| Mud Server Status Protocol |
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MSSP • Protocol • Variables • Links MSSP Crawler MSSP News MCCP MSDP MSSP MTTS |
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| MUD listings are often out dated and lack accurate information. Verifying that the one submitting a new MUD is a member of the MUD's administration can be quite tedious as well. |
| The MUD Server Status Protocol seeks to address these issues by providing a transparant protocol for MUD crawlers to gather detailed information about a MUD, including dynamic information like boot time and the current amount of online players. It also makes submitting a new mud entry very simple because it only requires a player or admin to fill in the hostname and port. |
| This document provides a technical description of the MSSP protocol. |
| The MSSP Protocol |
| MSSP is implemented as a Telnet option RFC854, RFC855. The server and client negotiate the use of MSSP as they would any other telnet option. Once agreement has been reached on the use of the option, option sub-negotiation is used to send information about the server to the client. |
| Server Commands |
| IAC WILL MSSP indicates the server supports MSSP. |
| Client Commands |
| IAC DO MSSP   indicates the client supports MSSP. IAC DONT MSSP indicates the client doesn't support MSSP. |
| Handshake |
| When a client connects to a server the server should send IAC WILL MSSP. The client should respond with either IAC DO MSSP or IAC DONT MSSP. If the server receives IAC DO MSSP it should respond with: IAC SB MSSP MSSP_VAR "variable" MSSP_VAL "value" MSSP_VAR "variable" MSSP_VAL "value" IAC SE. |
| The quote characters mean that the encased word is a string, the quotes themselves should not be send. |
| MSSP definitions |
| MSSP 70 MSSP_VAR 1 MSSP_VAL 2 |
| Example MSSP handshake |
| server - IAC WILL MSSP client - IAC DO MSSP server - IAC SB MSSP MSSP_VAR "PLAYERS" MSSP_VAL "52" MSSP_VAR "UPTIME" MSSP_VAL "1234567890" IAC SE |
| Variables and Values |
| For ease of parsing, variables and values cannot contain the MSSP_VAL, MSSP_VAR, IAC, or NUL byte. The value can be an empty string unless a numeric value is expected in which case the default value should be 0. If your Mud can't calculate one of the numeric values for the World variables you can use "-1" to indicate that the data is not available. If a list of responses is provided try to pick from the list, unless "Etc" is specified, which means it's open ended. |
| The same variable can be send more than once with different values, in which case the last reported value should be used as the default value. It is up to the crawler to decide how to exactly process multiple values. It's also possible to attach several values to a single variable by using MSSP_VAL more than once, with the default value reported last. This would look as following: |
| IAC SB MSSP MSSP_VAR "PORT" MSSP_VAL "80" MSSP_VAL "23" MSSP_VAL "3000" MSSP_VAR "CREATED" MSSP_VAL "1996" IAC SE |
| The quote characters mean that the encased word is a string, the quotes themselves should not be send. |
| Official MSSP Variables |
| Required |
NAME Name of the MUD. PLAYERS Current number of logged in players. UPTIME Unix time value of the startup time of the MUD. |
| Generic |
CRAWL DELAY Preferred minimum number of hours between crawls. Send -1
to use the crawler's default.
HOSTNAME Current or new hostname.
PORT Current or new port number. Can be used multiple times,
most important port last.
CODEBASE Name of the codebase, eg Merc 2.1.
CONTACT Email address for contacting the MUD.
CREATED Year the MUD was created.
ICON URL to a square image in bmp, png, jpg, or gif format.
The icon should be equal or larger than 32x32 pixels,
with a filesize no larger than 32KB.
IP Current or new IP address.
LANGUAGE Name of the language used, eg German or English
LOCATION Full English name of the country where the server is
located, using ISO 3166.
MINIMUM AGE Current minimum age requirement, use 0 if not
applicable.
WEBSITE URL to MUD website. |
| Categorization |
FAMILY AberMUD, CoffeeMUD, DikuMUD, LPMud, MajorMUD, MOO,
Mordor, Rapture, SocketMud, TinyMUD, Custom. Report
Custom unless it's a well established family.
You can report multiple generic codebases using
the array format, make sure to report the most
distant codebase (the ones listed above) last.
Check the MUD family tree for naming and capitalization.
GENRE Adult, Fantasy, Historical, Horror,
Modern, None, Science Fiction
GAMEPLAY Adventure, Educational, Hack and Slash, None,
Player versus Player, Player versus Environment,
Roleplaying, Simulation, Social, Strategy
STATUS Alpha, Closed Beta, Open Beta, Live |
GAMESYSTEM D&D, d20 System, World of Darkness, Etc. Use Custom if
using a custom gamesystems. Use None if not available.
INTERMUD AberChat, I3, IMC2, MudNet, Etc.
Can be used multiple times if you support several
protocols, most important protocol last. Leave empty
if no Intermud protocol is supported.
SUBGENRE LASG, Medieval Fantasy, World War II,
Frankenstein, Cyberpunk, Dragonlance, Etc.
Use None if not available. |
| World |
AREAS Current number of areas. HELPFILES Current number of help files. MOBILES Current number of unique mobiles. OBJECTS Current number of unique objects. ROOMS Current number of unique rooms, use 0 if roomless. CLASSES Number of player classes, use 0 if classless. LEVELS Number of player levels, use 0 if level-less. RACES Number of player races, use 0 if raceless. SKILLS Number of player skills, use 0 if skill-less. |
| Protocols |
ANSI Supports ANSI colors ? 1 or 0 GMCP Supports GMCP ? 1 or 0 MCCP Supports MCCP ? 1 or 0 MCP Supports MCP ? 1 or 0 MSDP Supports MSDP ? 1 or 0 MSP Supports MSP ? 1 or 0 MXP Supports MXP ? 1 or 0 PUEBLO Supports Pueblo ? 1 or 0 UTF-8 Supports UTF-8 ? 1 or 0 VT100 Supports VT100 interface ? 1 or 0 XTERM 256 COLORS Supports xterm 256 colors ? 1 or 0 |
| Commercial |
PAY TO PLAY Pay to play ? 1 or 0 PAY FOR PERKS Pay for perks ? 1 or 0 |
| Hiring |
HIRING BUILDERS Game is hiring builders ? 1 or 0 HIRING CODERS Game is hiring coders ? 1 or 0 |
| Links |
| If you want a link added, or added MSSP to your Mud, you can email me at mudclient@gmail.com. I'll add muds that correctly report a substantial section of the official variables to the MSSP crawler. |
| Clients (for debugging MSSP support) |
| GnomeMud Mud Client - Requires compilation with --enable-debug-logger=TRUE |
| TinTin++ Mud Client - Requires using '#config {debug telnet} on' to display MSSP output from a MUD server. |
| Codebases |
| AckFUSS - As of version 4.4.0. |
| FluffOS - As of version 2.16. |
| NakedMud - As of version 3.8. |
| PennMUSH - As of version 1.8.4p1. |
| WickedMUD - As of version 1.0. |
| Crawlers |
| Azereth Mudcrawler |
| MSSP Mud Crawler |
| Directories |
| MudStats.com |
| MudBytes.net |
| Extensions |
| MudBytes Extended Variable list |
| Telnet Servers |
| A list of MSSP enabled MUDs is available on the MSSP Crawler page. MUDs need to be listed on TMC in order to be crawled. |
| Snippets |
| KaVir's MUD Protocol Handler - Handles ATCP, CHARSET, MSDP, MSSP, MSP, MXP links, NAWS, TTYPE, UTF-8 and 256 colors. |
| libtelnet - Handles MCCP, MSSP, NAWS, and TTYPE. |
| PennMUSH MSSP - MSSP Patch for the PennMUSH codebase. |
| Scandum's MUD Telopt Handler - Handles MCCP, MSDP, MSSP, MTTS, NAWS, NEW-ENVIRON, TTYPE, and 256 colors. |