<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>OasisOLC v2.0</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <H1>OasisOLC</H1> <H2>A little history to begin.</H2> <P>Welcome to OasisOLC, one of the most popular online creation (OLC) systems for the CircleMUD code base. The package originated as a room editor (redit) and item editor (iedit) written by Levork. Harvey Gilpin then took the package and cleaned it up in a new 1996 release called OasisOLC. He renamed iedit to oedit, created a zone editor (zedit), wrote the shop editor (sedit), and crafted the mobile editor (medit). He also created a generic 'olc' module to handle the similiar code of the various editors. It was quite an ambitious undertaking and after its release, including the improved editor, many people reported problems when saving mobiles to memory or when creating a new zone. Various unofficial fixes and feature enhancements to OasisOLC surfaced on <A HREF="ftp://ftp.circlemud.org/">ftp.circlemud.org</A>, but still the crashes remained. Harvey did not have the time to find these bugs. Around September of 1997, <A HREF="mailto:greerga@circlemud.org">George Greer</A> became sick of the repeated messages to the CircleMUD mailing list and decided to fix it, not knowing that he would be hacking on it much more than just for fixing bugs. He may one day (most likely around version 2.0) turn the entire project over to someone who will take it further.</P> <H2>What is planned for version 2.0.</H2> <P>Originally based on CircleMUD bpl9, OasisOLC relies on a menuing system for all changes. The other popular OLC system for CircleMUD is the OBuild package by <A HREF="mailto:samedi@dhc.net">Sammy</A> which uses a command line system. There have been many debates about which is better. In my own experience, it is a chore to make them both coexist happily. Therefore, OasisOLC v2.0 will rely on a library of functions called <I>GenOLC v1.0</I> which will present a non-OLC-specific way to add to the world. This wacky concept will be extended to OBuild when mostly finished adding all of the various other Oasis editors to the distribution. Then with OBuild and OasisOLC both using the same routines to manipulate the world, nothing will be out of sync and builders may freely switch between the two of them. Someone could feasibly create the room in OasisOLC and then fix typos, adjust room flags, or add exits later with OBuild, or vice versa. While v2.0 will not integrate OBuild and OasisOLC, it is planned for a future minor revision.</P> <P>Another project would be loadable OasisOLC modules for editing various things without having to rewrite the menu system. Theoretically it would allow such things as customizable menus for all your builders or to plug-in MobProgs or Death's Gate Scripts much easier. However, this project will not make the v2.0 release.</P> <P>Don't forget you have to mail <A HREF="mailto:rv@twylite.demon.co.uk">Rv</A> (Harvey Gilpin) if you use the package. A simple message, something like "It's crap! You suck!" would do, or so he says. Many people find it to be a very useful online creation system. There are also a few restrictions on the use of this code placed by him: <OL> <LI>"You must not use the code to make a profit in ANY way."</LI> <LI>"Any derivative works must give credit to the original author, Levork, and are subject to the same conditions of use."</LI> <LI>"You accept any damage caused by the use of this software to be your own fault. (i.e. Don't sue me :)"</LI> </OL> <P>Don't forget to credit <A HREF="mailto:rv@twylite.demon.co.uk">Harvey Gilpin</A> and <A HREF="mailto:greerga@circlemud.org">George Greer</A> also.</P> <P><B>Please remember to back up your world files!</B> Any software package may (will) have bugs and could potentially cause a loss of data, world files, or your sanity. A backup of your world may be accomplished in Linux or other related operating systems by doing the below:</P> <PRE> To back it up: tar -cvf backup.tar lib/world/ To restore it: tar -xvf backup.tar You should also compress your backup: gzip -9 backup.tar And to decompress it later: gzip -d backup.tar </PRE> <H2>Configuration</H2> <P>Rv has tried to make this system as reliant as possible on the tables that already exist in the Circle code, so that when the mud changes, the OLC will be able to deal with it. However, the system does need to know some information about the tables sizes, and those that are not already defined in structs.h have been placed in olc.h.</P> <P>If you want the OLC to react to changes you make to tables within your mud you must update the defines in the top of olc.h.</P> <P>Version 2.0 of OasisOLC will allow user-definable colors. However, since I haven't released this yet I'm going to delay it until a future minor release.</P> <P>If you want to add new features to the OLC, for pointers on how to go about it, look at the commented out code for object level flags in oedit.c.</P> <P>There is a user-definable toggle, PRF_CLS, for whether OasisOLC should clear the screen on menus.</P> <H2>Known bugs or gotchas.</H2> <P>Due to the way Extended mobs are implemented it is impossible to know what individual MUDs do with them. So when medit writes the mob files out to disk it can only deal with those it knows about. Any other one that were there get <I>erased</I>. <B>If you want to use extended mobs in your mud, you MUST edit the save_mobiles() function in genmob.c so that it knows how to save them.</B></P> <HR> <H2>Documentation (on how to use the darn thing).</H2> <P>There are numerous better documents on how to use OasisOLC. Please check the <A HREF="http://developer.circlemud.org/">CircleMUD developer site</A> and the <A HREF="http://www.circlemud.org/pub/CircleMUD/">CircleMUD FTP site</A> for more documentation.</P> <HR> <H2>Credits</H2> <P>Finally, thanks to the following for their bug reports, ideas and feedback: <UL> <LI>Adam Days</LI><LI>Chris A. Epler</LI><LI>Edward Almasy</LI> <LI>Paul Jones</LI><LI>Con (a.k.a Rasmus)</LI><LI>Sean P. Mouncastle</LI> <LI>Trevor Man</LI><LI>Ryan A. J. Biggs</LI><LI>Andrew Helm</LI> <LI>Desmond Daignault</LI><LI>Robert Sinland</LI><LI>Patrick J. Dughi</LI> <LI>Spooge</LI><LI>Adam Beytin</LI><LI>David Klasinc</LI><LI>Crimson Wizard</LI> <LI>christopher john raehl (raehl@students.uiuc.edu) -- Checking for STRING_TERMINATOR</LI> <LI>Julian Buckley (s348266@student.uq.edu.au) -- Permanent affects and minimum levels</LI> <LI>and probably more.</LI> </UL> </P> <P>George Greer can be contacted at <A HREF="mailto:greerga@circlemud.org">greerga@circlemud.org</A>.</P> </BODY> </HTML>