tbaMUD Continued development of the CircleMUD core

i recently found a snippet i like and wanted to implement it.

How do I go about implementing, Merc code, merc snippets, and other snippets and codes?

Rumble collected some howtos on patching in a former post:
http://www.tbamud.com/forum/thread/377

Basically it boils down to this sequence:

1. unpack (or better, check out from svn: http://www.tbamud.com/content/devnull-patch-bring-svn) and compile a copy of tbaMud.
2. when the mud can be started, works, etc. TAKE A BACKUP of the /src directory. You might want to use a local subversion lib, git or other version control system for maintaining history between source code versions.
3. add the code from the snippet. If using a codebase that is different from the snippet (ie. trying to patch in a merc snippet in tbaMud) you'll run into commands not having the same name, datastructures being different and other issues. Until you are familiar with the tbamud code, I suggest only adding tbamud snippets.
4. compile and test your code.

repeat 2-4 as many times as you like.

And if you're hell bent on a Merc snippet in tba and it is really a SNIPPET and not a large patch, send me a PM and maybe I can help you out.

One thing you'll need to do is change all the send_to_char() calls around. Merc, RoM, RoT, SMAUG all have it as send_to_char(msg, char), and CircleMUD/tbaMUD have it as send_to_char(char, msg, msg formatting) with the formatting being optional. This is a huge boon, since you don't have to snprintf() your strings before using them with send_to_char in CircleMUD and derivs.