[MUD-Dev] Where are we now?

[Deidril]

On 01 April 2001, Ronan Farell wrote:

> A free mud generally is generally not a graphical mud (though GUI
> may exist) because

>  a) the volunteer organisers have not got the artistic ability

>  b) the volunteers don't have the coding ability or time and
>  attention to produce a fully graphical system

>  c) most free muds try to go for content of description and story
>  over something that is pretty to look at, because that is where
>  there strenghts lie.  The $20/month server and free code to produce
>  your idea of how a mud-world could be

> So don't get me wrong, I see lots of benefits to a graphical mud but
> I do believe that it would take an exceptional design team to
> produce even the simplest of complete systems and that any such team
> with the time and effort to do that has probably got the makings of
> a commercial mud.  Oh and commercial muds are not always graphical
> but graphical muds are quite often commercial.


It depends what you means by 'graphical'. You can add some graphical
GUI to a text based mud, let's say, Hp/Mana/Move graphical bars,
player group life scores, and even a GUI for your inventory and
equipment, so your mud can still be played with a text client. I'm
pretty sure if a nice GUI for circle/smaug is going public, we would
see it going commonly used because it's ressources free then.

If you means a full 3D environnement, then the usual $20/month server
can't support the code for that. It is were going commercial is a
need, unless your father owns AOL and can offer you a free T1 bandwith
with a dual P3 800Mhz, although i'm not convinced a graphical mud need
more bandwith per player than a text one, because the data from
everquest says something between 500 to 2500 bytes per sec. It is less
costly for your bandwith sending 'msg 180 arg1=Joe arg2=80' than 'You
exterminate Joe with your slash for 80 damage, painting the floor
behind your feet with his blood.'. However, the computing for
pathfinding is more costly in a 3D world than in a room based mud
because a fight in a text mud doesn't involve moving while in 3d...It
is where the commun mud server isn't enough.

More further, you don't just need a 3d engine for your client, but
some server side code to handle moving, seeing, changing of zone,
etc...It's not just a graphical client for a mud, it means your mud is
designed for a graphical world, and so far, i don't know of a public
and free codebase to do it.

A possible choice could be to do a 'Vagrant-Story' like graphical mud
because this game is room based and should be more easily made from a
traditionnal codebase than rewriting your server from scratch. Again,
if there was some codebase fully implemented for that and public, i'm
sure we will see it more commun.


Frederic Manisse
f.Manisse at cryo-networks.fr

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