Talek says, "Tonight's first real presentation in the Innovations in Code series will be about the Unofficial TinyMUSH."

Talek says, "Since all three members of the team working on this are here, and they haven't told be for sure who's talking, I don't know who to introduce."

Whip will be talking.

Lucifer nods. Whip has the stuff.

Talek says, "However, I'm sure one of the three will step forward now, and tell us all about their work. :-)"

Talek goes down the few steps to the seating area.

Talek comes down the few steps from the stage.

Whip carefully walks up the narrow stairs to the stage.

Whip says, "Okay. Cool. I get my very own stage. Anyhow, I'm Jay Grizzard, one of the folks doing the TinyMUSH 2.2.4 "unofficial" releases, with my partners in crime Joi (Gyles) and Joel (Lucifer)."

Nveid can't sit

Whip says, "This is a quick 3-part blurb about the "unoff" releases of TinyMUSH 2.2.4. This has been my (and Joel's, and Joi's) pet project for a number of months now."

Whip says, "The first part: Why we exist."

Whip says, "Basically, we saw a niche that needed filling. Over time, a fairly large number of complaints have appeared about the TinyMUSH 2.2 maintainers, regarding their lack of support for their software. Lydia (the most visible 2.2.4 maintainer) suggested, basically, "If you don't like it, do better" ... and we decided to do just that."

Whip says, "Our intention is not to replace or challenge 2.2.4 in any way; rather, it is to provide an alternative, hopefully better supported, stable version of the 2.2.4 series of games. Our overall goals: Stability, support, and ease-of-use."

Whip says, "Along the lines of "not replacing 2.2.4", we are going out of our way to insure compatibility with the stock 2.2.4 server. This doesn't mean that we won't be adding new features in the future, but we're doing our damnedest to make sure that we don't do anything that will make us fundamentally incompatible with the stock 2.2.4 servers. We're -real- serious about not creating yet another mutant branch of MUSH, and will do what it takes to keep our project from turning into such."

Whip says, "We're just trying to give 2.2.4 some TLC, in other words. :)"

Whip says, "Part two: What we have done, what we are doing."

Whip says, "The current release of the "unoff" tree is TinyMUSH 2.2.4 Unoff #1 consisted almost entirely of bugfixes, stabilizations, and code cleanups, with no significant feature changes. We worked very hard to keep the server as identical to the 2.2.4 server as possible, while providing somewhat cleaner internal code and a more stable server."

Whip says, "Now that we've done that, we'll be moving on to more exciting things. We have several major changes planned for Unofficial release #2, some of which include:"

Whip says, "1) A native Windows 95 / Windows NT port. Currently, there is a port of TinyMUSH using the Cygnus Win32 toolkit, but this port has a few bugs and relies on an outside toolkit (essentially a Unix/POSIX emulation layer) to run. We are actually producing a native Win32 port that will compile and run on any Win95/NT box in the world (and yes, binaries will be provided and supported). (PennMUSH already has this, we figured it was our turn :)"

Whip says, "2) Much cleaner internal code. Over the years, MUSH has been worked on by a very large number of people, some of which didn't fully understand the way things were abstracted within MUSH, some of which didn't understand many of the coding standards used within MUSH. We are going through MUSH and standardizing a number of things to make the internal code cleaner and more consistent throughout."

Whip says, "3) Programmer's documentation. We don't want MUSH to get back into the state it is now. We want to provide some documentation to programmers that details some of the internals of MUSH, some of the standards and abstractions used, and generally provide a base for writing more consistent code into MUSH. This document should also serve as a good starting point for those that are unfamiliar with the game's internals, yet want to do some hacking of their own."

Whip says, "and 4) Easier administration. Some of us are getting quite tired of the general opinion that one must be a Unix or programming geek to be able to administer a MUSH. Fundamentally, there is no real reason that someone unfamiliar with Unix or software development shouldn't be able to run a game, other than the fact that it seems like it's being made almost intentionally difficult for these folks to do so, mostly due to lack of documentation."

Whip says, "We plan to address some of these issues as best we can. We are going to be providing much better documentation for the "newbie" administrator, cleaning up the behavior of the server itself to make it a bit more sane for 'newbies' to deal with, providing binary releases for many platforms, etc. In the end, bringing up a game won't be as easy as just flipping a switch, but we're going to do our damnedest to make it less of a learning curve than it is currently."

Whip says, "And Part three: The "open development" model. (I'll try to make this one quick. :)"

Whip says, "One of the things that seems to irk most people when dealing with 2.2.4 is that there seems to be an impenetrable wall between them and the developers -- The 2.2.4 developers seldom communicate with their users about anything involving the 2.2.4 software. (True or percieved, many I've talked to definately see this as a problem)"

Whip says, "For the unoff releases, we are doing our best to be absolutely as open and verbose as we can be. Bugs and feature requests are stored in a web-accessible database for all to see. We make it a point to make sure we reply to every bug report, feature request, or other communication directed towards us."

Whip says, "We're also considering opening our actual source-in-development up to the public (via CVS), as well as some of our other development tools, though that decision hasn't been made yet. (Feel free to pester me about it privately, though)"

Whip says, "And ... That's pretty much it. For more information, we have a web page at http://unoff.lupine.org, and a mailing list (tinymush-unoff) that you can subscribe by sending "subscribe tinymush-unoff YourNameHere" in the _BODY_ of a message to listserv@lupine.org"

Chris says, "are we supposed to clap?"

Whip , having done the rant thing long enough, jumps into the question queue. :)

Talek grins, and claps.

Whip waves his hand towards the audience, "Javelin, speak!"

Javelin says, "How does the project related to TinyMUSH 3.0? Once they release, do you expect to continue development?"

Whip says, "We plan to be working on this project long past the 3.0 release, for the primary reason that there are a LOT of folks that don't want to convert to 3.0 and would prefer to stay with a 2.2.x game. I can't guarantee we'll be doing this -forever-, but we will be for the forseeable future, yes."

Javelin nods.

Whip says, "We're not really related to 3.0, but I do have a liason to the 3.0 team that makes sure we don't do -too- much to conflict with one another's projects."

Whip points at David.

David asks, "What about PennMUSH compatiblity? It has been noted that when features are added to TinyMU*, they often will ignore any existing Penn feature, and add in virtually the same but incompatible stuff. Are you planning to continue this, or you planning to see how Penn does it before adding stuff? This actually is a rather bias question, isn't it? :)"

Whip says, "To answer the question more generally, we're doing our best to not fall victim to the "not invented here" syndrome. I won't code something incompatable unless there's a -reason- to. (And I'll document the reason in my notes that are distributed with the server)"

David nods. "Ah, good."

Whip turns the spotlight to Sandi.

Whip is informed Sandi gets the last question, too.

Sandi says, "Uhm, I'm not sure I get the "noT replacing 2.2.4" idea. Could you expand a bit?"

Talek carefully walks up the narrow stairs to the stage.

Whip says, "Okay, real quick, before my time goes away: We're not trying to do something and stand up and go "Hey, those guys over there doing 2.2.4 suck, ours is better, come over here and play with us". We're basically trying to give folks another option if they want to -- But we're intentionally behaving, from a user's point of view, as identically to 2.2.4 as possible. Basically, I said that to try to emphasise that we're not trying to have a competition, since that's what the first people I talked to about the unoff stuff thought about it. :)"

Whip pants. Okay, I guess I'm done. :)

Talek says, "Sorry, Whip, but to keep things moving, I need to step in."

Whip hops off.

Whip goes down the few steps to the seating area.

Whip comes down the few steps from the stage.

Javelin claps.

Chris claps

Nveid claps

Talek says, "Thank you for the good presentation, and remember, questions can continue after the show."