[MUD-Dev] The MLI Project

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 10:13 AM 2/24/98 +0000, I personally witnessed Chris Gray jumping up to
say:
>[Ling:]
>
>:By displaying information regarding a single 'thing' across several
>:windows (specially as above) would require the player to process the
>:information and spent some time as a detective.  Piecing things from
>:different parts of the spectrum to get the big picture.

I think some people might actually like this. I wouldn't be one of them,
but I imagine a lot of people would think this sort of thing is really
cool... sort of like all the different gauges on a flight simulator. They
all mean something small individually, but they fit together into a bigger
picture that you just have to understand the interaction to get a look at.

>:This seems silly coz a computer should do this all for you.  So perhaps a
>:layering system where you can switch off layers.  If any of the other
>:senses is very strong, it can spill over.

Umm... that seems overly complex. I don't know that it would really be
workable. 

>That could work, but would take some getting used to. For people just
>starting, separate windows might be less confusing. Having to integrate
>the data might not be too unrealistic - humans often have to do that in
>real life, e.g. trying to identify what is giving off a sound or a
>smell, by wandering around listening/sniffing. 

Also if you have multiple senses, you often have to specifically try to
*use* one. If you're not paying attention to it, then you don't notice
anything. Something I was thinking of was maybe a system where you would
have 'throbbers' (like the Netscape meteor storm or the IE spinning comet)
on your toolbar icons: when you move into a room, any of the toolbar icons
related to senses that are updated start the throbber, which should be
subtle but noticeable. Then you have a very simple sequence. Walk into a
room, look at the toolbar, and click the icons that are throbbing. You're
now assured that you've seen what there is to see in the room, within your
abilities, and you can move on. If you don't particularly care about
exploring, you can ignore them. If you REALLY don't care, you could take
those icons off the toolbar. Depending on the sense, you might have any
number of things pop up from those icons: a picture, another window, a
series of things you can smell/hear, a little dropdown description,
whatever. Depending on the sense and the information you're going to
display, you can select an appropriate information vehicle.


>However, I would expect
>a visual-oriented additional sense to be fairly well integrated with
>normal vision, after a couple of months of use. So, a good setup would
>allow both versions - separate windows as well as an integrated one, with
>control of what all aspects are displayed, and how.

I think a really good setup would choose one of the methods and stick with
it, rather than trying to do both! There are things you can do with the
layered approach that just don't work well with the windowed approach; for
example, you might allow descriptions that somehow handle different senses
in-line. In a windowed system, unless the description is worded right, it
won't translate. Consider the following description, assuming %INFRA%
brackets text which is only for those using infravision:

The room is rather dark, with only a slight glow spilling over from a light
source to the south which pulsates slowly. %INFRA%The room is uniformly
cold, and the light gives off no discernible heat.%INFRA%

This works for both systems! You can take the part in the %INFRA% tags and
put it in another window if the player has infravision. You can place it
inline if he has it layered. Smooth, eh? Not really... along comes the
builder, thinking his descs are a little too simple and first-grader style,
and decides to improve the description a little. (I wish more builders
would do this.)

The room is rather dark%INFRA% and uniformly cold%INFRA%, with only a
slight glow spilling over from a light source to the south which%INFRA%
gives off no discernible light and %INFRA% pulsates slowly.

If you have infravision, you get "The room is rather dark and uniformly
cold, with only a slight glow spilling over from a light source to the
south which gives off no discernible light and pulsates slowly." If you
don't, you get "The room is rather dark, with only a slight glow spilling
over from a light source to the south which pulsates slowly." Layered
systems, this works. But windowed? Your infravision information, once
again, is "and uniformly cold" and "gives off no discernible light". How do
you put that into a description window?

Also consider that with the windowed approach, you have the capacity for
other people to write plug-in modules and expand the architecture to handle
different things... for example, someone might write a RealAudio plug-in
that retrieves the RA file from a server and hands it off to the player, so
your MUDding is enhanced by music. Someone else might write a PNG
displayer, or something for some odd format no one uses anymore like PPM. 

I'm a big proponent of things that have pure hack value. I'm much quicker
to buy something that sucks but has an extensible architecture; I'm sort of
indifferent to things that come out which are damn good, but you get what
you got and deal with it. Particularly with MUDs, which have met a lot of
resistance to the idea of dedicated clients to begin with, I think a system
constructed with the idea that people are going to grab an SDK and write
add-ons is more likely to be a good one. Not that I'm suggesting you do a
half-ass job of the client, but after all what you think really kicks ass
is something the next guy may absolutely hate.