[MudNet-Announce] Progress update

[Robby Griffin]

Today's changes:

I'm going to bring MudNet back up today without channel support and with
host keys required. This is part of a transition to a customizable
softcoded comsys, and the hostkey support has been around for a while
without being used (it's intended to cut down on spoofing).

You will need to install the hostkey-enabled version of the softcode; see
the <A HREF="install-updates.php">update page</A>. You'll also need to make
sure your globals have a hostkey set (it's the VK attribute). When I bring
the bot back up, it will try to set the hostkey then; please don't write us
to request a hostkey until at least half an hour after that time.

Further plans:

If we do not receive excessive reports of abuse, we will continue to keep
the bot running until we're ready to deploy the next version of the code.
I expect that to happen sometime in February; I'm estimating 2 weeks for
merging an i/o layer rewrite that I did in early 2000, 1 week to develop
the new comsys support, and 1 week for testing and misc changes. The next
released version will require a softcode update again, but we think it
will be worth it; you'll have much more flexibility in setting locks.

	--Alierak