[MUD-Dev] User interface design [was: Where are we now?]

[Adam Martin]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Munt" <greg.munt at btinternet.com>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2001 9:53 PM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] User interface design [was: Where are we now?]

> There seem to be little or no resources for free mud developers who
> don't want to develop a telnet-based user interface.

Which has caused me to start writing a business plan for how I could
make a free mmorpg earn significantly large amounts of money so that I
could persuade people to fund the business so that I could hire good
artists to make the game I'd like to make (Phew!). This is also
because startups are an area where I have some expertise, but if
anyone had any easier ideas on how to achieve this...?

> Alternatives for a graphical interface:

>   2. First-person 3D

>     Doomesque. High levels of immersion. Anticipated to require
>     twitchiness.  Possible for a free mud to provide? I doubt this.

Using CrystalSpace (cross-platform ?GPL? 3d engine) or Java3D (uses
hardware-acceleration if present) or just write a Java 3d engine
(surprisingly easy really) I would say that its pretty easy for a free
mud to provide both 2 and 3.

I think it comes down to the fact that, algorithmically, even Quake
was pretty simplistic except for where they were making it run at
decent speeds on high-end 486's. Now that most games players have
something that runs at at least 400Mhz, it's rather easy to write
purely software 3D engines that run fast (assuming you just want a
nice one, not a oh-my-god-that-looks-amazing one).

Certainly, I found it only took a few days to write a 25fps affine
texture-mapping 3d engine in java.

> Any others?

I'd add:

  6. Tiled + 3D = Moraff's World (yay!), but also Eye of the Beholder,
  Wizardy VI+ etc.

Simple version: Tiled, and you can see in front of you. VERY fast,
since although the view on the world is apparently 3D, people can only
look in 4 directions, so you just use sprites instead of 3d objects
(only the large fixtures need to be 3D).

More fun version: (as in MW) - you get to see in all four directions
at once. Since the direction you were facing in was drawn as a much
bigger window than the other 3, it was quite similar to peripheral
vision, in that you would notice something behind you, half obscured
by a corner, and then turn around and go check it out. MW ranked as a
favourite game of mine back in 91 for having on-the-fly fractal
landscapes as part of the game-world.  Sadly on the state of the art
286's this took an AWFUL long time to display each screen!

Adam M

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