[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Thu, 25 Sep 1997 23:57:58 PST8PDT, "Jon A. Lambert"
<jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>On 25 Sep 97 at 20:39, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
>> I don't always count these among MUDs; in
>> fact, my suggestions that we just might learn something by looking at
>> MUSHes and MUCKs were met with some level of derision. 
>
>WRONG. Your insistence in using the term MUD to refer to things not
>of MUSH was met with a great deal of derision and resistance.

Yes, it was, as was my suggestion that maybe we ought to take a closer
look at the building interface on MUDs and perhaps take some cues from
the MUSH community. This in turn led to some very annoying responses
about how stupid all the @ signs were and I was obviously a codebase
bigot because @ signs suck so hard and having to type one is a big pain
in the ass and those MUSH building commands are just a bunch of crap.
(If @ signs are such a pain in the ass, what the hell are you doing
sending e-mail?) I said it was easy to use, and people said oh no it
isn't! I said MUDs have difficult building syntax, and people said like
what? So I gave an example and everyone basically said that obviously I
had never played anything except Dikus and MUSHes and I didn't know my
ass from a hole in the ground and the new interfaces were so much better
and somehow no one ever got around to providing an example of how
radically cool the building interface on that ultimately cool easy to
use server was. I did see a screen dump of a menued interface with
several fields I couldn't intuitively identify, but that hardly
qualified as 'easy' in my mind.

As I recall, the conversation rapidly degenerated into exactly what I
meant by 'MUD' and 'MUSH', a needless triviality which I cover in some
detail below. So it's not surprising that this is all you remember about
it. I suppose you'll remember this thread as having been about whether
people react in character on MUDs. *shrug* Whatever floats your boat,
man.

>It was your insistence in the earlier thread to make comparisons 
>between a MUSH interface and a MUD interface from a builder's 
>perspective if I am not mistaken.  

The interfaces are similar in purpose and vastly different in
implementation, which invites comparison. Much like apples and oranges,
which are both round edible fruity things that grow on trees, but which
people insist you cannot compare for some utterly nonsensical reason
that defies logic.

There is, however, no point in reviving the building interface thread.
It's been beaten up all over the place already, and evidently it's not
considered important. Luckily, people seem to think that to some degree
the *user* interface is important, which has led to some very thought
provoking discussion.

>It was also your contention that 
>good builder documentation exists for MUSHes but not for MUDs. 

Which in my own experience, being the only experience I can draw upon,
is true. I have seen excellent building documentation for MUSHes. I have
seen very little building documentation at all for MUDs. Prove me wrong:
show me. URLs, FTP sites, whatever. I don't care what form they're in.
Show me the docs. No one did this in the previous thread either. I had
one or two mentions of 'Joe-Bob did some good docs for WhizBangMUD
once', or similar things, but nothing specific. The burden of proof lies
with the proponent of the positive hypothesis, and to shoulder my
portion of said burden I submit "Amberyl's MUSH Manual" which may be
located easily and quickly on any search engine.

>Comparing a specific server-type to all others is about as about as 
>clear and useful as comparing a cow to a mammal. 

The comparison of a specific mammal's characteristics to the
characteristics of other mammals in the same class is both common and
accepted in scientific circles. The pit viper's sensory organs differ
rather radically from the sensory organs of other snakes, other
reptiles, and even other vertebrates -- and such a comparison does not
create dissent among the scientific ranks of the world, even though
there is more than one type of pit viper and there are several other
animals with heat-sensing organs. The comparison of the MUSH building
interface to the building interfaces generally accepted among other MUDs
is both a valid and useful activity, which was roundly dismissed as
condemnation of any MUD server that didn't fit my personal likes and
dislikes. 

I'm not persecuting anyone. I'm not championing one specific codebase
over all others. If I thought any one server was the greatest thing
since sliced bread, I would have no interest whatsoever in developing
new servers or discussing the characteristics of those new servers.
Since I am here, such is evidently not the case. 

>Perhaps your 
>assumptions about what a MUD game is about is also colored by these 
>distinctions. 

No, quite definitely they are, because the human mind is by nature
narcissistic. There is no shame in that quality, and it is in fact this
and similar qualities that make it the superb piece of biological
machinery that it is. Each and every experience we have is related in
thousands of ways to experiences we have already had, improving the
brain's ability to sort, separate, and group. This is furthermore an
efficient method of collation in almost any case, as chaos theory and
the fractal nature of reality bear out. It is never possible for the
human mind to be completely objective, as at that point it ceases to be
human.

Any non-humans on this list are free to exempt themselves from this.

>MUSH concepts have permeated many threads on this list.  Several 
>hundred messages in fact.  None of these messages received derision.
>Quite probably because the posters didn't say "MUSHes do this, MUDs 
>do that". 

It seems rather obvious to me that when I refer to 'man' and 'woman' the
meaning of 'man' is significantly different than when I refer to 'man'
and 'ape' -- and further, it does not imply in any way that 'ape' and
'woman' are equivalent, interchangeable, or even similar. A further
difference in definition is found in the treatment of 'man'/'beast',
'man'/'boy', 'man'/'wimp', and several other word pairs. This is called
'context sensitivity', and it is part of our basic reading comprehension
skills. I therefore submit for your consideration that there is a
context determination difficulty somewhere, and I rather doubt it's on
my end. The word 'level' carries multiple meanings in stock AD&D - a
designation of character experience, a measure of monster power, a
measure of spell power, a specific physical area of a dungeon - and yet
there is no confusion. I therefore postulate that it is not only
possible but *trivial* to have a single word which carries multiple
different meanings depending on context, and yet is perfectly
understandable in each of those contexts.

God forbid I may ever indulge in any neologism on this list. I think
people would have heart failure.

>It's been quite apparent to me for my entire existence on this 
>list and quite possibly before that the use of the term 'muds' has 
>always been used as a GLOBAL definition of ALL of our servers, 
>regardless of specifics.  

This usage is generally considered either entirely inappropriate usage,
or the ONLY appropriate usage. I was of this opinion also, and got a lot
of hell for it on several other lists. It's been quite apparent to me
for my entire existence PERIOD that no rule is absolute, and that the
right thing in location A is the wrong thing in location B. You don't
eat in the bathroom, and you don't crap on the dining table. To refer
summarily to all online (please fill in the remainder of your own
definition here) games as MUDs will get you in very hot discussions on
some of the other mailing lists I frequent.

Perhaps more to your own satisfaction, it should be obvious there are
times when you must draw a distinction between server family X and
everything else, such as when you hold up an example of what you
consider 'correct' behavior. You know, like that thread on building. It
is thus convenient AND correct to use the generic term MUDs to refer to
the remainder of the group even while a more specific term is used for
the example. A discussion of MUDs and MOOs would be perfectly
appropriate when spotlighting something specific to MOO. A discussion of
MUDs and Dikus would be likewise appropriate. A set *can* be
productively compared to a superset of itself, as quite obviously to say
it is a subset of the other set involves a direct comparison resulting
in a relevant and positive conclusion.

>There is a practical reason for this.
>All personal definitions result in confusion, babble and flames.

QED?

=+[caliban at darklock.com]=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=[http://www.darklock.com/]+=
"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more 
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a 
new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by 
the preservation of the old institution, and merely lukewarm defenders in 
those who would gain by the new one."                      -- Machiavelli
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