[MUD-Dev] Clients

[Travis Casey]

On Friday, 13 February 98, Stephen wrote:

> I once took a strong look at the Pueblo Mud Client, a psuedo-html compliant
> interface.  Basically, my thought was to break the text sent to the player down
> into logical groupings, and display this information in seperate windows.  I
> achieved this goal for the most part, sending room descriptions to one (
> overwrite ) window, objects/npcs/people to another ( overwrite ), and
> communications and generic events to another, splitting information into a total
> of 5 primary and two pop up windows.  Also implemented point-click
> object/inventory manipulation, sound support using a downloadable soundpack and
> some other interesting features.

> I found the execution of mudding as a player using this interface to be much
> more realistic...when someone walked into the room they appeared in the Visible
> window.  When the sun went down, the room description updated itself.  When I
> left clicked on an object on the ground, by inventory and equipped window popped
> up, allowing me to manipulate items with point-click until I closed them.  All
> in all, I felt it was a much stronger interface then any general "one window per
> mud" client.

Sounds quite nice to me.  The only thing I'd want to make sure of is
that the windows would be small enough so they could be arranged into
a small area -- I'd prefer not to have the mud taking up my whole
screen, and I'd rather have the windows close enough together that I
can flick my eyes between them easily.

There's a hack-like PC game called Castle of the Winds which has an
interface like you're describing, but with sub-windows inside a larger
window rather than separate windows.  One window displayed an overhead
view of the area around the character, another which showed the
character's body with what was being worn/carried on what location,
windows showing the contents of the character's backpack, pouches, and
other containers, and another with bars showing current hit point
status, magic point status, etc.

I loved that interface.

> Players hated it.  I think that out of about 20 people that saw it, one person
> actually wanted to use it continuously, and was begging to see the code to
> support it on his mud ( another ack ).  I just found that your generic "text
> mudder" is pretty set in their ways, and aren't interested in too much change.

Well, I can't speak for your players, of course, but I do wonder
whether people said that they hated it, or if you concluded that they
hated it because they didn't use it much.  I've seen some mud
interfaces that I really liked, but I still just use standard telnet.

Why?  I mud from a variety of locations, and don't want to get used to
using an interface that I won't always be able to have.  If that
interface can only be used on some muds, I'd be even less likely to
want to use it.

I tried Pueblo, and even visited a couple of Pueblo-enhanced muds,
back when it first came out.  However, I quickly decided that I didn't
want to start using a client that I couldn't use from work (I was on a
Unix workstation there), couldn't use when mudding from a friend's
house, couldn't use from a computer lab, and which took up about
several megabytes of my hard drive.

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