hey :) I just took a look at Portal client at http://www.gameaxle.com/
It's pretty nice but I prefer the scripting ability on MUSHclient, however, take a look at their mapping feature and what it does if you haven't seen it already - very very kewl, especially for new areas and for making fastest route strings.. maybe something that could be developed at some stage for MUSHclient?
I kinda like their chat & tell monitor feature too, where you can set it up like a trigger to send all tells to a separate window so you dont miss any tells in all the spam you get while fighting.. it would be nice to make that window active as well so you could reply to tells there and not lose track of the conversation if you're busy doing something else for a period of time on the main 'play' window.
Just some thoughts :)
Mapper - lot of arguements about how, when, why or even if the existing mapper can be fixed. So far no real progress and I haven't sat down to code my attempt to fix it yet.
Chat - Some discussion, the usually cries of "don't make the client slow" and some suggestion of an external client instead. I haven't a clue what or if anything was decided on this. :p
Tell Monitor - One of my own projects I plan to do allows you to display text, picts, etc. in an external window using COM. However, your mention of having the ability to enter the tells there as well makes sense. I may, this is not to say 'will', but 'may' have such a thing available in the future.
If any of these things will make it into the client itself, especially if other like me develop them, is hard to say. I would hope that some did, since having a third party develop the stuff and host it someplace else is not reliable. Third party web sites tend to vanish, get moved without notice or plain shut down when people stop supporting things. This is not terribly helpful when the program is a badly needed plugin or COM program you can't find a replacement for.
I have written an automapper for my own use that works through a COM/TCP hack, which I would consider making available for others if there was interest... It's pretty rough at the moment, and I'm sure full of bugs, and not even complete, but it does create maps as you explore.
I think this is the way to go for any/all of these features. Use external programs, since mc is so very flexible at scripting, it's all very easy to implement outside.
Mark
I considered it. I would prefer the core fixes to be in the internal one though, or what is the point of having it. Also, if not provided as part of the regular install package, there is the risk that such 'addins', when they effect a large number of potential users, may disappear due to broken links, canceled accounts and other real life situations that result in the place they are posted going offline.
I agree that a graphical version is probably better 'outside' the program, but the internal one shouldn't need to be completely replaced to do it. As things stand, the internal one is less reliable than a good pad of note paper, a fact which some people don't mind for the use they make of it, but causes serious problems for those of us that assumed it would work better.
Having fiddled the last few days with things.. I have concluded that the main problem is that it is not very adaptable. It lacks a means to add additional valid directions, can't recognize what on most muds is a standard repeat sequence (despite the fact that it uses something nearly identical for its own purposes) and finally, if the mud can give it a 'valid' response, there is no way to configure it. These are core issues, not something that 'should' be fixed externally imho.
Only problem is that while a number of people have talked about the issues here and how to fix things, I seem to be the only one (besides you) that intends to try to fix it. And your solution, while it would be a nice addition, doesn't repair what is broken in the client.
Keep working on it though. I wouldn't mind a graphical mapper, I just think what is in the client already still needs to be fixed as well. ;)
I've never used the mapper inside the client, so I wouldn't know whether it's broken or not. It seemed to me upon casual inspection to be useful only to backtrack out of a zone you had gone in to, and for me, that wasn't useful, so I had to go the graphical route.
Mark
Yeah. That is all it really does. The problems have generally been cases of it not handling situations that are relatively common and thus what one would expect a good mappers, or path generator in this case, to handle a lot more gracefully. It messes up too easilly as it stands when you are not very careful and cautious about how fast you move, when you move, what commands you actually use, etc.
The last few days I have had a bit more time online, so haven't really sat down to design my plugin 'fix' for it. The time was too valuable for use actually playing. ;)