[MUD-Dev] Clients

[Mike Sellers]

At 10:08 PM 2/11/98 PST8PDT, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
>At 09:22 PM 2/11/98 +0000, Jon A. Lambert wrote:
>>It's not a
>>text vs. graphics popularity contest.  It's largely an obscure-kludgy-unix-
>>command-line-babble interface vs. something more windows/lisa/x-like.
>>It's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  We'll do the interface like its
>>always been done and complain about the IQ of the rest of the I-net.
>
>Well, you have to admit that the intelligence level of the average adult
>American has declined quite rapidly since the eighties. 

Is this humor?  This is a pretty easily refuted assertion (if anything the
IQ of the average US adult has risen slightly in the past 20-30 years).  

I think Jon's last statement above is to the point: it's not that the
average IQ has gone down, it's more the case that the average geek-quotient
of people on the Net has gone down dramatically in the past few years, and
will continue to do so.  With this, their tolerance for obscure interfaces
goes down, and the demand for clearer, more usable interfaces goes up.  


>Anyone given any real thought toward building a server ENTIRELY under NT,
>with GUI server manager and administrative interface? It's a much more
>robust solution than it once was, and another thought would be that with
>the impending release of the BeOS for Intel we might be able to do
>something over *there* as well.

M59 servers run on NT boxes, though the admin software runs on W95.  Were I
to do this again (ahem), I'd more likely put the server itself on a
high-powered Unix box and make the admin tools W95-accessible.  OTOH, the
difference in robustness, scalability, and overall price-performance for,
say, high-end Sun servers vs. NT servers is becoming less and less clear as
time goes on.  

>I wonder if you could build an effective MUD using ActiveX, ASP, and SQL
>Server. 

Yes, you can.  Quite well, in fact.    


>>
>>Is there really LESS text in a Graphical mud?  
>
>There sort of has to be, doesn't there? I mean, the graphics replace some
>of the text, but you are correct in that there will always be SOME text. At
>least until real time audio becomes feasible. 

Right.  There is less text, but not *that* much less text.  

And even with audio, you'll want text for some time -- the technologically
or biologically audio-challenged will not be going away any time soon.  

>>Isn't this an unwarranted assumption? 
>>Are Doom and Diablo responsible for this?
>
>I must say, Quake in my opinion *is* a MUD -- it saves state (player
>efficiency and frag count), permits a lot of simultaneous players (over
>seventy on Base100), is programmable and customisable, and simulates a
>world within which the players interact. 

Wellll... this is getting us into the choppy waters of "what is a MUD
anyway?" (hmm, I smell a FAQ), but I would say that Quake is missing two
ingredients common to every MUD: a social aspect within the game (even the
bloodiest dikus I've seen have both more support for and actual social
interaction than quake), and a persistent world.  This is more than just
saving player state and frag count in any meaningful terms, though perhaps
this is just arguing differences of degree and not kind.  Still, the idea
that if I play today and come back tomorrow and the *same world* is still
going on is perhaps the most central attribute of a MUD, IMO.  It may be
too that if that world continues while I'm gone but is still only a
frag-fest, that some essential MUD-quality is lost too; in other words that
both of these qualities, acting together, are necessary for a MUD.  

But as I said above, arguing about definitions like this too much is
nonsensical.  Quake is a virtual world, of a type -- a narrowly focused,
violence-centered, minimally persistent world.  


--

Mike Sellers   Chief Alchemist -- Online Alchemy   mike at online-alchemy.com

"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others 
may despise it, is the invention of good games.  And it cannot be done 
by men out of touch with their instinctive values."  - Carl Jung