Zugg Software :: View topic

Sorcerer Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 706 Location: USA

I have a favor to ask of a few of the gurus out there I am trying to make a singing alias for a RP mud. I want to store the song in a database, which I haven't even played with using the database before.
Example:

Sorcerer Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 706 Location: USA

Anybody?

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

Choosing to store verses in the database is going to cause more headaches and waste lots of memory. I suggest you keep the lyrics in text-file form and simply point to the file in the database. This will give you what you want without having to use dirty tricks to beat the database module into submission.

First, create the database. You have to do this manually, as ZMud does not allow you to script the creation of one. I suggest including a field for name of song, artist who wrote the song, a field to contain the file name for the lyrics, and the other stats you want to record.

Next, after you have the database set up just like you want it, create the Ssong alias shell. This is going to be your key to the whole system, so you want to make sure it's naturally easy to use. For instance, you might want to first CHOOSE the song and bring it to the front of your mind (ie, load up the variables). Once a song is chosen and ready to go, you might want to do a little yammering at the audience about how you got the song or how it ties into whatever it was you were talking about. Instead of just launching into the song without preamble, maybe you'd like to START the song when ready. Finally, maybe something might happen while you're in the middle of a permformance that requires you to respond. For that you'd want a STOP option. Finally, maybe you as the player want to have some sort of control over the mechanics of your performance, like the delay between each verse or even prompting you the player to continue. This sort of thing is what I favor, so I typically throw in an OPTIONS option or something:

SSONG CHOOSE|START|STOP|OPTIONS

#ALIAS ssong {#if (%numparam() >= 2) {#noop we have enough parameters, time to validate;#if (%ismember(%1,"choose|start|stop|options")) {#noop %1 is valid option, time to validate %2;#case %ismember(%1,"choose|start|stop|options") {#if (@IsSinging = 0) {#query (&Name = "%-2") "" 1} {#noop this option isn't available while performing}} {IsSinging = 1;#NOOP stuff to build verse #1 SING command} {IsSinging = 0} {#NOOP I'll leave this to your imagination}} {#noop more helpful syntax reminders}} {#NOOP helpful syntax reminders, mostly just a bunch of prettily-formed #SAYs}}

This should get you in the general area, but it's not at all complete and as it stands it's not functional yet (so don't go pasting this into ZMud thinking you can just start singing willy-nilly). Also, it assumes you are leaving the song database open all the time; if not, some DB management code will need to be included to make sure it's loaded and closed.

Sorcerer Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 706 Location: USA

Matt,
How would you set it up to recognize the end of each line in a verse?

Anybody else want to try this?

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

To make it extremely easy on myself, I'd set up the file using a tag system:

[chorus]

[verse]

[refrain]

[bridge]
[EOF]

Each tag would specify the type of line (useful for when we go to store it in our datarecord variable). Blank lines would determine verse breaks, and the [EOF] tag is there so we can tell when we reached the end of the songfile.

The code would basically be the standard #FILE/#CLOSE stuff with a variable to catch the %read() output (it goes line-by-line). This variable would then be checked and assigned the next line in a loop, and we can use a #CASE with a couple of #IFs to do all our line-checking.

#NOOP stuff that sets the Song datarecord variable to its zeroed state goes here
#FILE 1 %concat("c:\your path to your songfiles\",&lyrics,".txt") //opens the text file so we can use it
Line = %read(1) //reads in the first line to be evaluated
#while (@line != "[EOF]") {#if (%begins(@line,"[")) {#noop this line is a tag line;#addkey Song %copy("[tag]this is a test",2,%eval(%pos("]","[tag]this is a test") - 1)) %db(@Song,%copy("[tag]this is a test",2,%eval(%pos("]","[tag]this is a test") - 1)))} {#noop this line is blank};Line = %read(1)}
#CLOSE 1 //closes the text file as we don't need it anymore

That should read the file in just fine, but to avoid overwrite problems with duplicate tags (ie, using [VERSE] for both verses 1 and 2) I would simply make sure to use numbers ([VERSE1], [VERSE2], etc) or instead of VERSE I'd use ordinals ([FIRST], [SECOND], etc)