Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post

thelenian · 11-05-2002, 04:13 PM

libaim only allows you to communicate with an AIM server (with limited functionality as of now).

People can already talk to their buddies over IM without any help from the MUD (this has been a serious problem on several occasions). If I'm understanding you (Emit) correctly, you want your MUD (or a seperate daemon on the same host) to host each players' MUD-specific buddy list. That is, AFAIK, impossible (in the loose sense of the word).

Yui did point out something that wasn't obvious to me, however. I'll try to explain my interpretation of his suggestion in detail.

You could use a sort of meta-protocol over AIM's OSCAR whereby your MUD is connected to the AIM network through use of libaim, and it would route traffic to the various AIM users on its buddy list. (i.e. sending YourMUD the message "Jimbob: hey Jimbob!" would cause YourMUD to send Jimbob the message). Your MUD daemon could then host a translation table of MUD charnames -> AIM usernames, allowing players to communicate to eachother over AIM knowing only the charnames of the people they're trying to contact. Since your MUD acts as an address translation proxy, you have the added benefit of masking your players' IP addresses from eachother (this is *very* important for liability reasons). This could be expanded to general MUD services, like sending YourMUD "who" would have YourMUD IM you the who list. Still, it must be noted that in this case the individual players will not show up on your buddylist.

11-05-2002, 04:13 PM	#6
thelenian Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 122	libaim only allows you to communicate with an AIM server (with limited functionality as of now). People can already talk to their buddies over IM without any help from the MUD (this has been a serious problem on several occasions). If I'm understanding you (Emit) correctly, you want your MUD (or a seperate daemon on the same host) to host each players' MUD-specific buddy list. That is, AFAIK, impossible (in the loose sense of the word). Yui did point out something that wasn't obvious to me, however. I'll try to explain my interpretation of his suggestion in detail. You could use a sort of meta-protocol over AIM's OSCAR whereby your MUD is connected to the AIM network through use of libaim, and it would route traffic to the various AIM users on its buddy list. (i.e. sending YourMUD the message "Jimbob: hey Jimbob!" would cause YourMUD to send Jimbob the message). Your MUD daemon could then host a translation table of MUD charnames -> AIM usernames, allowing players to communicate to eachother over AIM knowing only the charnames of the people they're trying to contact. Since your MUD acts as an address translation proxy, you have the added benefit of masking your players' IP addresses from eachother (this is very important for liability reasons). This could be expanded to general MUD services, like sending YourMUD "who" would have YourMUD IM you the who list. Still, it must be noted that in this case the individual players will not show up on your buddylist.