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                      JOURNAL FOR FRIDAY 27TH MAY, 2022
______________________________________________________________________________

SUBJECT: A terminal idea…
   DATE: Fri 27 May 20:37:45 BST 2022


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Recently I’ve been busy on something and doing a lot with ANSI escape codes.
Coincidentally, with the new combat system the display can get very busy, very
quickly. I was thinking to myself “can I use the escape code work to improve
the player’s experience?”. I took a break from implementing more of the combat
system and came up with a proof of concept one evening:


──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

[Fireplace]
You are in the corner of the common room in the dragon's breath tavern. A fire
burns merrily in an ornate fireplace, giving comfort to weary travellers. The
fire causes shadows to flicker and dance around the room, changing darkness to
light and back again. To the south the common room continues and east the common
room leads to the tavern entrance.

You see exits: east, southeast, south
You examine the ornate fireplace.
This is a very ornate fireplace carved from marble. Either side a dragon curl
downward until the head is below the fire looking upward, giving the impression
that they are breathing fire.
You examine the fire.
Some logs have been placed into the fireplace and are burning away
merrily.
The fire dims, then flares back up again.
You hear talking nearby.
The fire pops, sending little embers dancing up the chimney.
You hear a loud sneeze.
The fire gently crackles.
You hear a loud sneeze.
H:30/30███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
exam fire

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
                         Actual screenshot: term.png


The screenshot actually does it more justice ;)

For now it only expects an 80 column by 25 line terminal. I have been hacking
away with the TELNET protocol and can query the client terminal size, that’s
not implemented yet. It does work in the Linux TELNET client, Windows TELNET
client and Putty. The status line even updates automatically as you gain and
lose health.

The screen is split into three areas: output, status line and input. The
biggest improvement is that the player’s input is no longer chopped up onto
multiple lines if new text needs to be displayed :)

This really is just a hack for now, and the code is really rough.

Is this something people would like to see properly implemented? I’m not sure
how well it would work with screen readers…

Like it? Hate it? Have your say and let me know: diddymus@wolfmud.org

A couple of bonus screenshots:  term2.png  term3.png

--
Diddymus


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