On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, Joe DiLascio wrote:
> Not to say that every mud should be multimedia... but...
>
> MSP (Mud Sound Protocol, for the unknowing) seems to have caught on (well, a
> little bit :p)... What thoughts have ye all about an MGP (guess what 'G'
> stands for :p)? 'Twould be trivial to implement a toggleable gif viewer in a
> mud client (at least on Win32) to show static or animated gifs. You know,
> nothing ground shaking (What is this-- Ultima Online?), maybe just display a
> series of pictures in combat like "!!PIC(mobattacks.gif)...
> !!PIC(yougethit.gif)... !!PIC(youattack.gif).. !!PIC(youmiss.gif)".. you get
> the idear. Maybe even multiple viewers (self, weapon, opponent).. -shrug-
>
> Heck, with proper graphic and sound coordination, a player could get the
> impression he's using one of those "Multimedia Extravaganza"-type CD-ROMs
> featuring stick figures re-enacting the Battle of Gettysburg.. back when 4x CD
> drives were THE thing :p
> Hmm, a mud narrated by Shelby Foote..?
>
> Personally, I think graphical muds are too new to be practical for the mass
> populace... but adding a little ambience to a text mud is easy enough
> nowadays.
>
Oddly enough, one of the main advantages of muds is that they don't have
graphics and sounds, because graphical muds lag the connections of the
ISDN challenged(me) and many other mud players. Of course perhaps having
a spot on the web page where you can download the latest pictures and
sounds, and throw them into a mud directory isn't a bad idea, or where you
can turn on an online option to download it from the internet when needed
for a fast connection would be good. Also, many people are talking about
windows clients, but many users of muds don't use windows, they use one of
the various flavors of linux. Sure this feature is good, but only if
everyone could take advantage of it. However, MIDI would be good, as it
has small files, but not every sound card can use midi. Some type of
standard software midi synthesizer distributed with the client would be
good. Also multimedia cdroms suck, there is another reality to the mud.
When you play a game, if it has sucky pictures, it ruins the game. If you
make it to some place, and the pictures in the game aren't up to what your
imagination is expecting, it can ruine the game. The mud is a great
invention, because it allows your imagination to flow free, that is one of
the main advantages of a mud. The mud world can seem more realistic than
any game that has graphics, limited only by the power of the imagination.
ObCircle: Hmm Anyone ever consider implementing dimensions in a mud, and
making each dimension a separate process than the mud, so players on that
dimension can't see or interact with players of the other dimension? The
connections and dns stuff can be handled by one thread, and each dimension
could have its own thread. I just figured it might be something cool.
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