Are there any users here that use linux and would like an easier approach to playing multiplayer text games? Enough that it is worth writing a simple program to play questnet games via a shell prompt?

This is sort of on topic, but I'll put it in here anyway.

I'm currently working on a version of Quest for Linux (QfL). I haven't been spending all my time working on it by any means, but I am still working on it. I am still in the stage of writing the parsing code. Once I finish this, it'll only be a small amount of time before I can implement this into a shell based command line interface.

One thing I plan to include in a later release is an X based interface to it. Though that isn't a priority as you can run it in a console window.

As regards to colours etc. (as someone asked in a previous post in an old topic), I've managed to implement several formatting functions using ANSI escape codes.

At this current stage, I'm not going to be implementing support for QuestNet, unless there is sufficient demand for it, and QfL has reached a decent level of stability.

Oh, I'm also releasing it as GNU GPL. I'm also not giving a definate date, but I expect that I'll release it either near Christmas 2004 or or a few months after. Heh, I may even release it before.

On Topic: Is telnet support built into QuestNet Server? If not, it should be.

Telnet support isn't built directly in to QuestNet Server, but it does include a Telnet adapter program. This acts as a proxy and sits between players connecting via Telnet and QuestNet Server, converting commands into a form the server can recognise and filtering the output so the player's screens aren't filled with garbage. It works fairly well but it's not especially pretty since it just uses the most basic form of Telnet, so there's no nice GUI or anything.

wasn't telnet meant to be a solid feature for this version of Quest? i'd like to be able to connect to a Quest Server in telnet, with pretty ASCII pictures. saves looking at that horrible Quest game layout, and Telnet brings back the good old memories of Smaug, Diki etc.

I think that QfL is a great idea, and that it will probably attract more useage for Quest. It would be great if Alex could make this an official download on the website once it's finished.

As said before, I really think a Quest player for linux would attract more people to this gaming system, and gain more respect from the IF community, which is highly using linux / unix systems.
A console application would be enough at the moment, except it would remove all multimedia from the games...

-> theoriginalkaching : are you working with Alex for the parser on linux ? re you coding in C++ ? If so then it would be more portable.

About QuestNet, it's still possible to access to games via telnet (and probably putty, a good terminal emulator), so it's not a very high priority.

I am working separately to make the parser.

As for the programming language, I'm using C.

ok.
Don't forget I want to be your 1st beta, or alpha, tester
You can also send it to me for testing, even in early state of usability.

About Quest Net, are there some servers running a QuestNet game 24h/day (with the proxy software running too) ?

I'd like to try the telnet connection.

Perhaps Alex could give you some help. Alex, maybe you should make this official (as was said above)

Just while I'm thinking about it: couldn't you turn the parser that you're writing for QfL into a windows version so that it is a simple app that just runs Quest games. Alex seems too busy to do it, but you're already doing the parser. Wouldn't it be easy to turn it into a Win32 version?

since it's written in C you will be able to port it to mswindows

excellent. so then a small version of Quest which only plays single-player games IS makable