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

[Shawn Halpenny]

On Wed, 21 Jan 1998, Chris Gray wrote:

> [Marian:]
> :                            When I describe some
> :landscape and mention there are dewdrops on the grass then the natural re-
> :action by the reader  is to wonder why those dewdrops are important.  They
> :are not but there is no escaping this habit. You can overcome it by provi-
> :ding so much detail that the dewdrops are but one of many but then you are
> :losing most of what makes text different from graphics  (and have a lot to
> :write also ;).
> 
> Yep. What's even more important is that you will lose many of your players,
> too. Some people are slow readers - they will not play a game in which
> they don't have enough time to read things before it scrolls of the
> screen. Even if it doesn't, their progress in the game will be so slow
> that it will be a boring game for them.

Okay, we have Slowpoke reading the long room text where his character
is standing.  As he's about halfway done (and by pure chance), a
group of orcs comes tearing through, chopping down anything in its
path.  Of course the room description is going to scroll off the
screen as the descriptions from wanton destruction are displayed. 
Shouldn't that be expected?  Does Slowpoke really care about the dew
on the grass as the orcs come tearing through?  Probably not.  He'll
stop reading the room description whether he's forced to because it
scrolled away or because he cares much more about his imminent death.

Fine.  So now Slowpoke's room description scrolls off because of the
inane global channel chatter.  Are those channels toggleable?  Is
Slowpoke required to pay attention to the global channels?  Probably
not.  If he can't keep up with the pace of things and he's got everything
configured to the slowest...well, he can go play chess.

This is not to say that I am advocating a do-or-die,
always-on-the-edge game pace.  I _am_ saying that where such things
can be controlled by the user, allow that control.  Toggleable
channels, configurable brief modes, etc.  Everyone here understands
that it is too hard to have the perfect information output rate for
all users, but accomodations can be made for those one or two
standard deviations away from the mean.

A well-designed client might be able to allay some concerns of losing
information because of scrolling.  

(The above is, of course, all firmly IMO).  

--
Shawn Halpenny