I want to first apologize, this question is probably one of the "Seriously dude, just read the bloody helpfiles" kind. I am, however, incredibly inept when it comes to scripting, triggers, and anything of the like.
I am on a MU* that uses long, multiple-line save messages. With three of these popping out at once, it's a huge chore to scroll through these. And they're all different, so I can't just make a simple trigger. The only thing they have in common is they're preceded and followed by a particular, common typographical symbol.
I'm not sure how to wildcard this without missing EVERYTHING that has this particular common symbol. Any ideas?
As you probably know, some MU*s have save messages. They tend to go either in 2 or 3 messages. A normal MU* might have the following:
GAME: Preparing to save.
GAME: Saving now.
GAME: Saved.
This is, I assume, the game making a backup of the database. However, I play on a MU* that has these stupidly long save messages. They're all usually little snippets of IC scenes or OOC jokes that staff characters have been involved in. These save messages end up taking up multiple lines.
One I can remember involves a mini-scene between the characters of an anime where one is trying to get some ice cream but they're out, she finds out why when the other character passes by with about fifty scoops on one cone, and then she chases after the character with the fifty scoops. Another involves a popular game company mascot telling a friend of his -- in ebonics, no less -- that the girl his friend is in love with is actually a chicken, his friend grows angry and denies it, and then the chicken does something and the friend swoons again.
They're designed to be silly, and they are. Sometimes they're funny. But when there's three silly messages an hour, each one between three and six lines long, popping up on my screen? It becomes a little less cute. Particularly when I'm trying to scene. They usually look like this:
# <First silly message that takes up 3-6 lines.> #
# <Second silly message that takes up 3-6 lines> #
# <Third and final silly message that takes up 3-6 lines> #
Sadly I don't actually have any of the messages themselves, because the existence of them has rather discouraged me from staying connected long enough to see them. Every single one of these messages is different. So what I'm asking is, short of just adding a trigger to leave out every single individual message as I see it, is there a way to just block all of these messages from my output buffer?
This is an interesting question. Could you grab a copy of what a real one looks like? Maybe get a bit of the session before and after too for context. Wrap it in [code][/code] tags to preserve formatting. ( https://mushclient.com/forum/bbforumcode.php )
From what you've described so far, maybe we can make a bit of headway until then...
Is there ever another moment when you have three messages of 3 or more lines consecutively?
Are these always wrapped by leading and trailing # symbols?
The solution provided is exactly why I asked about this. I looked at it, and can't understand anything that's written, because (as I mentioned), I'm really not good at scripting. It's a little disappointing that the only solution requires programming ability on-par with coders -- what even /is/ "Lua", anyway?
Well, failing this, I can always just whine at the staffers to cut down on the spam. I'm sure I'm not the only player who finds having to cut 10+ lines out of their log annoying.
Surprisingly enough, I didn't catch one all day yesterday, for whatever reason. And then today I tabbed back in to see this:
## A rumbling sound fills the streets of NeoTokyo as Lina Inverse runs past the
UR, looking fearfully back over her shoulder now and then. ##
## Lina runs into the police station and grabs the first handy officer she sees
around the knees as she drops to the floor and begs, "PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF
L-SAMA, YOU'VE GOT TO LOCK ME UP SOMEPLACE SAFE!" ##
## Outside the police station, the rumble stops, replaced by a chorus of 10
voices laughing out loudly as they persue Lina,
"OOOOOOOOOOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!". Inside the station, Lina
quakes with fear, "Oh no, they found me again!" as she sprints out the back
door to try to evade the 10 Naga clones that are chasing her. Officer Gourry
pikus as Lina runs away after letting go of his legs. ##
(If I happen to catch any more between the time I post this and the time it gets answered, I'll add them to this post, this is just the first one I happened to see. I don't log on much, mainly because of these messages.)
This is not the only message like this. This is also one of the SHORTER ones. I think the only way these could be any more annoying is if they were in blinking text. But I've also asked staff about shortening these before, or eliminating them totally, and the answers I've gotten have been various takes on "Well, you don't sign on that often anyway" and "nobody else is complaining about it". So I'm having to figure out how to block them out of my output on my end.
That's my client. I prefer to keep it at 80 characters because most of the places I go, if I set the wrap any higher, some of the formatting ends up looking wonky.
Sorry. I figured you'd need a demonstration as to WHY it was so egregious to have on my screen.
## A rumbling sound fills the streets of NeoTokyo as Lina Inverse runs past the UR, looking fearfully back over her shoulder now and then. ##
## Lina runs into the police station and grabs the first handy officer she sees around the knees as she drops to the floor and begs, "PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF L-SAMA, YOU'VE GOT TO LOCK ME UP SOMEPLACE SAFE!" ##
## Outside the police station, the rumble stops, replaced by a chorus of 10 voices laughing out loudly as they persue Lina, "OOOOOOOOOOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!". Inside the station, Lina quakes with fear, "Oh no, they found me again!" as she sprints out the back door to try to evade the 10 Naga clones that are chasing her. Officer Gourry pikus as Lina runs away after letting go of his legs. ##
EDIT: And another, just popped up:
## It's mid-day in the Usual restaurant; Marc is sitting, thumbing through a pile of Wrestling magazines. He glances over at Atsuko as sighs. 'She's so beautful..the way she breathes, the way she moves..the way she pecks at her dish." Sonic walks up behind Marc and taps him on the shoulder. "Dude..I hate to tell you this..but Atsuko's a Giant chicken!" ##
## Marc tightens his fist angrily, 'How dare you say such a thing! I ought to go Steve Austin on your butt!!" "But it's True!" Replies Sonic, She a Chicken, a giant Chicken!!" ##
## Atsuko rises, her long green wig falling off as she begins to chase a tasty looking worm around the Usual! "Cluck-cluck-cluck!" Marc pikus. "That's the..the most beautiful giant Chicken I've ever seen!" ~You wear a disguise to look like Human..um..guys but you not a man, you're a chicken boo!~ ##
These are not the only messages. As I said, there are others, at least one that I can think of. One details a failed ice cream-procuring trip because another anime character has an ice cream cone with several scoops on it.
I don't have a list of them though, because I'm fairly certain if I asked the staff on the place for behind-the-scenes information like a list of them, I'd probably get laughed at. And then oh-so gently denied.
This is, however, the format all these messages follow -- three messages, all ringed with ## and a space. Because the three messages represent the three stages of database saving -- "preparing to save", "saving", and "save finished". None of the messages are colored, to my knowledge, just normal dull white text on black background.
Well, the most reliable way would be to build a list of the known ones, and then omit them when you see them. I presume there is a reasonably finite number of them.
For advice on how to copy the above, and paste it into MUSHclient, please see Pasting XML.
That omits all lines starting with ## and ending with ##. It also omits them from the log file.
That seemed to work on your test data. Now if you get the occasional line that is omitted that shouldn't be, you could make an "exception" trigger with a lower sequence number. That would match first, and stop this trigger from reaching it.
And as it turns out, general MU* announcements, watchfor (this is connection alerts of friends on a list), and shouts are all ringed with ## as well. Thus it's been strongly suggested by staff there that I don't use the trigger. However, staff has also stated outright that they are completely and utterly unwilling to even consider trimming these save messages, let alone removing them entirely, because "they've always been a thing". Nor will anyone attached to staff give me a full list of these messages so that I may block them individually, because it's too much trouble to dig through the database. So I'm rather stuck.
I don't really think there's anything else I can do in this situation. But I thank everyone here for their cooperation and willingness to help, even though I don't have the brainpower to understand most of the higher functions of MUSHClient.
I still suggest looking for batches of three of these lines and deleting them on that condition.
Ignore Nick's suggestion to omit on each. What you actually need is two triggers. One for the pattern and one for everything else. I'll call them A and B. A should have a lower sequence number so that it fires first. You also need a variable that counts the number of times A has fired before B fires.
When A fires, increment the counter. If the counter hits three, reset the counter, call DeleteLines(3), and then StopEvaluatingTriggers().
When B fires, reset the counter.
I've decided to use Nick Gammon's trigger. The staff there were rude when telling me the lay of the land as far as their opinions on the save messages. Since they're unwilling to work with me in any way, shape, form, or fashion, I don't feel it's unreasonable to emit a small portion from my output buffer, as it does not change the way the service works or is accessed for anyone else, and does not affect anyone but me. In my opinion, if anyone is being unreasonable it's them.
Additionally I've decided to go with Nick's trigger because I honestly have no idea what you just said, Fiendish. As I mentioned a couple posts back, I have no capability to code, and I don't understand any of the explanations given in the help files for coding. This is not something I can help, I just do not have the intelligence to figure these things out.
The staff there were rude when telling me the lay of the land as far as their opinions on the save messages.
It's possible that they were rude when they told you no, but complaining about game owners not wanting to change _their_ game for you is backwards. There are a thousand other MUDs out there for you to try that won't have this weird problem. You've just gone into someone else's home and told them you don't like their carpet.
That analogy doesn't quite work, because I'd assume you don't publicly invite people you've never met into your house to play a game with you. This is, then, a public venue. By the same token, if the people setting up a public venue make said venue in a way that I find unpleasant in some way, I feel that I should be free to alter my perception of said venue in any way that I choose, so long as it does not affect anyone else's perception of, or access to, said venue. This is, in fact, what I am doing.
And I'm also not the only one of their players to complain about this; additionally it's only a SINGLE staffer who refuses to change the messages, when several of the other staffers AND players have asked him numerous times to do so.
However, I now have an adequate solution to the problem. Thank you all very much for your assistance.
And as it turns out, general MU* announcements, watchfor (this is connection alerts of friends on a list), and shouts are all ringed with ## as well.
If there is some pattern to these announcements (eg. "Peter shouts xxx") then it may well be possible to catch those first and those save them from being omitted. In other words:
Trigger sequence 90 (evaluated first) looks for:
"## * shouts * ##"
If found it does nothing (however by merely matching it stops other triggers from being evaluated).
Trigger sequence 100 (evaluated later) looks for:
"## * ##"
This omits from output and from the log file, so that messages that don't match the first trigger are not omitted.
If there is some pattern to these announcements (eg. "Peter shouts xxx") then it may well be possible to catch those first and those save them from being omitted. In other words:
So far it sounds like the only pattern we know of is that the bad messages come in groups of three and the others don't.
