NALEDI ya AFRICA - SERVER PROTOCOL

This document describes the text-based protocol used by the Naledi client to
communicate with the game server.

General syntax: "<command> [<args>]*"

The server will always return a string answer to a command.

#TODO remove "NIL" return values (too ambiguous)

COMMANDS

* login <player-name> <password>
  -> player name echoed on acceptance, error signalled otherwise
  -> Warning: passwords are transmitted and stored in plain text!
  -> required before all other commands

* signup <player-name> <password>
  -> create a new player with the given password and log him in
  -> signals error if a player by that name already exists

* news
  -> latest news item relevant to the player

* map <width> <height>
  -> a 2d list of (<character> <colour>) pairs, representing the visible
  game map

* describe-patch <x> <y>
  -> a string representation of a list of lines describing the specified patch

* move <direction>
  -> "T" on success, "NIL" on failure