front end clients.....was Re: [MUD-Dev] Semi Graphical MUDs

[Christopher Allen]

Willowreed at aol.com:

>> One thing that was cool in the later 80's is people create
>> front-end clients for Island of Kesmai that converted the text into
>> tiles, which made it fairly comparable to some of the 2-D single
>> player games of the time

> is that along the lines of Pueblo?  does anyone remember another
> software called "alphaworlds" or something like that?

No, it was very different then pueblo.

The text interface for Island of Kesmai used VT52 or VT100 terminal
emulation to display the text. Maps would appear at the top right of
the 80x24 text screen, ala:

  [][][][][]
  []      []  D - Dragon
  []  D   []  * - Fireball
  []  **  []  x - Shon'Jir, Cala, You
  []    x []
  [][][]  []
      []  []

Every pair of characters would signify a different terrain - [] for
walls, -- and |  for doors, ** for fire, ~~ for water, etc. As I recall,
there were over 50 terrains. Alpha characters were reserved for parties of
people or creatures.

The clients basically presented the same interface, but used the full
screen (then 640x480), also keeping the map to the upper right, but
substituted graphics tiles for each of the terrain types, and was also
smart enough to convert the alpha characters that represented parties
to creatures graphics if the party consisted of one or more of the
same creature.

The game was multi-user and I can recall the first time I killed the
dragon -- it took about 10 of us, and half us died permanently. Which
was quite a loss back then, as you felt that you invested $100s of
dollars to make a character good enough to fight the dragon, which
could kill you permanently without hope of resurrection.

-- Christopher Allen

------------------------------------------------------------------------
.. Christopher Allen                                 Skotos Tech Inc. ..
..                           1512 Walnut St., Berkeley, CA 94709-1513 ..
.. <http://www.Skotos.net>               o510/647-2760  f510/647-2761 ..

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