rusty@garnet.berkeley.edu (rusty wright) (10/05/90)
Archive-name: tclbot/01-Oct-90 Original-posting-by: rusty@garnet.berkeley.edu (rusty wright) Original-subject: announcing tclbot Archive-site: belch.berkeley.edu [128.32.152.202] Archive-directory: /pub/mud_misc Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) This is an announcement of the first release of tclbot. This should be considered a beta release because there is a bug in the "explore" code. Everything else seems to work fine. You can get tclbot via anonymous ftp to belch.berkeley.edu (128.32.152.202) in the pub/mud_misc directory. tclbot is a robot designed for people who don't want to learn how to program in C but would like to experiment with a robot. The bad side is that you'll still have to learn how to program, but in the language tcl. The good side is that tcl is an interpreter so you can make quick changes, modifications, etc. and experiment easily. tclbot is sort of like some of the 'cutting edge' muds in that by itself it is a void; it's your tcl code that makes it into something. tclbot has no built-in personality or behaviour; you will have to provide that. Note: like the Maas-Neotek robot, tclbot uses the OUTPUTPREFIX and OUTPUTSUFFIX commands (of which the existence isn't widely advertised). Some muds require your robot character to have its bot bit set by a wizard in order for it to be able to use these commands. (This is true of Islandia.) Some mucks and muds allow all characters to use these commands. The mud BotHaven on belch.berkeley.edu (128.32.152.202), port 2323 has been set up as a test mud for robots and allows all characters to use these commands. Documentation for tclbot is provided. The top-level README file gives a general overview of tclbot and some instructions and examples for using tcl and tclbot. The README file in the tclbot/src directory lists the tcl commands that I added that you can use to control the robot (in addition to the regular tcl commands). The file tcl-3.3/doc/Tcl.man documents tcl and the tcl commands. From a programmer's viewpoint, one of the nice things about tcl is that it's easy to add tcl commands to your C program. I've tried to add as many of the most likely to be used tcl commands that I could think of. If there are any that you'd like added send me email. Send comments, complaints, suggestions, etc. to rusty@garnet.berkeley.edu. -- rusty c. wright rusty@garnet.berkeley.edu ucbvax!rusty