[MUD-Dev] Custom Client or Plain ole' Telnet?

[Christopher Allen]

Matt Chatterley wrote:

> From just the short list above, I think the playing experience
> could benefit from a custom client - but perhaps a mixed approach
> would work? Have the bits above and more available for those who
> install the client, but make sure the game can be played through
> telnet as well?

At Skotos we use an embedded ActiveX control for Internet Explorer
(called Alice), and an embedded XUL-Javascript app for
Mozilla/Firefox (called Zealous). These reside on web pages allows
the web page to talk to the text-interface, and for the
text-interface to talk to the web page.

All of our text games (except TEC) are thus able to display at
minimum a map of where you are located. The most sophisticated
implementation is in WAP's "Monsters Monsters: Grendel's Revenge"
where you have various live health indicators and skill timers.

The text-interface itself can have clickable links, so we've even
created our own sort of IDE using it. For instance, if you are a
coder you can "+obname first magic potion" and you'll get the name
of the potion which is a clickable link to open the web-based
development editor for that object.

It has always been our intent to have these two tools to be open
source, but we've never really packaged them for that yet.

-- Christopher Allen

------------------------------------------------------------------------
.. Christopher Allen                                 Skotos Tech Inc. ..
.. <ChristopherA at skotos dot net>         2342 Shattuck Ave Ste 512 ..
.. www.skotos.net  www.rpg.net                Berkeley, CA 94704-1517 ..
.. office 510/649-4030         fax 510/849-1717     main 510-647-2760 ..
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