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

[Greg Munt]

[##Make Nylander]

> [Mike Sellers]
>
> | [##Make Nylander]
> |
> | >	For me, the idea of a graphics-only MUD has always sounded like
> | >	"we invented video tape, now let's burn all the books!".

I've never seen a commercial mud of UO's ilk, my only frame of reference 
is something like Sierra On-Line's "King's Quest" series. AFAIK these 
games featured a mixed interface (both text and graphics) - and I would 
doubt the success of a graphics-only mud. My reasoning behind this is 
that when you *completely* abandon text, you lose functionality. If you 
are going to change the interface, it should, at the very least, be able 
to provide identical functionality to what it is replacing.

> | 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.

I'm confident that these sorts of comments will stay in the newsgroups, 
where they belong (did I say that?) - so long as this list is moderated, 
at any rate :)

> | >	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

I don't see this as patronising in the slightest. Perhaps you are being a 
tad over-defensive? Remember, this isn't USENET. Perhaps your definitions 
of "The Nintendo generation" differ, somewhat. Taken in context, I would 
assume the implication of a group of people who are used to GUI's (and 
perhaps *expect* them), rather than beings of lower intelligence, 
and attention-span. 
 
> 	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'm saying that most people are well aware of possibilities of
> 	the Web, but also acknowledge the economical and technical limitations.

The difference between not knowing anything better, and not being able to 
access anything better (or not being prepared to fork out the cash, in 
order to do so), is that really significant, in this context?

> 	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.

The implication here is that people want to use mud GUI's, but either 
don't have, or aren't offered, the resources to do so.

Let's define what is considered "Web Technology": HTML, definitely; 
JavaScript, yes; ActiveX, no chance. DHTML is coming, bringing CSS with 
it. Perhaps even XML too. A foreseeable danger is IE's non-compliance 
with Sun. (Was this sorted out? Last I heard, Sun were petitioning 
Microsoft for the removal of the Java logo from its browser...) 

As far as rapidly-changing technologies go, I see no problem, so long as 
backwards compatibility is observed - and perhaps an icon saying which 
'version' that page is compliant with (similar to the HTML icons 
available from www.w3.org). Plug-ins are an option, but the danger there 
is perhaps requiring a seperate plugin for each browser - and, of course, 
the potential player who can't be bothered to go away and download yet 
*another* new plugin!

The graphics vs text argument is not new. I remember when Infocom 
released its first graphical adventure. The same arguments were given 
then, for and against using graphics in the so-called "Interactive 
Fiction." 

These days, pure text adventures are dead. Does anyone see this happening 
with muds too? Can the commercial successes cross over into the world of 
free muds? Should they? 

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