Hey, you want to help make Ranvier better? That's awesome. If you're new to the world of open source Github has a great guide to get you started https://guides.github.com/activities/contributing-to-open-source/.
Before you start writing code, adding documentation, or submitting issues we suggest you hop in our slack channel (Get an invite) and say hi.
Ranvier is a passion-project and I never expect to make money off of it. With that said, if you want to buy me a beer because you like Ranvier so dang much you can do so at my Patreon: patreon.com/shawncplus. More than money though I appreciate contributions of the other types on this page: submitting bugs, suggesting features, and the very best: pull requests.
If you find an issue click the Issues tab on the github page, there will be a template to walk you through what info you should include in your report. We also suggest you hop in the above slack channel and let us know, we may be able to resolve your issue right then and there!
If you are new to the open source world or even a veteran who just wants an easy introduction to the Ranvier codebase check the issue list for issues with the help wanted label. help wanted issues are non-critical bugs or features that are particularly easy or provide a good introduction to a certain Ranvier subsystem.
If you're not sure where to get started contributing to Ranvier the best place to start is documentation. Read over the existing documentation, read through some of the code, try to build something and get a feel for what is missing from the docs that you could add.
Documentation is stored in the docs/ folder in the root of the project. Our documentation is rendered with mkdocs
version 0.17.x and the Python-Markdown extensions, any markup you can use from those is free game. If you want to change
the look and feel of the documentation styles are in docs/_mkdocs/theme/ranvier/assets/stylesheets/application.css
You can test your changes to the docs locally by installing mkdocs version 0.15.0 (version is important) and running mkdocs serve
from the root of the repo.
An example of something that would be desired for a code contribution:
- Yes: A bugfix for code in
src/. - Yes: A bugfix or feature for code in one of the bundles prefixed with
ranvier-. - Maybe: A feature for code in
src/. This might have some discussion around it depending if it changes any of the data models or impacts existing bundles. - No: Your bundles. The end goal will be to have a place, like npm, where you can register your bundles for other Ranvier users to download. For now as long as your bundle is on github you can submit an issue for us to link to your bundle from our documentation.
For the most part you can follow the style guide outlined in https://github.com/airbnb/javascript and you'll be safe. There are some differences but it's close enough that if you follow it we won't reject the PR on style terms alone. When in doubt look at existing code in the repo.
The default bundles (bundles prefixed with ranvier-) are meant to be a functional example of a Diku-style MUD built in the Ranvier engine. It is not intended to be a SMAUG-esque turnkey MUD where it comes with 80 areas and 200 commands and tells you exactly what kind of game you have to build.
The commands in the default bundles, while inspired from classic Diku style MUDs have output inspired by modern MMOs like World of Warcraft. Very little information is obscured from the player as was common practice in old MUDs. Combat shows damage, items show their stats, you see enemy health, quests are much less puzzle-like and more direct.
Suggested changes/additions to those bundles should be made with that in mind.
Ranvier works by letting you build on top of it so fixing bugs and submitting them can sometimes lead to you submitting more code than you intended. To prevent this isolate your bug fix, re-clone Ranvier into another directory and apply your fix/feature to the fresh clone. That way when you send your pull request it won't included any of the custom bundles you've built or changes you have made to the core that perhaps don't fit the criteria above.