Some notes to provide a little more context.
Anyterm version:
It's my understanding that the currently released (1.1.29) stable
version of Anyterm does not properly handle an important feature that I think
is essential to using Anyterm for a mud, which is why the instructions
outline the use of a dev branch. What is that feature? Funny you ask...
Server Side Includes:
Here's the thing. The way anyterm works in this case, it basically lets
people telnet from the computer anytermd is on to the computer you specify
in its starttime arguments. This means that when someone connects to the mud,
they look like they're telnetting in from the anytermd server (usually
the same host as the mud).
This creates an administrative problem because if tons of people are coming
from the same IP, it is difficult to enforce things like bans.
There's a neat trick to anytermd, though. It can accept a token containing a
string that it uses as part of the command line. This token thingy is
the feature that I don't think works 100% in 1.1.29 and below.
By enabling server side includes we can send to the anytermd daemon the
ip address (in the token %p) that it can include in the command line.
This is useful because telnet has a subnegotiation feature called
NEW-ENVIRONMENT whose "user" variable is invoked in telnet with the -l
flag. It gets kinda complicated here, but the idea is this
1) Apache uses SSI to figure out the client IP.
2) This information is collected by the Anyterm javascript and web file.
3) The information is sent to the anytermd in the form of a string.
4) The connection initiated by anytermd includes this ip as the "user" NEW-ENv var.
5) The mud receives a connection that LOOKS normal to the player, but includes the ip.
6) Dead Souls then determines whether the info is legit, and if so, considers it the user's ip.
As you can see, if you're using Dead Souls on an older driver, or
not using Dead Souls at all, you may wind up being able to to use anyterm
but finding that the control over ip connections is no longer
possible at the mud level.
It is unusual for mud servers/drivers to handle NEW-ENVIRONMENT, but it's
not exactly rocket science to add. If you're on a Diku derivative mud,
you should visit
http://mudbytes.net and do a search for MSSP. I think a
dev named Scandum has documented some ways of implementing telopts into
Diku-type muds, and there may even be snippets available.
-Crat
