[MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds

[Matt Chatterley]

On Thu, 25 Dec 1997, ##Make Nylander wrote:

> [Original message sent by Mike Sellers]
> | >| 
> | >	For me, the idea of a graphics-only MUD has always sounded like
> | >	"we invented video tape, now let's burn all the books!".
> | 
> | Let's not have the graphical people telling the text
> | people they're geek-dinosaurs and the text people accusing the graphical
> | people of having no imagination or making other patronizing comments.  
> | >	There's plenty of room on the net for graphical MUDs, and they're
> | >	probably a lot more appealing to the Nintendo generation than 
> | >	traditional text-based MUDs. But for people like me, who've grown
> | >	up playing RPGs, the representation of the game world is of no
> | >	importance, since we've already got the best medium of all available:
> | >	our imagination.
> | 
> | Okay, ignoring the patronizing nature of this paragraph, let me just point

Wishing to avoid a bout of flames, but unable to resist dashing a *little*
magnesium powder on the fire:
 
> 	How am I being patronizing? I stated my opinion, I didn't claim
> 	the original poster was wrong. In his post, Greg Munt implied that
> 	most people play text MUDs because they don't know anything better,

I agree with Greg almost unconditionally (there is really no other option
<vbg>), but particularly on this - a lot of people prefer text interfaces
to gui, and I would wager a slightly larger portion actually prefer gui.
The rest are in-between. Some people use what they are given, and are
unaware of potential or existant alternatives.

Example (a bit flaky due to Christmas hangover-and-two-thirds):

I use X11r6 running on Linux. The applications I use most typically are..
colour xterms! I also use netscape, and an X-based frontend (*not* GUI
though) to my editor; xjed.

My mother uses windows 95 (all MS comments laid aside), and was originally
happy to use it - now she has used some parts of my setup (she uses her
system for graphic design, and was drooling over the latest GIMP release),
she is trying to work out if a switch is feasible.

Other people are perfectly content with windows, knowing of alternatives.

This was thoroughly beaten to death a while ago in a similar thread. :)

> 	I'm saying that most people are well aware of possibilities of
> 	the Web, but also acknowledge the economical and technical limitations.

Yes/no. I fall somewhere in the grey on this statement - a lot of people
are ignorant of some of the web possibilities and limitations (for
instance the whole problem of secure data transfer), and a few ignore some
of them (people who refuse to use stuff which is not in the HTML 3.2 spec,
for instance, frames - this is justifiable, frames are not official), and
even those who refuse to use things such as java applets (which are part
of HTML 3.2). All on the basis of the software people may be using.
Obviously lynx does not support applets, but at some peoples surprise, it
has quite nice frame support (assuming reasonable logic is used in the
HTML writeup).

Hardware limitations were and are shown by phenomemon such as the
'internet-slowdown' on several sites when IE4 because available for
download, and of course, the strain put on systems by the absurdly
overpackaged browsers we end up using to support all this neat stuff!

Rant mode off. Sorry. :)

> 	I like GUIs, I like pretty graphics, and IMO if you're planning to make
> 	a career out of coding MUDs, graphics are the only way to go. BUT,
> 	producing a graphical MUD takes a lot of time and money, and 
> 	until someone can run something akin to Ultima Online free of charge,
> 	there'll be aplenty of people who'll be quite happy to suffer the
> 	limitations of text-only interface just to be able to play for free.

I do still agree here. I cannot *afford* to shell out to play games online
(being online, despite free calls, is heftily expensive via a personal
account for a student where I live - mind you, it could be worse), besides
which there are many truly excellent free games (some text based).

Who knows, in a few years, as some of the talent present on this list
evolves, we may see a cluster of free graphical games (or partially
graphical games) - it seems a logical direction for muds to develop in.

A strangely mangled phrase from my drunken mind is recalled, soon to
become a .sig; "We can recode it, we have the technology."

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	ICQ: 5580107
"I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world." -Einstein