Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/01/05/19:51:07
Martin Winning wrote:
> 
> Before I even try it, has anyone had a go at building the Circle mud
> server, or possibly even Mordor mud server? What sort of problems am I
> looking at? Is it possible?
I don't know about those mud servers, but I successfully built the ROM
2.3 source "out of the box" with DJGPP.  There was only one error, and
that was because the server used an errno code that was non-POSIX.  A
simple #define cleared that up.
You should be careful though, because very often MUD servers, although
claiming to be ported to DOS, were not carefully checked for bugs.  I
guess this is because DOS is really a terrible platform to run a MUD
server on; here are some pitfalls you may run into:
  - Make sure the server code is not long filename dependent.  ROM 2.3
isn't; I don't know about Circle or Mordor.
  - The crypt() function, available on most Unix systems, was never
ported to DJGPP.  This can invalidate the password matching of many MUD
servers.  (At least, it did with ROM 2.3.)
  - ROM 2.3 uses separate main game loops and i/o routines for DOS and
Unix systems.  I discovered through trial and error that some important
code in the Unix game loop was omitted from the DOS one, probably by
accident.
That's about it as far as I can remember.  I am hardly an expert, but if
you have any trouble feel free to email me and I'll do my best to help.
Good luck!
-- 
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| John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I  |        fighteer AT cs DOT com         |
| Plan:  To find ANYONE willing to |   http://www.cs.com/fighteer   |
| play Descent 2 on DWANGO!        | Tagline: <this space for rent> |
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