I've found than one frustrating part of being a telnet- based application is that MUDs are extremely limited in medium. Before that line spawns a debate on text as a medium itself, what I'm actually referring to is the inability to do other things along with text. A well- written description can convey a lot about an image or location. But music is nice. But to do that, I've got a streaming mp3 system (that caches the files), but that adds a freeAMP/mudAMP (this was written and implemented by a friend of mine) client. And I want to be able to provide more data in the form of graphics, i.e. maps. So far, my best solution is to provide a maintained connection to my server, and then tell the client to get more information. But now we're at _3_ clients to play a MUD. Obviously, writing my own client is an option. But now we face a couple fairly painful facts: telnet works on all platforms and most people have a preferred client already. zMUD allows writing modules, but zMUD is not free, and I don't think the 'vast majority' of players have tossed out the crash to use it. Of course, if the MUD's services were good enough, I could become a zMUD affiliate and sell zMUD on my MUD web site, but will I be violating the CircleMUD license? In the end, I'm probably going to have to write my own client, and most likely it will be in Java. The inherent slowness of Java will turn most people off to it, I fear. But everybody will have access to it. Do extra clients bother players? (For Windows,) I'm envisioning a mini-browser (approximately 150x150 pixels of viewing area) that you can set to 'Always on Top', then set it up in a corner of your screen so that it doesn't interfere with your "regular" playing, but displays what you request (a map, images of weapons/armor, etc.). The RoAClient has a lot of this functionality, but is remarkably unbeautiful. These are the questions I'm trying to point out, in a remarkably roundabout manner: 1. Do people actually buy zMUD? Is it worth developing for a specific _client_? 2. What kind of client things could be added (music, graphics, etc) without being considered annoyances? 3. How would you address the fact that telnet is a widely supported, cross-platform protocol, without writing clients for each platform? 4. I remember discussion of an actual MUD protocol (not MSP, MXP, etc). Does the community need an open-source MUD client available across platforms, etc? Will this happen? 5. What other problems could you see in this? Anyway, just about any input on the topic would be interesting to see. I have a slight fear that Zugg's zMUD would put a lot of strain on trying to use any other client in Windows. Oh, and I'm definitely not advocating turning the MUD away from text-based, so these are just additions, that one can live without (does that become my ultimate excuse?). -Tony (ending message before rambling further). -k. -- +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | FAQ: http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html | | Archives: http://post.queensu.ca/listserv/wwwarch/circle.html | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
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