Usurper Reborn v0.47.1 — MUD Streaming Mode, Client Support & UI Polish

MUD Streaming Mode (Online Play)

The online server now behaves like a real MUD instead of a BBS door game. Previously, every action wiped the terminal and redrawn the full menu — chat messages from other players got erased, scroll history was lost, and the experience felt like flipping pages rather than inhabiting a living world.

What changed:

• Screen no longer clears between actions in online MUD mode. Output flows continuously downward and stays in your terminal's scroll buffer
• Location banners print once when you enter a location, then stay in your history
• Actions, combat, NPC interactions, and chat all accumulate naturally in the scroll buffer
• Chat messages from other players (/say, /shout, /tell) now appear inline between your actions instead of being wiped on the next screen redraw
• Prompt changed from Your choice: to a location-aware Inn > / Dungeon Fl.5 > / Main Street > style
• Type look or l at any time to reprint the current location's banner (standard MUD convention)
• BBS mode and local/single-player mode are completely unaffected — they continue to use full-screen redraws as before

MUD Client Connections (Raw TCP / Telnet)

Players can now connect using any standard MUD client (Mudlet, TinTin++, BlowTorch, MUSHclient, etc.) in addition to SSH and the browser terminal.

Connection settings:

• Host: usurper-reborn.net
• Port: 4000
• Protocol: Telnet or Raw TCP (not SSH)

SSH connections (ssh usurper@play.usurper-reborn.net -p 4000) continue to work unchanged. Both protocols are multiplexed on port 4000 via sslh — SSH traffic is routed to the SSH gateway, everything else goes directly to the game server.

Technical details:

• sslh protocol multiplexer on port 4000: SSH → internal port 4022, raw TCP → game server port 4001
• AUTH header detection timeout reduced 3 s → 0.5 s for faster MUD client login screen
• Telnet IAC byte sequences (0xFF option negotiation) filtered and discarded so MUD client handshakes don't corrupt input
• U+FFFD replacement characters (produced by IAC bytes passing through the stream reader) silently discarded

MUD Client Echo Fixes

Several echo-related bugs caused doubled characters or doubled prompts in MUD clients and the browser terminal. All three are now resolved.

IAC WILL ECHO — Client Local Echo Suppression

When a raw TCP MUD client connects (Mudlet, TinTin++, VIP Mud, etc.), the server now immediately sends IAC WILL ECHO + IAC WILL SGA (standard telnet option negotiation). This tells the client "the server will handle echo — stop echoing locally." Without this, clients echoed each keystroke locally while the server also echoed it back, causing every character to appear twice.

ServerEchoes — Web and SSH Relay Echo Isolation

SSH and web terminal connections route through a relay (the ssh-proxy Node.js process) that uses a PTY (pseudo-terminal). The PTY automatically echoes all keystrokes. Previously the server's input handler also echoed those characters back — resulting in double echo in the browser terminal and for SSH users.

The server now tracks whether it should echo per connection type. Direct raw TCP connections (ServerEchoes = true) get server-side echo because they have no other echo source. Relay connections via SSH or the web proxy (ServerEchoes = false) suppress server echo and let the PTY handle it.

\r\n Double-Enter Fix

Mudlet (and some other MUD clients) sends \r\n for the Enter key rather than just \r. The server was treating both \r and \n as line terminators — so each Enter press generated two inputs, causing the prompt to appear twice with an empty line between them.

Fixed with a _prevInputWasCR flag: when \n arrives immediately after \r, it is discarded as the second half of a CRLF pair rather than treated as a second Enter.

VIP Mud / Screen Reader Support

Players using VIP Mud (a screen-reader-optimized MUD client for blind/low-vision users) or any terminal that reports itself as DUMB or UNKNOWN now receive a plain text connection with all ANSI art and box-drawing stripped.

What plain text mode does:

• ANSI color escape sequences removed from all output
• [colorname]...[/] markup tags stripped
• Box-drawing characters (╔═╗║╚╝╠╣╦╩╬) replaced with plain ASCII equivalents (+, -, |)
• Screen-clear sequences replaced with a plain --- separator line
• Auth/login screen shown as plain ASCII text instead of the ANSI banner

How detection works:
After the initial telnet handshake, the server sends IAC DO TTYPE + IAC SB TTYPE SEND (standard terminal type negotiation). If the client responds with a terminal type starting with VIP or equal to DUMB/UNKNOWN, plain text mode activates automatically. Most graphical MUD clients (Mudlet, TinTin++) respond with XTERM-256COLOR or similar and receive full color output as normal.

Connection Type Display Fix

The /who command and the website's Who's Online list were showing Via ? for players connected via raw TCP MUD clients instead of Via MUD. The connection type string "MUD" was missing from the formatter. Fixed — raw TCP clients now correctly show as MUD.

UI: Box-Drawing Alignment Fixes

65+ title lines across 21 location and system files had misaligned right-side borders. Title strings were padded with hardcoded spaces that didn't account for title length, causing the right ║ to land 1–4 characters off from the box edge. All affected boxes now use calculated centering:

int left  = (78 - title.Length) / 2;
int right = 78 - title.Length - left;

Several boxes also had their border ║ characters rendered in a different color from the top/bottom ╔═╗ lines — fixed so the entire box is one consistent color.

Code Cleanup — Godot Engine Removed

All legacy Godot game engine scaffolding has been removed from the codebase. The project was originally prototyped in Godot 4.4 before being rewritten as a pure .NET 8.0 console application, but the Godot stub files remained as compatibility shims.

Removed:

• project.godot, Main.tscn, UsurperReborn.csproj.godot — Godot project files
• .godot/ — Engine cache directory
• Scripts/Utils/GodotStubs.cs — Stub implementations of Godot types (Node, Control, GD, etc.)
• Scripts/Utils/GodotHelpers.cs — GetNode<T>() replacement helper
• using Godot; removed from 110 source files
• : Node / : Control base class inheritance removed from 10 classes
• GD.RandRange(), GD.Randf(), GD.Randi() replaced with Random.Shared equivalents
• GD.Print() / GD.PrintErr() debug calls removed

No gameplay changes — purely internal cleanup.

Website Fix — Prestige Class Names

The website stats dashboard and leaderboard were showing Unknown for players playing prestige classes (Tidesworn, Wavecaller, Cyclebreaker, Abysswarden, Voidreaver). The class ID mapping in the web proxy was missing entries 11–15. Fixed.

Files Changed

• GameConfig.cs — Version 0.47.1
• Scripts/UI/TerminalEmulator.cs — IsPlainText property; ToPlainText() static helper (strips ANSI codes, markup tags, box-drawing); ServerEchoes property; _prevInputWasCR flag; plain text paths in WriteLineToStream(), WriteToStream(), WriteRawAnsi(), ClearScreen(); SetColor() skipped when IsPlainText; ReadLineInteractiveAsync() split \r/\n handling with _prevInputWasCR fix, all echo gated on ServerEchoes; ClearScreen() returns early in MUD server mode; CP437 infrastructure (UseCp437 property, Cp437Encoding lazy field, PreTranslateCp437(), WriteCp437ToStream()) — present but not currently active
• Scripts/Server/MudServer.cs — AUTH header detection timeout 3 s → 0.5 s; IAC byte filtering in ReadLineAsync(); U+FFFD filtering in ReadLineInteractiveAsync(); IAC WILL ECHO + IAC WILL SGA sent on interactive connection; ProbeTtypeAsync() — sends IAC DO TTYPE + IAC SB TTYPE SEND, reads response, returns true for VIP Mud/DUMB/UNKNOWN clients; isPlainText flag propagated to InteractiveAuthAsync() and PlayerSession; plain ASCII auth menu for screen reader clients; interactive connection type "MUD"
• Scripts/Server/PlayerSession.cs — isPlainText constructor parameter; sets ctx.Terminal.IsPlainText and ctx.Terminal.ServerEchoes = (ConnectionType == "MUD") in RunAsync()
• Scripts/Systems/OnlineChatSystem.cs — Added "MUD" => "MUD" to FormatConnectionType() so raw TCP MUD connections show correctly in /who and on the website
• Scripts/Systems/OnlineAuthScreen.cs — Banner box centering fixed; single-color border
• Scripts/Core/GameEngine.cs — "While You Were Gone" box centering and border color fixed
• Scripts/Locations/BaseLocation.cs — "A Mysterious Encounter" box centering fixed; _locationEntryDisplayed flag; GetUserChoice() compact MUD prompt; GetMudPromptName() virtual method; look/l global command
• Scripts/Locations/MainStreetLocation.cs — GetMudPromptName() → "Main Street"
• Scripts/Locations/DungeonLocation.cs — GetMudPromptName() → "Dungeon Fl.N"
• Scripts/Locations/InnLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Locations/TeamCornerLocation.cs — Title and subtitle centering fixed
• Scripts/Locations/AnchorRoadLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes; GetMudPromptName() → "Anchor Road"
• Scripts/Locations/CastleLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Locations/ChurchLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Locations/DarkAlleyLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes; GetMudPromptName() → "Dark Alley"
• Scripts/Locations/DevMenuLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Locations/HomeLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Locations/LevelMasterLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes; GetMudPromptName() → "Level Master"
• Scripts/Locations/MagicShopLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes; GetMudPromptName() → "Magic Shop"
• Scripts/Locations/SysOpLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Locations/TempleLocation.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Locations/WeaponShopLocation.cs — GetMudPromptName() → "Weapon Shop"
• Scripts/Locations/ArmorShopLocation.cs — GetMudPromptName() → "Armor Shop"
• Scripts/Locations/LoveStreetLocation.cs — GetMudPromptName() → "Love Street"
• Scripts/Systems/WizardCommandSystem.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Systems/IntimacySystem.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Systems/OnlinePlaySystem.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Systems/SysOpConsoleManager.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Systems/VisualNovelDialogueSystem.cs — Box alignment fixes
• Scripts/Utils/GodotStubs.cs — Deleted
• Scripts/Utils/GodotHelpers.cs — Deleted
• web/ssh-proxy.js — Added prestige class names (IDs 11–15) to CLASS_NAMES mapping
• web/index.html — Steam launch date updated to "Sometime in March, 2026"
• 110 additional .cs files — using Godot; removed; GD.* calls replaced
• Server config: /etc/sslh.cfg — sslh installed; on-timeout: "anyprot"; timeout 1 s; SSH → 127.0.0.1:4022, anyprot → 127.0.0.1:4001
• Server config: /etc/ssh/sshd_config_usurper — Port 4000 → 4022; ListenAddress hardened to 127.0.0.1