• Protocol
• Variables
• Links
MSSP Crawler
MSSP News
EOR
GMCP
MCCP
MMCP
MNES
MSDP
MSLP
MSSP
MTTS
| Mud Server Status Protocol |
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MSSP • Protocol • Variables • Links MSSP Crawler MSSP News EOR GMCP MCCP MMCP MNES MSDP MSLP MSSP MTTS |
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| MUD listings are often out dated and lack accurate information. Verifying that the one submitting a new MUD is a member of the MUD's administration can be quite tedious as well. |
| The MUD Server Status Protocol seeks to address these issues by providing a transparant protocol for MUD crawlers to gather detailed information about a MUD, including dynamic information like boot time and the current amount of online players. It also makes submitting a new mud entry very simple because it only requires a player or admin to fill in the hostname and port. |
| This document provides a technical description of the MSSP protocol. |
| The MSSP Protocol |
| MSSP is implemented as a Telnet option RFC854, RFC855. The server and client negotiate the use of MSSP as they would any other telnet option. Once agreement has been reached on the use of the option, option sub-negotiation is used to send information about the server to the client. |
| Server Commands |
| IAC WILL MSSP indicates the server supports MSSP. |
| Client Commands |
| IAC DO MSSP indicates the client supports MSSP. IAC DONT MSSP indicates the client doesn't support MSSP. |
| Handshake |
| When a client connects to a server the server should send IAC WILL MSSP. The client should respond with either IAC DO MSSP or IAC DONT MSSP. If the server receives IAC DO MSSP it should respond with: IAC SB MSSP MSSP_VAR "variable" MSSP_VAL "value" MSSP_VAR "variable" MSSP_VAL "value" IAC SE. |
| The quote characters mean that the encased word is a string, the quotes themselves should not be send. |
| MSSP definitions |
| MSSP 70 MSSP_VAR 1 MSSP_VAL 2 |
| Example MSSP handshake |
| server - IAC WILL MSSP client - IAC DO MSSP server - IAC SB MSSP MSSP_VAR "PLAYERS" MSSP_VAL "52" MSSP_VAR "UPTIME" MSSP_VAL "1234567890" IAC SE |
| Variables and Values |
| For ease of parsing, variables and values cannot contain the MSSP_VAL, MSSP_VAR, IAC, or NUL byte. The value can be an empty string unless a numeric value is expected in which case the default value should be 0. If your Mud can't calculate one of the numeric values for the World variables you can use "-1" to indicate that the data is not available. If a list of responses is provided try to pick from the list, unless "Etc" is specified, which means it's open ended. |
| The same variable can be send more than once with different values, in which case the last reported value should be used as the default value. It is up to the crawler to decide how to exactly process multiple values, multiple values should be ordered from least to most relevant. It's also possible to attach several values to a single variable by using MSSP_VAL more than once, with the default value reported last. This would look as following: |
| IAC SB MSSP MSSP_VAR "PORT" MSSP_VAL "80" MSSP_VAL "23" MSSP_VAL "3000" MSSP_VAR "CREATED" MSSP_VAL "1996" IAC SE |
| The quote characters mean that the encased word is a string, the quotes themselves should not be send. |
| Variable names should exist of upper case letters and may contain spaces. As many programming languages have difficulties with variable names which contain spaces clients and crawlers can substitute spaces with underscores as the recommended solution. |
| Official MSSP Variables |
| Required |
NAME Name of the MUD. PLAYERS Current number of logged in players. UPTIME Unix time value of the startup time of the MUD. |
| Generic |
CHARSET ASCII, BIG5, CP437, CP949, CP1251, EUC-KR, GB18030, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2, KOI8-R, UTF-8.
Name of the charset in use. You can report multiple charsets using the array format,
the preferred / default charset last. See man charsets for reference.
CODEBASE Name of the codebase, eg Merc 2.1. You can report multiple codebases using the array
format, make sure to report the current codebase last.
CONTACT Email address for contacting the MUD.
CRAWL DELAY Preferred minimum number of hours between crawls. Send -1 to use the crawler's default.
Recommended values are -1, 1, 5, 11, and 23.
CREATED Year the MUD was created.
DISCORD URL to a Discord server, this should include the https:// prefix.
HOSTNAME Current or new hostname.
ICON URL to a square image in bmp, png, jpg, or gif format. The icon should be equal or
larger than 64x64 pixels, with a filesize no larger than 256KB.
IP Current or new IP address.
IPV6 Current or new IPv6 address.
LANGUAGE English name of the language used, eg German or English
LOCATION English short name of the country where the server is
located, using ISO 3166.
MINIMUM AGE Current minimum age requirement, omit if not applicable.
PORT Current or new port number. Can be used multiple times, most important port last.
REFERRAL A list of other MSSP enabled MUDs for the crawler to check using the host port
format and array notation. Adding referrals is important to make MSSP decentralized.
Make sure to separate the host and port with a space rather than : because IPv6
addresses contain colons.
SSL The port number for a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encrypted connection.
WEBSITE URL to MUD website, this should include the http:// or https:// prefix. |
| Categorization |
FAMILY AberMUD, CoffeeMUD, DikuMUD, Evennia, LPMud, MajorMUD, MOO, Mordor, SocketMud,
TinyMUD, TinyMUCK, TinyMUSH, Custom.
Report Custom unless it's a well established family.
You can report multiple generic codebases using the array format, make sure to report the
most distant codebase (aka the family) last.
Check the MUD family tree for naming and capitalization.
GENRE Adult, Fantasy, Historical, Horror, Modern, Mystery, None, Romance, Science Fiction, Spiritual
GAMEPLAY Adventure, Educational, Hack and Slash, None, Player versus Player, Player versus Environment,
Questing, Roleplaying, Simulation, Social, Strategy
STATUS Alpha, Closed Beta, Open Beta, Live |
GAMESYSTEM D&D, d20 System, World of Darkness, Etc.
Use Real Time, Tick Based, Turn Based, or Custom if using a custom gamesystems. Use None if not available.
INTERMUD AberChat, I3, IMC2, MudNet, Etc.
Can be used multiple times if you support several protocols, most important protocol last.
Leave empty or omit if no Intermud protocol is supported.
SUBGENRE Alternate History, Anime, Cyberpunk, Detective, Discworld, Dragonlance, Christian Fiction, Classical Fantasy,
Crime, Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Erotic, Exploration, Forgotten Realms, Frankenstein, Gothic, High Fantasy,
Magical Realism, Medieval Fantasy, Multiverse, Paranormal, Post-Apocalyptic, Military Science Fiction,
Mythology, Pulp, Star Wars, Steampunk, Suspense, Time Travel, Weird Fiction, World War II, Urban Fantasy, Etc.
Use None if not applicable. |
| World |
AREAS Current number of areas. HELPFILES Current number of help files. MOBILES Current number of unique mobiles. OBJECTS Current number of unique objects. ROOMS Current number of unique rooms, use 0 if roomless. CLASSES Number of player classes, use 0 if classless. LEVELS Number of player levels, use 0 if level-less. RACES Number of player races, use 0 if raceless. SKILLS Number of player skills, use 0 if skill-less. |
| Protocols |
ANSI Supports ANSI colors ? 1 or 0 UTF-8 Supports UTF-8 ? 1 or 0 VT100 Supports VT100 interface ? 1 or 0 XTERM 256 COLORS Supports xterm 256 colors ? 1 or 0 XTERM TRUE COLORS Supports xterm 24 bit colors ? 1 or 0 |
| Commercial |
PAY TO PLAY Pay to play ? 1 or 0 PAY FOR PERKS Pay for perks ? 1 or 0 |
| Hiring |
HIRING BUILDERS Game is hiring builders ? 1 or 0 HIRING CODERS Game is hiring coders ? 1 or 0 |
| Links |
| Contact |
| If you want a link added, or added MSSP to your Mud, you can email me at mudclient@gmail.com. I'll add muds that correctly report a substantial section of the official variables to the MSSP crawler. |
| Debugging |
| You can use the TinTin++ MUD client to display MSSP output from a MUD server. |
| After launching the client you need to enter '#config telnet debug' and to create a connection enter '#session mssp <hostname> <port>'. To exit press ctrl-d. |
| For additional debug information you can save the mssp debug script to a text file in the directory from which you launched tintin, for example 'debug.tin'. Use '#read debug.tin' to load the script into tintin. If you are using WinTin++ you need to save the file in the /bin/ directory. The WinTin++ folder in the Windows start menu contains a link to the tintin directory. |
| Clients |
| TinTin++ Mud Client |
| Mudlet the MUD client |
| Codebases |
| BasedMUD - DikuMUD/ROM - As of version 1.5. |
| Evennia - As of version 0.8. |
| FluffOS - LpMUD - As of version 2.16. |
| Lowlands - DikuMUD/MrMud - As of version 1.4. |
| NekkidMUD - SocketMUD/NakedMud - As of version 1.5. |
| PennMUSH - As of version 1.8.4p1. |
| WickedMUD - SocketMUD - As of version 1.0 |
| Directories |
| Grapevine |
| MSSP Mud Crawler |
| MUD MSSP Stats |
| MudStats (defunct) |
| MudVerse |
| Telnet Servers |
| A list of MSSP enabled MUDs including debug information is available on the MSSP Mud Crawler page. MUDs need to be listed on TMC in order to be automatically added. |
| Discussion |
| MUDhalla Discord channel for TELNET related discussion |
| Snippets |
| KaVir's MUD Protocol Handler - Handles ATCP, CHARSET, MSDP, MSSP, MSP, MXP links, NAWS, TTYPE, UTF-8 and 256 colors. |
| PennMUSH MSSP - MSSP Patch for the PennMUSH codebase. |
| Scandum's MUD Telopt Handler - Handles CHARSET, EOR, MCCP2, MCCP3, MSDP, MSDP over GMCP, MSSP, MTTS, NAWS, NEW-ENVIRON, TTYPE, and xterm 256 colors. |