[MUD-Dev] Client Technology

[Andrew Wilson]

Jon Morrow:
> Over the past few weeks, I have been doing a little research regarding the
> current technology for MUD clients.  To clarify, I refer to clients as the
> software used in connecting to a text based world.  As I am more of a
> manager and conceptual designer, the most esoteric programming issues are a
> bit foreign to me.  However, I do have a strong foundation with which to
> make some basic judgments.
> 
> Currently, I am deciding which programming language would support a GUI
> based client most effectively.  Portability is obviously a consideration,
> while so is development time.  For these reasons, I am pondering the
> potential of Java.  Massive calculations will not need to be made, but I am
> a little concerned about what I have seen in its speed with graphical
> components.  Low-interaction video and audio must be supported, along with
> the regular graphical controls like text boxes.
> 
> As I am not incredibly educated in the pros and cons of the different
> languages in the gaming community, would anyone care to comment?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jon Morrow

A little off-topic perhaps:

Collaborative Virtual Workspace (CVW) clients exist in TclTk, Java
and on PalmOS (I dunno how the PalmOS version was built, perhaps
it was Java->C) .  Both Java and TclTk are cross-platform.  You
can write the same source code and it'll run on Unix/Mac/Windows
with a minimal tweaking.  The back-end of the CVW system is a MOO,
and a variant of MCP is used to pass data to-from the client.

The CVW suite features audio/video using nv and vat.

    http://cvw.mitre.org/

tkMOO-light is TclTk.  Its got a plugin for some CVW support.

    http://www.awns.com/tkMOO-light/

[in my opinion] Of the two languages, Java is probably your best
bet.  More people know Java.  It's got nice syntax for building
complex stuff and it's harder to make really stupid mistakes.  The
available Java widget sets are up to building a conventional chat
client (if conventional Java chat clients are anything to go by)
although you may need to tweak the Text widgets a lot to get the
best out of them.

Many other languages make use of the Tk widget set of course.  But
I've not used any of them.

Cheers,
Ay.

Andrew.Wilson at cs.cf.ac.uk http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/User/Andrew.Wilson/



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