I'm currently working on my own codebase because of the fact that adding onto ROM is getting tiring and though my telnet core is not totally functional yet, I have done a totally different approach from ROM.
First off, I forgoed the process of having the giant game loop that ROM uses and decided for a multithreaded system instead. Every user has their own threads, 1 which handles and interprets the input, and another that does the output. When a user pages another user, or the system pages one of them, it posts a semaphore for the output thread to output to that user's descriptor. This system that I have described is much better in performance than the looping system, because it is event based, hogging CPU cycles only when needed, unlike ROM, which polls all descriptors regardless of whether they are active or not. There is a update thread that unblocks every few minutes and does the updating of the areas database (I have made it use SQL to handle the DB tasks, unlike ROM, which has its own system) Some helpful resources to get you stared are as follows: "Advanced Linux Programming" -- Mark Mitchell "Linux Sockets Programming" -- Sean Walton Those were the only two books that I needed to take care of the specific information about the threads and the sockets. And if you can't afford/find these books at a library, there are plenty of resources online that you can refer to. Here are some good ones: http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/arpanet/6/cc.htm http://scitsc.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/comms/sockets.html Hope that helps! On Tuesday 29 July 2003 06:14, Jed Yang wrote: > Hello all, > > I am planning to write a server that handle telnet connections. > I am not sure if it is going to evolve into a mud, or simply a chat or > boards. > Therefore it is of course not a `ROM' derivative. > Yet I am most used to the ROM mud, (since I programmed for a ROM mud and > thus subscribing to this list for quite a while), and I am quite bad at > socket programming (or whatever it is called), so I might need to > `borrow' the ROM connection code. > Only the basic part will be borrowed: > + main > o init_socket and its necessary child > o game_loop_unix (only the connection part extracted) > - init_descriptor > = write_to_buffer > - read_from_buffer > - read_from_descriptor > + DESCRIPTOR_DATA struct minimal need > + and any other that I missed but is essential (please enlighten me, > thanks) > After reviewing the ROM/Merc/DIKU licenses, it seems that I will need to > put the original authors name on my logon screen, even though if I am > only using the connection part, not even using command intepretor, > pulse, CHARACTER_DATA, etc. > > So I have a question, is there a way around it (I do not mean to sneak > holes past the licenses, but other than writing my own code to handle > sockets and descriptors, is there any way to do it? Or could someone > point to a minimal socket code (for instance, just echoing what you > typed in and responding to only `quit'). If possible, I actually want > the code to work for Win32, so I can test all non-connection related > functions on my laptop and host the final project back on an Unix > machine. I am actually not sure at all how hard it is to write such a > code, i.e. if it is possible for one of you to write it in a few minutes > or will it take hours? Any response will be appreciated. Thank you. > > Sincerely, > > Jed Yang (Htam)
