I've been a fan of old-school multi-player MUD games for years. I've managed to collect some of my favorites from the past that are now defunct. One of the best out there was The Forest Edge - It is a very unique code base that is fun to play and lends itself very well as a skeleton to build a new game on.

That being said, much of this code was made before C/C++ strict standardization, so things that compiled well in the past will not compile now. This is my attempt to log the changes needed to bring the code back to life, I will post the final product here as well for anybody willing to use it.

The original, unmolested code can be found in a collection here: http://seltha.net/tfe/ - The mega-pack contains quite a few versions of the code (none of which will compile out of the box). The version I will be working on is “The Forest's Heart” - dated 1999.

After decompressing the archive, navigate to directory “tfh”. The directory structure is set up to isolate source, include, player, etc.. files for easier navigation.

area  clans  files  inc  logs  notes  player  rooms  src  tables

The *.cc files are located under the src/ directory, and any include files (*.h) will be found in the inc/ directory. We will worry about the rest later.

Navigating to the src/ directory brings up all the *.cc files as well as the Makefile. There are a couple of items you want to edit in the makefile (at least as of this revision of my log) to make life easier.

Firstly we will get A LOT of spam from errors and warnings. For the moment we will suppress warnings (Though, we will go back later to fix them too) so we can get to the hardcore problems first. We will also supply the -fpermissive flag to further cushion some of the errors.

This is accomplished by editing the following line:

  7 CFLAGS  = $(DEBUG) -O $(WARN) $(PROF)

To

  7 CFLAGS  = $(DEBUG) -O $(WARN) $(PROF) -fpermissive -w

Now, run “make” - here are the errors that I find:

c++ -c -ggdb -O   -fpermissive -w  -I. abil.cc -o ./OBJ/abil.o
In file included from struct.h:128,
                 from abil.cc:6:
array.h: In function 'void copy(Array<something>&, Array<something>&)':
array.h:78: error: array bound forbidden after parenthesized type-id
array.h:78: note: try removing the parentheses around the type-id
In file included from struct.h:180,
                 from abil.cc:6:
fight.h: In function 'void spam_char(char_data*, const char*, T)':
fight.h:168: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct pc_data'
struct.h:39: error: forward declaration of 'struct pc_data'
fight.h: In function 'void spam_char(char_data*, const char*, S, T)':
fight.h:180: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct pc_data'
struct.h:39: error: forward declaration of 'struct pc_data'
fight.h: In function 'void spam_char(char_data*, const char*, S, T, U)':
fight.h:192: error: invalid use of incomplete type 'struct pc_data'
struct.h:39: error: forward declaration of 'struct pc_data'
In file included from struct.h:222,
                 from abil.cc:6:
output.h: In function 'void fsend(thing_data&, const char*, S, T, U, V)':
output.h:994: error: no match for 'operator<' in 'i < array'
output.h:995: error: no match for 'operator[]' in 'array[i]'
output.h: In function 'void fsend_seen(char_data*, const char*, S, T, U, V)':
output.h:1093: error: 'NULl' was not declared in this scope
output.h: In function 'void send_color(char_data*, int, const char*, T)':
output.h:1113: error: no matching function for call to 'send_color(char_data*&, int&, char [480])'
output.h: In function 'void send_color(char_data*, int, const char*, S, T)':
output.h:1124: error: no matching function for call to 'send_color(char_data*&, int&, char [480])'
output.h: In function 'void send_color(char_data*, int, const char*, T) [with T = const char*]':
abil.cc:467:   instantiated from here
output.h:1113: error: no matching function for call to 'send_color(char_data*&, int&, char [480])'
make: *** [abil.o] Error 1

Yikes!! And that is just from trying to compile the FIRST file - If your real daring, remove the -w compile flag and try to find the errors, its much like Where's Waldo, but less fun!

Do not be afraid though, taking each error one at a time makes life easier.

There were really only a few common errors found, but they were repeated throughout the code.

The prime suspect I ran into was selective prototyping. Most functions were prototyped in their header files, but that was not always the case… Especially overloaded functions. Apparently old GCC would compile without complaining, this is not the case anymore. Adding the proper prototypes solved that problem.

Typecasting on the left… or lcasting. Lcasting is a big no no, but it was common practice in this code.

  (int)x = y;

This problem haunts my dreams still… it was done in a billion places, and there's no easy way to fix it like the prototyping problem above. You have to go through one by one and edit it so that it logically works.

The final error that was found throughout the code was functions requiring a char, but the variable being a const char, or visa-versa. Again a frustrating nightmare. The solution I made was to create overloaded functions that took the other argument.

So if there was a function “blah(char)” I created another that was “blah(const char)”. Seemed simple enough at the outset, but it turned out to be a major typing exercise.

In the end though, it DID compile without errors (but with plenty of warnings). I must admit that I'm impressed on how stable it is. Just take a look at this!

mgough@lab46:~/unix/scripts$ telnet lab46.corning-cc.edu 5006
Trying 10.80.2.38...
Connected to lab46.corning-cc.edu.
Escape character is '^]'.

0 players on.
System started 36 days 9 hours 41 minutes ago.
Getting site info ...
Welcome to WezlMud v0.1b
Enter 1 to create a new character.
Or enter your name if you already have one...
                   Choice:

36 days of uptime is respectable for any software.

Would I do it again? Probably.. but I'm probobably a bit crazy too…

If you get bored, feel free to log into lab 46 and….

telnet lab46.coring-cc.edu 5006

And have fun!