[MUD-Dev] Clients

[Stephen Zepp]

Greg Munt wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 13 Feb 1998, Stephen Zepp wrote:
> 
> [Pueblo interface]
> 
[my description of my 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.
> 
> 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.
> 

I agree with this part, but you've also got to consider that no matter how well
_you_ like an interface, it's the players that will use it.  I didn't give up on
the peublo stuff because my players ( really playtesters, I'm not open ), didn't
like it, but because sending full length html was way to cumbersome...lag was
obvious whenever I had to send 24 characters for a single forground color
change, for example, as opposed to the under 7 char for a straight ansi
sequence.  We've been playing around with a 3 character command code sent from
the mud to a custom client, with a mud-configurable lookup table de-referencing
the command codes into client tasks.  Should be much more efficient.

In general, players shouldn't drive your design, but I strongly feel that they
must interact with it in the early stages to ensure that it's gonna work.  For
example, I have always liked SSI designs, but hated their interfaces so totally
that I will never buy another SSI game.  Stronghold comes quickly to mind..a
really cool game, but impossible ( for me ) to control and play effectively.

Z