256 Color Support

[Gatz]

After seeing some articles posted on MUD Bytes about 256 color support, ie no longer being limited to 16 colors but 256 different shades/colors, I was thinking about adding that support to NM. The only downside being some very old clients don't support it, i.e. GMUD, and some shockers like Portal. However, pretty much everyone else does.

The link below contains the full list clients and what they support:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_MUD_clients

This link is what all 256 colors looks like and you can see all the pretty shades -we could- have.
http://www.mudpedia.org/wiki/Xterm_256_colors

I have more research to do on this, but it would be fun to have more colors to play with. The only downside I see is there are always the die hards who are rocking GMUD and will never leave.

[Giyoku]

what happens if a mud client doesn't support the color? Is there a way to code a sort of 'alternative' (all shades of red split between dark/light red if not supported?)

[Gatz]

what happens if a mud client doesn't support the color? Is there a way to code a sort of 'alternative' (all shades of red split between dark/light red if not supported?)

I don't have an answer to that right now, right off the top of my head, I'd say if it was easy to figure out if a client supported 256 colors or not, the color would default to the non-shaded version. So, a shade of red would become red, etc. SMAUG by default sort of seems to have planned a future date when more colors would be around as it uses things like AT_RED, AT_FIRE etc.

Otherwise, my guess is if I didn't handle it server side, it'd come out as either an error or grey.

[Daizaburo]

The 256 color management could be handled much in the same way that ANSI color is handled right now, with a config flag allowing the player to turn ANSI color on and off. A similar config flag could presumably be used with the 256 color option.

[Ichiro]

I think more colour options could be nice....but I've seen a lot of MUD's that just go crazy with it. I like our set-up and colour-scheme as is right now, and I worry that more options could potentially lead to even our reasonable colour scheme becoming mind-boggling....I suppose it really depends on how it was implemented.

Good implementation = I'd most likely change my vote

[Giyoku]

I was kind of leaning towards Ichiro's side myself, but I think Gatz is right, he needs to do more research and find out what kind of solutions there are to the obvious problems of what happens when a client doesn't support it and what solutions could we easily implement to fix it - otherwise.. it seems like a silly way to lose players because they cannot get colors and refuse to play muds that do not use them, and when they do only conservatively.

More colors in this kind of mud are always great because they can allow builders something unique to their area, an identification of sorts. If done properly (especially since I believe we can restring our EQ customized however we want) the color schemes can be striking, but not blinding, and unique. Players eat this stuff up and ask for seconds. Trust.

[Gatz]

Well, now I've added support for this. So, I hope some folks are using this, specifically builders. I think the color scheme tweaks I've made for 256 colors looks a lot nicer. Especially toning down some of how intense some colors looked, like the bright yellow and bright green.