[MUD-Dev] Clients

[Greg Munt]

On Fri, 13 Feb 1998, Stephen Zepp wrote:

[Pueblo interface]

> 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.
> 
> 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.

Am I alone in thinking that player demand should not drive new mud
development? On this list, I don't think I am. (On Usenet... Hrmm.)

Generalising, I should say that players are dumb and stupid, and will
follow you so long as there is a clear path from the past to the present
to the future. 

Obviously, there is no path to what we must consider as the future of UIs.
In this and similar situations, you should ignore what the players say
they want (generalising again, what players say they want is not usually
what they want - most of the time, they don't know they want it until they
see it, and even then, some period of acclimitisation is warranted), and
go ahead and do your thing. I remember the uproar when Infocom started
using graphics in their interactive fiction. A while later, and no-one was
interested in a text-only interface. Look at Sierra's "Space Quest" series
- originally graphics and text, it is now wholly a GUI. 

You can't make decisions based on the current demands of the players -
but, rather, on their future demands. And their future UI demands are
definitely graphical. 

My current project will be supporting telnet only as a courtesy. There 
will be no line editor for telnet users. (Although I could do one, if I 
wanted to.) I should imagine that all of my initial players will be 
coming in through telnet. That does not mean I will support telnet in 
anything but a minimal way.

PLAYER DEMAND SHOULD NOT BE A FACTOR IN INNOVATIVE MUD DEVELOPMENT.

--
Greg Munt, greg at uni-corn.demon.co.uk; http://www.uni-corn.demon.co.uk/ubiquity/
"Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow."