14 Sep, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Recently on a couple of other mud forums, someone has been promoting their new mud client - it's expensive, apparently not very widely tested, and seems to offer far less functionality than the top free clients, but it did get me thinking.

As far as I can see, its two main selling points are:

(1) highly accessable (players just click 'play' and the download/updates are automatic).

(2) highly customisable appearance (mud owners can design their own skins).

Although I don't think the client in question is worth the asking price, I do think the above two points are worthy of serious consideration, particularly when trying to appeal to non-mudders.

In regard to (1), my website has a "play" link to a self-extracting copy of GMud, already preconfigured to connect to my mud. This isn't quite "one click and you're in", but it's still very quick and simple to follow. This has actually proven quite attractive to newcomers.

Lately I've been looking at MUSHclient. It's a bit more complex to use, but far more powerful, and the plugin support allows for a psuedo-graphical interface. I'm not sure if it's permitted to offer MUSHclient downloads from your own website, but if it is this could be combined with the self-extractor to provide new players with a rather fancy introduction to the mud.

My only real concern is that MUSHclient (like most other mud clients) is very clearly third-party software from a "look and feel" perspective. I know the source code is available for earlier versions though, so presumably you could use it to design something that appeared more tailored to your individual mud - but I could see this requiring a fair amount of work, and you'd lose out on the more recent MUSHclient changes and updates.

I know Aardwolf created their own custom setup for MUSHclient, and it does look pretty good, but (to me) the client still doesn't really feel as if it's part of the game. It still has that generic feel to it.

I guess I'm rather undecided on the issue. I do reckon that a decent client that really looks and feels as if it's part of the mud could provide a clear advantage when it comes to drawing in new mudders. But I'm not sure whether that advantage is enough to offset the drawbacks. Has anyone tried customising a copy of MUSHclient, or any other free client with graphical capabilities?
14 Sep, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Having asked about future possibilities for skinning on the MUSHclient forums, it now seems that MUSHclient does already support full skinning functionality, which renders much of my concern moot.

I really need to start playing around with MUSHclient a bit more, I think.
14 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
I'm not sure if it's permitted to offer MUSHclient downloads from your own website, but if it is this could be combined with the self-extractor to provide new players with a rather fancy introduction to the mud.

I think you are free to distribute your own version. I believe that Aardwolf does, in any case, and Lasher and Nick were working rather closely together.

KaVir said:
I know the source code is available for earlier versions

The source code is in fact available for all versions. More of a problem is that it uses libraries like MFC that are only legally distributed with the full VS (and not the express version, for example).

KaVir said:
Having asked about future possibilities for skinning on the MUSHclient forums, it now seems that MUSHclient does already support full skinning functionality, which renders much of my concern moot.

I really need to start playing around with MUSHclient a bit more, I think.

MUSHclient is incredibly powerful and the potential is very high. Were I to need a custom client, I would extremely strongly consider writing it around MUSHclient's plugin and miniwindow infrastructure instead of trying to roll my own. My main issue with MUSHclient is that I can't compile it easily. (I have a (legal) copy of MSVS lying around, but I do all of my development on Linux.)
14 Sep, 2009, Orrin wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
I think there's a couple of issues around the whole topic of custom clients.

1. Accessibility. With Vista now your players may not be able to play the game from a telnet link and the alternative of having to download, install and configure a third party program is going to put off some potential players. This is probably where web based clients are most useful. There are several free alternatives around using Java or Flash so it should be fairly easy to put something like this on a mud website which would give that "one click and you're in" feature. It's also worth mentioning that these are going to provide better cross platform compatibility than something like a custom version of mushclient.

2. Interface enhancement. With control over both the client and the server it's a lot easier to put in cool stuff such as mappers, split windows, stat guages, buttons and icons, etc. Mushclient is skinnable, can do custom windows and graphics, and is open source, so it would be ideal for something like this. The only problem I think would be targetting linux and mac users.

It could be argued that there are two different goals here; one to provide a way for new players to try out the game as simply as possible, and second to provide a better playing experience for established players. At present I think a customisable mushclient fails at the former, whereas web based clients tend to lack the sophistication to satisfy the latter. Ideally you would want just one client, but until then I think offering both a simple web based client alongside something like a customised mushclient is definitely going to help.

The custom web client we have for Maiden Desmodus is not much more than a skinned terminal window with stat guages and some MXP style navigation, but IMHO it does a nice job transitioning website visitors into the game. I would like to enhance the web client but it's going to be very tough to compete with clients like mushclient/zmud that have years of development behind them so in the end I may just keep the web client simple and offer a custom version of mushclient or something similar alongside it.
14 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Orrin said:
The only problem I think would be targetting linux and mac users.

MUSHclient works quite well under Wine, and I'm told that it works well under Parallels as well. Obviously a cross-platform GUI toolkit would have been nicer to begin with, but all is not lost fortunately.
14 Sep, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Orrin said:
1. Accessibility. With Vista now your players may not be able to play the game from a telnet link and the alternative of having to download, install and configure a third party program is going to put off some potential players. This is probably where web based clients are most useful. There are several free alternatives around using Java or Flash so it should be fairly easy to put something like this on a mud website which would give that "one click and you're in" feature.

That's a very good point…for a long time, one of the strengths of muds was that they didn't require any downloads - but with the telnet client not installed by default in Vista, that's no longer the case for many users. For that reason alone I can see the value of having a simple client as part of the website.

But a prettied-up web-based client could also be used to try and pull in players from browser games. You wouldn't really need the complex functionality and power of something like MUSHclient, either (assuming people could also use regular clients to connect) - this would mostly be a way of getting a new audience in the door.
14 Sep, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm a big fan of anyterm. It's OSS so you can customize the look however
suits you (which is largely a matter of html/css, so not exactly rocket science)
and it plows through most firewalls with ease, since it's AJAX.

The downside is that you need to have a general idea what yer doin with
apache and you need to either be root or convince root to do some stuff for ya.

Oh and it's constantly polling, and though that's not a huge bandwidth deal,
it's not a trivial issue for some folks.

The fabulous upside tho is that it doesn't have that goofy flash policy server problem,
it can be run through SSL making it secure, there's no download or install, and
you don't even need to be able to telnet out of your network…just web access
suffices. If it could only provide informed consent, I'd marry it.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
14 Sep, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
Oh and it's constantly polling, and though that's not a huge bandwidth deal, it's not a trivial issue for some folks.

What exactly is "non trivial"? I used to use webshell, and managed to rack up around 1.3 GB in a month (with 2-3 connections, mostly idling in the background). I wouldn't mind being able to connect through a firewall again, but I don't fancy a repeat of the IT Inquisition.
14 Sep, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Cratylus said:
Oh and it's constantly polling, and though that's not a huge bandwidth deal, it's not a trivial issue for some folks.

What exactly is "non trivial"? I used to use webshell, and managed to rack up around 1.3 GB in a month (with 2-3 connections, mostly idling in the background). I wouldn't mind being able to connect through a firewall again, but I don't fancy a repeat of the IT Inquisition.


Short answer: I don't know.

Speculative answer: I don't think it's nearly that much. As part of my testing I had a test player
on an anyterm connection 24/7 for a cupla weeks and I didn't notice any unusual b/w spike
in my vps stats page. However, it's worth testing more precisely. I'll see if I can figure out some
way to give you an actual answer.

Even if the b/w is minimal tho, a connection that is constantly tagging a server on the outside
all day with oddly shaped requests is prolly gonna get noticed, if you have net torquemadas. :(

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
14 Sep, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
It's possible going multi-platform using TinTin++, the only downside is that it's limited to a VT100 interface. screenshot1 screenshot2

The main advantage of tintin is that interface scripts are easy to write, and several of them are floating around the internet to serve as an example, including one for godwars2. I also don't think a fully graphical interface is that much of an advantage, a MUD is still a text game.

I wouldn't mind creating a couple of mud specific tintin builds since it's fairly easy for me to do, send me a PM if you're interested.
14 Sep, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
Even if the b/w is minimal tho, a connection that is constantly tagging a server on the outsideall day with oddly shaped requests is prolly gonna get noticed, if you have net torquemadas. :(

Well I'm allowed to surf as long as it's not illegal/pornographic, and as long as it doesn't interfere with my work (i.e., as long as I'm sensible about it nobody minds) - it's just that "suspicious activity" tends to draw attention. A huge amount of traffic obviously raised a red flag, and constant polling might do the same. I'm really just after something that'll run quietly in the background, allowing me to keep tabs on the mud by checking on it every so often.

Scandum said:
I also don't think a fully graphical interface is that much of an advantage, a MUD is still a text game.

I would argue that it's primarily the client itself that differentiates a graphical mud from a text-based one. With a fully graphical interface, it would no longer be a text game.
14 Sep, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Scandum said:
I also don't think a fully graphical interface is that much of an advantage, a MUD is still a text game.

I would argue that it's primarily the client itself that differentiates a graphical mud from a text-based one. With a fully graphical interface, it would no longer be a text game.

I guess 'fully graphical' wasn't the right word choice. What I mean is that a user interface with buttons, health bars, and a pretty skin isn't going to convert people who aren't interested in playing a text game.
14 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
What I mean is that a user interface with buttons, health bars, and a pretty skin isn't going to convert people who aren't interested in playing a text game.

Actually, I disagree with this claim, precisely because many people are put off by text games because of the interface. Even if a lot of the content is still text, having auxiliary display windows can dramatically change what kind of information you display and how easily you interact with it.
14 Sep, 2009, Grimble wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Is the goal to get to a web interface that looks something like this, with nicer tiles obviously, and perhaps text windows that pop-up when you mouse over mobs, items, etc?

And yes, Ultima was my introduction to the fantasy computer game genre, so no matter how dated, it holds a special place in my heart.
14 Sep, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
I guess 'fully graphical' wasn't the right word choice. What I mean is that a user interface with buttons, health bars, and a pretty skin isn't going to convert people who aren't interested in playing a text game.

I don't think it's a black and white as that - even 'fully graphical' muds use a certain amount of text, and many text-based muds utilise graphics of some sort (even if they're just ASCII graphics such as maps). So it's not as if games are forced to choose one category or the other.

If you take a look at the various browser games out there, you'll notice that some are extremely popular despite having very basic graphics (often without any animation). I agree with David Haley's view about the interface putting off a lot of players - and I feel that a pretty front-end client could encourage such players to give the game a chance they wouldn't otherwise give it.

Browser games have a pretty big market of players, and I wouldn't mind tapping into it.
14 Sep, 2009, Kline wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
MobyGames link is a generic hotlink image :(
14 Sep, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Grimble said:
Is the goal to get to a web interface that looks something like this, with nicer tiles obviously, and perhaps text windows that pop-up when you mouse over mobs, items, etc?

I wasn't necessarily thinking of going that far - more a case of having a nice background, energy bars, a dynamically updating map (similar to an ASCII map but not ASCII) and perhaps various icons and buttons for different abilities (eg displaying your skills in a graphical tree like Diablo2).
14 Sep, 2009, Idealiad wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Archons of Avenshar has exactly that (a nice graphical map, buttons, health bars) and a main text window. It's also a Flash client though.
15 Sep, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Scandum said:
I guess 'fully graphical' wasn't the right word choice. What I mean is that a user interface with buttons, health bars, and a pretty skin isn't going to convert people who aren't interested in playing a text game.

I don't think it's a black and white as that - even 'fully graphical' muds use a certain amount of text, and many text-based muds utilise graphics of some sort (even if they're just ASCII graphics such as maps). So it's not as if games are forced to choose one category or the other.

Regardless, VT100 has been around for decades, and the number of muds who utilized it to create an interface can be counted on one hand. While an improvement over traditional prompts, it ultimately doesn't change all that much. Maps are useful for people who easily get lost, but most people won't bother playing a text game to the degree where they do get lost.

KaVir said:
If you take a look at the various browser games out there, you'll notice that some are extremely popular despite having very basic graphics (often without any animation). I agree with David Haley's view about the interface putting off a lot of players - and I feel that a pretty front-end client could encourage such players to give the game a chance they wouldn't otherwise give it.

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same games, but the games I know of are simple point and click games, where typing is reserved for talking to other players, and everything is represented with crappy graphics and very little text. I guess you could make a mud more accessible by making the command interface optional and adding a point and click interface.
15 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
The point is not what is possible functionally, but what is possible aesthetically and other things. Yes, it is possible to display some kind of realtime map using a terminal's cursor control, but that doesn't change the fact that very many players will look at it and say "ungh" without even giving it a chance. As you say yourself, this feature is not enough to get people to play. It is because although functionally it is a map, it just doesn't have the right look for people. There's also the issue of interacting with that map, but that's another question entirely.
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