elm-mudclient

Online demo: https://www.danneu.com/elm-mudclient/

A just-for-fun weekend project that implements a MUD gaming web-browser client in Elm that talks to telnet MUD servers through a telnet<->websocket proxy server.

Why?

Just for fun. Doubt I'll work on it after this weekend. This project idea simply had enough moving parts to be fun, and adding polish/features in Elm is also fun.
I sometimes spend a month playing one of the MUDs in Spanish just to practice Spanish. Would be fun to use this client and then build features as I want them.

How?

src/Main.elm contains the Elm browser client
telnet-proxy/index.ts implements the websocket<->telnet bridge server (hackjob)
telnet-proxy/parser.ts implements a streaming telnet code parser (hackjob)

The Elm client opens a WebSocket to the telnet proxy which opens a TCP socket to a telnet server.

The Elm client is ignorant of WebSocket and telnet specifics. It just sends and receives strings over ports.

Progress / features

Basically works
Supports MCCP2 (i.e. server-only) compression
Provides local history download

Feature wishlist

Usable on small/mobile clients
Manage multiple servers with tabs
Implement aliases and triggers that are saved locally or even synced somehow
Support more MUD-specific telnet options like MCCP3
Implement prev/next history

Run client locally

This github repo ships with pre-built assets found in the dist/ folder.

Just serve the directory with any http server. Here are a bunch of one-liners for doing that: https://gist.github.com/willurd/5720255.

It will connect to my demo telnet-proxy server by default. If you want to run the telnet-proxy locally, the client UI has a text field that lets you provide another proxy URL like ws://localhost:8080.

Run telnet-proxy locally

You just need Node.js installed.

git clone <thisrepo>
cd telnet-proxy
npm install
npm run build # Run typescript compiler
node index.js # Run server
# listening on :8080

Develop client locally

git clone <thisrepo>
cd mudclient
npm install
npm run dev # Runs http dev server that auto-compiles source files
# listening on :1234

Notes about telnet-proxy

Responds to all {DO,DONT,WILL,WONT} negotiation with DONT
Hosted at ws://telnet-proxy.fly.dev (free tier) only for demo purposes.

danneu/elm-mudclient