[DGD] DGD & Simulations

[Christopher Allen]

"Dannic" <dannic at orpgs.com>:
> Why do that when popular clients that quite a few
> mudders use has this built into the client.  Zmud, for
> example, uses a protocol to make frames for the
> different things, ie images, chat, combat ect.  all
> that has to be done is send tags to the client.  This
> is much easier than parsing it all at the server level
> if the client can handle the tags.  The two clients
> that I am aware of which use this protocol are Zmud and
> MushClient.  it is not all that dissimiliar from html.
> especially since I can send clickable hyperlinks to the
> client.  You can even detect to see if the client has
> this protocol enabled(which it is default for zmud).
>
> I don't have to build a webpage or build a client to
> take advantage of the scripting.  Nor do I need
> knowledge of java applets.  Its a nice feature and you
> probably should look into it.

Take a look at Castle Marrach and Grendel's Revenge while using Internet
Explorer on a PC (we have a free month trial membership.) There is no
way that we could do the beauty and elegance of either of those clients
with Zmud.

In addition, as you will see, there is not annoying installer -- just
wait for the applet to auto-install, and 'voila', you are running the
game.

As for why the different clients? We'd love it if we could have just one
cross-platform client, but client-side Java sucks. 85% of our users use
Internet Explorer, so ActiveX was the best way to get the wonderful
look-and-feel that we wanted. Our newest client is a Mozilla client,
which is still a bit in alpha quality, but it looks like it will very
nice.

>From the programming point of view of the game designer, ideally you
shouldn't care much what client you are using if they all use the same
protocol. We are not quite there yet (for instance, there is not a Java
client for Grendel's Revenge) but we hope to be.

-- Christopher Allen



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