Play MUME!

A modern web client for MUME using DecafMUD that is hosted on mume.org.

The target audience is new players who don't want to install desktop applications to test MUME, and other players who can't use their usual setup for some reason (not at home etc). It is not intended to replace a full-featured client + mapper.

I Want to Host a Copy of Play MUME!

It is a Bad Idea to self-host a copy of Play MUME! for general usage because you will encourage players to input their MUME passwords into random websites and expose themselves to phishing attacks.

Please contact the Valar on MUME before doing this. We'll discuss other options.

I Want to Contribute to Play MUME!

Great! You'll need a little setup described below. If you get stuck, do not hesitate to contact the Valar on MUME!

Forking the repositories

The Github contribution workflow requires that you sign up on Github and fork the two repositories, DecafMUD and Play MUME!.

Doing so now will save you time later when you want to send pull requests.

In this document we will use YOU as a placeholder for your Github username. You could skip this step and use MUME as YOU, but you'll eventually have to sign up, fork, and then replace your remote URLs (an advanced topic).

Github has a 4 mins tutorial on forking repositories and sending pull requests.

Getting the Source Code

The index.html of this project expects to be installed alongside with DecafMUD, like this:

play/           # Clone of https://github.com/YOU/play-mume/
    index.html  # point your browser here (/play/)
    DecafMUD/   # Clone of https://github.com/YOU/DecafMUD/

So, assuming you are in your project directory and are using the git command-line software, run:

git clone https://github.com/YOU/play-mume.git play
cd play
git submodule update --init
cd DecafMUD
git remote add YOU https://github.com/YOU/DecafMud.git
git fetch YOU
git checkout YOU master

Remember to replace YOU with your Github username.

Adapt these instructions if you are using a graphical Git client to get the above directory layout.

Compiling the Source Code

The best part of Play MUME! is written in TypeScript (src/*) and will need to be compiled to JavaScript (build/*) before your browser can use it.

Docker

You can use docker-compose to quickly get a working developer environment up and running. This will run the TypeScript compiler and expose Play MUME! on port 4000 running on node.js within a Docker container:

docker-compose up --build

Alternative

If you do not want to use Docker you will need to set up your developer environment manually. You will need to install TypeScript compiler from https://www.typescriptlang.org and run in play:

tsc

TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that compiles to clean JavaScript output. It helps catching bugs before anybody even tests the code, letting me produce more features in less time. Try it with a compatible editor and you'll love it too!

Getting the Third-party Libraries

Play MUME! relies on a few 3rd-party Javascript libraries. As I didn't integrate with NPM or Yarn yet, you'll have to download them by hand into the node_modules/ directory. See node_modules/README.txt for the instructions.

Or just grab the libs folder from a recent release's play-mume-vX.Y.Z.zip.

If you're using docker-compose you can enter into the container and grab the libraries out:

docker exec -it play_play-mume_1 sh

Getting Map Data

The map data is an export of a MMapper map into a special web-friendly format that allows the browser to only load the surrounding area instead of the whole 35k+ rooms.

As the time of writing, that feature has yet to be included in a stable MMapper release. Instead, you can just grab the mapdata folder from a recent release .zip.

Setting Up a Web Server

The map display works only if served over HTTP(S), as opposed to just opening local files in your browser (or you'd have to disable security checks in your browser).

Setting up a production server is outside of the scope of this document, but for testing purposes you can use:

• https://cesanta.com/ (untested!) for Windows.
• python -m SimpleHTTPServer or python -m http.server on GNU/Linux from your project's directory (ie. mume/).

After one of these commands starts succesfully, point your browser to http://127.0.0.1:8000/play/.

Just keep the current settings in index.html and you'll use the official MUME WebSocket proxy.

Testing

If everything went well, you should see your very own Play MUME! running on 127.0.0.1 in your browser! Check that the map seems to work.

Contributing

This is where you reap the benefit of the forks above. Write awesome commits (possibly in a feature branch), send a pull request, et voilà!

About the WebSocket Proxy

WebSocket is a modern browser technology that lets Javascript code create data streams (such as Telnet for MUDs) inside HTTP(S).

Javascript (Client-Side) Configuration

index.html configures the DecafMUD Javascript code to securely connect to MUME's official WebSocket URL at https://mume.org/ws-play/ with these settings:

• host set to mume.org
• set_socket.wspath set to ws-play/
• set_socket.wsport set to 443 (*)
• set_socket.ssl set to true (*)