<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients --> <!--X-From-R13: Qnyvona Fverfvnf Rnexybpx <pnyvonaNqnexybpx.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 06:12:33 +0000 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 199802120612.BAA18603#relay,mnsinc.com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Reference: 199802120335.WAA14742#relay,mnsinc.com --> <!--X-Reference: 199802120219.CAA59434#out4,ibm.net --> <!--X-Reference: 199802120517.XAA25027@dfw-ix6.ix.netcom.com --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg00426.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00428.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg00425.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00434.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#00427">Author</A> | <A HREF="#00427">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#00427">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#null,net">mud-dev#null,net</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: Caliban Tiresias Darklock <<A HREF="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 01:12:56 -0500</LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> At 09:22 PM 2/11/98 +0000, Jon A. Lambert wrote: > >By continuing to build muds with conventional text Telnet interfaces, it >is certain that the hobbyist mud audience will not grow. In fact it >will likely shrink. The only reason it has grown is that by sheer numbers >who have gain access to the internet. Some have tried to compare this >with the text adventure game phenomenon. I don't agree. Text adventure games had one major feature that MUDs lack: you could learn, play, and solve the average text adventure game in a week. Following this, it was largely an easter-egg search, finding the amusing things like the granite walls in Zork or the terrible Cthulhu-mythos puns in Lurking Horror, and within a matter of a month or two you exhausted the possibilities and were ready to move on. Luckily, a good text adventure game could be built (using an existing parser like Infocom's) in that period of time, so you could pick up a new one. In a sickening development, the complexity and development cycle of modern games have increased dramatically while the attention span of the average player has decreased sharply. Hence the drive toward games which can be learned in a minute, played in a day, and then discarded -- such as Doom -- although networked play of games like Quake has strongly increased replayability. Solutions? Um... maybe these aren't problems. Maybe they're design criteria. ;) >It's not a >text vs. graphics popularity contest. It's largely an obscure-kludgy-unix- >command-line-babble interface vs. something more windows/lisa/x-like. >It's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. We'll do the interface like its >always been done and complain about the IQ of the rest of the I-net. Well, you have to admit that the intelligence level of the average adult American has declined quite rapidly since the eighties. There are thousands of ways you could point the finger on this -- drugs in the 60's, conspicuous consumption, poor school quality, television broadcasts (daytime talk shows being strongly blamed on this score), single parent families, rampant secular humanism, chemicals in the water and preservatives in the food (for all you black-helicopter-conspiracy-theory folks out there) -- but there's no one factor that really contributes to it, and it certainly isn't universal. (I came out rather well, I think.) >I know, most everybody has their servers running on *nix, yet the majority >of the mud playerbase use a GUI environment. What's handy and familiar >for the server-author, is an utterly alien turn-off for the average user. Anyone given any real thought toward building a server ENTIRELY under NT, with GUI server manager and administrative interface? It's a much more robust solution than it once was, and another thought would be that with the impending release of the BeOS for Intel we might be able to do something over *there* as well. I wonder if you could build an effective MUD using ActiveX, ASP, and SQL Server. A lot of people seem to be trying to do one in Java. Hehehehe, VB-MUD. LOL >Warning: Don't get the idea that I really "care" about the above. I'm >not a crusader...just a quiet observer. <splurgh> Me, I'm a crusader. My latest crusade is spam. I'm for it. Am I a masochist, or what? >> It seems to relate rather well to the >> graphics/text argument, as well: why text? Well, we've always done it that >> way. Graphic MUDs? > >Is there really LESS text in a Graphical mud? There sort of has to be, doesn't there? I mean, the graphics replace some of the text, but you are correct in that there will always be SOME text. At least until real time audio becomes feasible. Oh, yuck. Imagine a server that worked like those horrid laggy crackly internet phone things. You type and click to do things, but to talk you just yell into a microphone. Kill me now. >Isn't this an unwarranted assumption? >Are Doom and Diablo responsible for this? I must say, Quake in my opinion *is* a MUD -- it saves state (player efficiency and frag count), permits a lot of simultaneous players (over seventy on Base100), is programmable and customisable, and simulates a world within which the players interact. I'd like to see a Quake level emphasising the puzzle aspects of play which can be so readily simulated. Some of the things American McGee is doing in his designs really are inspiring, and I think there's real potential to produce some very cerebral concepts and get a little farther from the "if it moves kill it" philosophy... although there's certainly something to say for the satisfaction of coming home from a job where you get the kinds of interface design quandaries we do, slapping Q2 in the drive, and calling up a few CRBots wearing the skin that looks most like your boss. ;) </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <ul compact><li><strong>Follow-Ups</strong>: <ul> <li><strong><A NAME="00434" HREF="msg00434.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></strong> <ul compact><li><em>From:</em> "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com></li></ul> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <UL><LI><STRONG>References</STRONG>: <UL> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="00424" HREF="msg00424.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban#darklock,com></LI></UL></LI> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="00422" HREF="msg00422.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> coder#ibm,net</LI></UL></LI> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="00425" HREF="msg00425.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com></LI></UL></LI> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00426.html">Socket programming (Was: The impact of the web on muds)</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00428.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] META: Unsubscribed users dur to bounces</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00425.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00434.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#00427"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#00427"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="00403" HREF="msg00403.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></strong>, coder <a href="mailto:coder#ibm,net">coder#ibm,net</a>, Wed 11 Feb 1998, 19:23 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00422" HREF="msg00422.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></strong>, coder <a href="mailto:coder#ibm,net">coder#ibm,net</a>, Thu 12 Feb 1998, 02:17 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00424" HREF="msg00424.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></strong>, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Thu 12 Feb 1998, 03:35 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00425" HREF="msg00425.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Thu 12 Feb 1998, 05:17 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00427" HREF="msg00427.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></strong>, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Thu 12 Feb 1998, 06:12 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00434" HREF="msg00434.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Thu 12 Feb 1998, 15:54 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00474" HREF="msg00474.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></strong>, coder <a href="mailto:coder#ibm,net">coder#ibm,net</a>, Mon 16 Feb 1998, 04:29 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="00238" HREF="msg00238.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Clients</A></strong>, Shawn Halpenny <a href="mailto:malachai#iname,com">malachai#iname,com</a>, Wed 14 Jan 1998, 14:41 GMT </LI> </ul> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="00252" HREF="msg00252.html">Clients</A></strong>, Andrew Wilson <a href="mailto:andrew#aaaaaaaa,demon.co.uk">andrew#aaaaaaaa,demon.co.uk</a>, Sun 18 Jan 1998, 20:53 GMT </LI> </ul> </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>