giant overhaul, tons of new functionality
• showColors() now sorts colours nicely

fixed:

• error and debug console fonts are no longer spaced weird
• grey area between trigger error and trigger patterns is fixed
• you can now select a single letter/character ("grapheme" in technical terms)
• trigger highlights can now highlight non-English text fine

This is a quality release bringing improvements to Mudlet editor, Geyser, while adding MSSP, HTTP POST/PUT/DELETE, and more. Enjoy

Mudlet editor improvements

dicene pulled his sleeves up and added a fair bit of great improvements to the code editor!

• Alt+E will now remember the view you last used, instead of always going to the trigger view.
• Alt+E will now also toggle between the editor and the main window – as an alternative to Alt+Tab or using the mouse
• Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab can now be used to jump around the main parts of the Mudlet editor – this helps a lot with keyboard navigation!
• Function autocomplete is now an option in settings

And while not strictly an editor feature, you can now select a specific profile tab – just like you can select a specific browser tab – with Ctrl+#. So Ctrl+1 will open the first profile, Ctrl+2 the second, and so on.

MSSP

Tamarindo from StickMUD added support for Mud Server Status Protocol (MSSP) in Mudlet! This means that for games that support it, the mssp table (do lua mssp to see it) will have all sorts of data that the game reports about itself. 

Are you an admin running a game? Add MSSP support! Are you a player on Mudlet wanting to use it? See here how to do that.

As well as MSSP, Mudlet will now accept JSON for the Client.GUI string – this is something game admins can use to setup a Mudlet interface. Thanks again to Tamarindo for adding that!

Improvements for custom UIs

demonnic added some neat features to Geyser labels: you can now align text in them to the left or right of the label, as well as format it with strikeout text! insertLink, echoPopup, and insertPopup now have c/d/h variants for colouring text too.

vadi2 managed to crack the problem that was affecting Windows releases – if you created opened mapper with your Geyser interface together, the latter would look a bit weird until you resized it. No more! Both will open up just fine now.

Additional web APIs

This one is for coders as well: Mudlet has already supported HTTP GET, and now it supports POST, PUT, and DELETE too! With these you can make Mudlet packages that interact with web services – we look forward to seeing what you come up with

Mindful of the privacy aspects of this, as always, all HTTP requests are now logged in the Centra Debug Console:

Feature 5

Feature 5 text

Credits

Big thanks to abbradar, demonnic, dicene, keneanung, macjabeth , mpconley, SlySven, vadi2, and wsdmatty for making this Mudlet update possible! Have you got an itch to scratch about Mudlet? Join in.

Changelog

We’ve added a ton of improvements in this release, including some neat table functions by macjabeth, so look below for the complete changelog:

added:

• Alt+E / “Script editor” will now open the same view you had last, instead of Triggers view at all times
• Alt+E now toggles between the Mudlet editor and the main window back and forth
• calcFontSize(window_or_fontsize, optional_font_name)
• Client.GUI is now accepted by Mudlet in JSON format as well (this is for game admins)
• Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab can now be used to jump around the main parts of the Mudlet editor
• Geyser.Label:echo can now align things to ‘left’ and ‘right’, and use ‘strikeout’ text
• insertLink, echoPopup, and insertPopup now have c/d/h variants for colouring text
• MSSP data is now available in Lua! Not all games support this, but those that do, you’ll be able to get additional data about the game in the ‘mssp’ table
• postHTTP(), putHTTP(), and deleteHTTP() – and logging of all requests in the Debug console so you know what scripts are doing
• table.keys(), table.n_filter(), table.n_flatten() for working with tables
• Ctrl+1,2,3,etc now changes between profile tabs (this won’t break your custom keybindings if you have those)

improved:

• code editor’s autocompletion now has a toggle in settings
• default map save format is now 20 (up from 18). This means maps saved by Mudlet 4.1 can’t be read by 2.1 (3.x is OK!) – at this point enough people should be off
• insertPopup and echoPopup now accept “main” as an argument
• “default_host” profile is now gone: even faster Mudlet loading!

fixed:

• ‘Copy as image’ now correctly works for Chinese and other 2-character-width languages
• changing formatting in a miniconsole will now take effect right away
• clicking on the timestamp will once again select the entire line (remember you have ctrl+clicking on a line too)
• setBold and other formatting functions will now work on miniconsoles
• setting a 0 width font (a weird font, basically) won’t crash Mudlet
• UIs / Geyser no longer look funny when you first open them
• userwindows will now close when you close their profile

2 years and 4 months or in tech speak, nearly 2,000 commits later – Mudlet 4.0 is here! We’ve achieved our stated goal to make Mudlet playable internationally; from Spanish to Chinese games

There are still minor improvements to do, such as translating the splash screen text, but internalisation is work that will never stop and will be always ongoing.

Mudlet Patreon

We’ve opened up a Patreon! All funds raised will be spent on improving the project, so if you like Mudlet, help us out! We’ve got a Special Offer in Patreon until August 25th: a hand-made, engraved Mudlet wooden pen.

10 year anniversary!

We’ve just had our 10 year anniversary! Our goal, just like everybody’s in this genre, is to keep it alive, innovate in it, and bring new players in – and we’re aiming for the next 20 of the same.

Internationalization improvements done for 4.0

Comparing the 3.0 to the 4.0 release, we have put in a ton of work to make Mudlet internalization-friendly:

Character display

Mudlet can now display Spanish, Italian, Russian, Chinese and other text fine:

Text selection also works correctly for Chinese and other languages where every monospace character doesn’t strictly occupy the space same space as 1 Latin character. Chinese characters, for example, occupy 2.

Server encoding

As expected, you can now choose everything from UTF-8, GBK, to KOI8 and more as an available server encoding:

Spellchecking

Spellchecking: yep, it’s here! Works for multiple languages; can be set to be for the profile only or shared Mudlet-wide, and you can use the Lua API with it, too!

utf8.* Lua string functions

All data your triggers, scripts, and everything else is encoded in utf8 – no matter what server encoding. Since Lua’s standard string library works just Latin only, we have added utf8 equivalents of relevant functions so your string.match can work with Russian, Chinese text.

Triggers, aliases, etc work for international text

As mentioned above, we’ve updated alias matching and trigger matching to work with international text! OK in all fairness, this change was the easiest of them all as it was a simple switch.

Windows users with non-Latin usernames

This issue was not a simple switch, unfortunately. An issue specific to Windows, if your account on the computer had non-Latin characters such as öäå, Mudlet would not load correctly. This is now fixed; everyone can run Mudlet!

Finally, the interface

And of course – the pièce de résistance – you can now play Mudlet itself with many different languages!

The interface is fully translated into:

• German – big thanks to Leris for doing the bulk of the translation
• Italian – big thanks to wiploo from Clessidra.it for doing the bulk of the translation
• Russian – big thanks to vadi2 for doing the same

Custom profile icons

Now specifically back to features introduced from the last 3.22.1 update to 4.0, we have done the following:

You can give your custom profiles – a custom icon! Size it to 120×30 for it to look good.

Tabs in display

Mudlet is now a lot better with tabs! This is for compatibility with older games, where they’re used for formatting and in-game source code editing.

If you’re building new code and would like to align text, use spaces instead: they’ll give you complete control of how the text will look like in the end, unlike tabs.

make.mudlet.org/snapshots

Mudlet’s Continuous Integration (CI) process is highly automated: every improvement or feature is checked for compile errors on multiple platforms and a test Mudlet version just for that change is automatically created for Windows, macOS, and Linux. This means you can even improve Mudlet’s code online, without installing anything, and get your own build of Mudlet to test the change!

We’ve previously put up those test versions of Mudlet on transfer.sh and as Appveyor artifacts, which were sometimes flakey, so our very own TheFae has improved the situation and custom-built https://make.mudlet.org/snapshots for us! Every build has handy links to the relevant Github commits and if available, the PR as well.

If you’d like to setup a copy of this website for your own needs, feel free! Just like Mudlet, it is open-source as well

Proxy support

You can now connect to your game using a SOCKS5 proxy!

Copy profile settings

You’ve worked hard to create your perfect, personal profile: the correct command separator, perfect colours, and just the right font size – and now you want to try a new game. Copying the existing profile will bring over all of the scripts so what do you do?Yep, we’ve got a button for that.

Improved menubar

We’ve added the Disconnect and Package Exporter buttons in the menubar, and made Discord be the primary “help with Mudlet” button. This brings it to feature parity with the toolbar, so you can pick which one you’d like to have.

IRC will stay as there are systems out there that make good use if it.

Emoji now in colour

On macOS, Linux, and Windows 10 Mudlet will now show emoji in colour!

Windows 7 and 8 unfortunately aren’t supported due to a Windows limitation.

Note that very few games support emoji’s out there – but you can always use echo(“Cool 😄\n”) in your scripts!

Mudlet – now in C++17

This is pretty techy news, but Mudlet is now made in C++17! Modern C++ is nothing like the traditional language you’ve heard of, and this update brings awesome things like structured bindings. Are you interested in trying it out? Mudlet is open for your PRs

Translation 🌟

Big thanks to Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo) from clessidra.it for putting in a ton of effort into the Italian translation – it is now complete and has a 🌟!

The Russian translation has also been updated to the 🌟 level as well, joining the German translation on the podium. Can you help us with your language?

Credits

This is a huge update. Big thanks to demonnic, imgbot, keneanung, Leris, SlySven, and vadi2 for making it happen!

Thanks to all translators (12!) in this update: beckham894, Cyber Nerd (cybernerd.us), Guilherme Campos (guicampos), hjdhnx, keneanung, Leris, lostnow, Marco “M0lid3us” Tironi (wiploo), Matthieu (Jack_potta), Shoryu Shin (shoryu49), vadi2, and vingi.

Changelog

We’ve added far too much to list in the post, so have a look through the detailed changelog below:

added:

• Copy profile (settings only) – handy for bringing over existing preferences to a new profile
• Disconnect button in the menu of the Connect button
• Discord is now the preferred way to get help; Discord is now available as a button. IRC is still there, people use it in their systems
• getBorderSizes() as well as getBorderTop(), getBorderRight(), getBorderBottom(), and getBorderLeft()
• package manager, module manager, and package exporter all have buttons in the menubar now
• Patreon supporters tab! See https://patreon.com/mudlet
• setBorderSizes(top, right, bottom, left)
• SOCKS5 proxy support for connecting to games / HTTP downloads
• tempTimers now have a repeating option (keep firing until you kill them)
• you can now give your profile a custom icon in the list

improved:

• 60-200ms faster profile load and lower memory use (code formatter is now loaded on demand)
• C++17 is now used for making Mudlet. If you like the sound of that, come join us
• command separator for new profiles is now ;; (remember you can now copy settings from existing profile)
• couple of long tooltips for map copy are now trimmed
• emoji’s will now be displayed in colour in Linux and Windows 10 (macOS already had them, Windows 7 not possible; Windows limitation)
• faster text rendering of normal characters (plain ASCII)
• feedTriggers now works independent of your encoding
• full path to the sound file is now shown as a tooltip in the trigger editor
• introduction texts for triggers/aliases/etc are now more thorough
• Mudlet updater and code editor texts are now possible to be translated
• Reconnect button and reconnect() will now connect to the last server, even when you use connectToServer()

fixed:

• ‘About’ button in menubar won’t show text when you’ve turned that off
• Chinese Linux users can now type in Chinese in Mudlet
• clicking on a search result will now correctly take you to the location in the code
• creating a new trigger won’t show an error about no patterns in it right away
• Ctrl+Delete works in the input line to delete by word, as well as other shortcuts
• permGroup() will properly create folders
• spellchecker now works for everyone, including Windows users with special characters in their name
• tabs now show correctly in Mudlet
• text selection works right for Chinese text

Here’s a snapshot of all the work that went just into Mudlet’s code alone (this excludes work done on the snapshots service):

It’s a lot! Want to improve something in Mudlet? Join in!