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

[Mike Sellers]

At 03:50 AM 1/22/98 PST8PDT, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> ...
>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. 

Well said.  Years ago Don Norman wrote about the "articulatory gulf" (the
distance between what we do and what happens in a computer application) and
"semantic gulf" (the distance between what we mean and what happens in a
computer application) in user interfaces.  Narrowing these 'gulfs' means
what happens more closely matches what the user expects, which makes for a
better user experience.  As the complexity of the application grows, this
becomes even more noticeable.  And believe it or not, in terms of breadth
and depth of user interaction, MUDs (especially graphical ones) are among
the *most* complex applications I've seen -- moreso even than the
radiological consoles and neurosurgical navigation UIs I've designed.  

>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. 

Well, I think they're going to want more than just a dungeon crawl.  Take a
look at Asheron's Call -- it looks very much like what you're describing.
It's still my bet for the "best of class" of this first generation or so of
graphical MUDs.  

Oh, I think I mentioned this once before, but in terms of powering amazing
3D engines, consider that a good higher-end (but not *too* high end) target
machine for next Christmas is likely to be a 300MHz Pentium II with 32Mb of
RAM (or more).  Not a bad platform on which to run a pretty spiffy engine.  


--

Mike Sellers   Chief Alchemist -- Online Alchemy   mike at online-alchemy.com

"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others 
may despise it, is the invention of good games.  And it cannot be done 
by men out of touch with their instinctive values."  - Carl Jung