[MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

Chris Gray wrote:

> From my experience, the complete opposite is true. I have never
> experienced much in the way of emotion from reading a book (other than
> sympathetic sadness from books like "Lassie"). I can't imagine how a
> book could startle me, for example. If you are a very empathic person,
> perhaps you relate to the characters in a book much more strongly than
> I do. For me, a book is entertainment. A really good book can be so
> engrossing that I'll keep reading until my eyes glaze over, but about
> the only emotion that comes out of it is satisfaction and contentment.

Have you been reading the Gunslinger series by Stephen King? How exactly did
you feel about the multiple-year wait between "The Waste Lands" and "Wizard
and Glass"? Was it any less agonising than the wait between "The Empire
Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi"? Aren't you anxious for the NEXT book
in the series? Me, I read the Belgariad when it first came out. Volume by
volume. One by one. I waited for each and every book with baited breath. I
cared about what was going to happen and how it was all going to turn out.
That's the mark of a good author.

But we don't really mean books. We mean TEXT. Let's say I show you a picture
of a dragon. To use something we can all look at as a frame of reference, I'll
give you a URL: http://www.darklock.com/fantasy/gallery/drag/drag.html --
which is, if you ask me, a pretty damn terrifying dragon. IF -- and this is a
big if -- you look at it properly.

When I look at this picture, I think 'Wow, cool dragon'. That's about it.
That's all. Terrifying? Hell no. Easy to put on a MUD? Don't make me laugh. I
look at this picture and go 'A dragon! Kill it!'

But let's back it up into text mode. Using pure text, we can depict exactly
the proper details. Much more cheaply. Much more efficiently. Listen.

"The rocks crack and shift under the weight of a tremendous dragon, its scales
gleaming a deep crimson in the fading light of sunset. Twin slit-pupilled eyes
burn beneath a sharply ridged brow, twin horns jutting back from the skull as
it swings from side to side, searching, the nostrils flaring as it sniffs the
air searching for prey, and its lip curls in anticipation to reveal rows of
glittering needle sharp teeth as the eyes turn and fasten on you."

Two sentences. Less than 1K of space. And if you ask me, it's a hell of a lot
more effective than putting a picture up on the screen. The fact of the matter
is, a picture will never startle you either. You walk around a corner and are
confronted by a picture of a dragon. Wow, you think, cool picture. And off you
go. Might and Magic never immersed me.

The mark of a good game is that it allows you to stop thinking about how to
tell the game what to do, and start thinking about what you actually want to
do. Ideally, you can just do it, and think about it later. I agree, graphics
can make MUDs accessible to a lot more people -- but the real killer
technology in this respect is the Quake 2 engine and what it brings with it. I
can be immersed and taken in by a game of Quake. I can lose myself in it. Time
flies. What about, say, Ultima? Never. I've never gotten immersed in Ultima,
although I've gotten very involved in it. Wizardry? Ha. Warcraft? In your
dreams. Diablo? Oh, please.

If you really want to make a graphical MUD, look at the Quake technology.
That's where people want a graphic MUD to go. Throw out all the concepts of
just adding graphics to existing MUDs. Graphic MUD players will want a
real-time dungeon crawl. In fact, you could redo your average Diku a lot more
convincingly as a Quake TC. Multiplayer needs work. It needs a lot of server
to run. But if we could kick it up as a coop Quake server, most of the Diku
areas would prove to be pretty vicious and make for a good game. Particularly
with respawn, and if the map was big enough.

I know, Quake isn't a MUD. But go play Quake 2. It's getting there. It's
getting awful close. And before people jump up to complain about system
requirements, allow me to remind you: once upon a time, not long ago, people
could do real work on 286 machines. The industry moves. The world grows up.
Live with it. You can't move to the next level if you chain yourself to a big
rock on this one.

--
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"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a
new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by
the preservation of the old institution, and merely lukewarm defenders in
those who would gain by the new one."                      -- Machiavelli
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