14 Apr, 2010, Runter wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Kayle said:
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I'll admit that yours looks prettier than mine. Although it's a lot harder to tell the difference without the background colors in the MUD itself.

But I'm just not seeing the MUD in what you're doing. There's too many pictures for one thing. I've always played and worked on MUD because of the lack of artwork and pictures. Because it leaves more to my imagination. It's like being inside my favorite fantasy novel, being a part of the action. I dunno. Maybe I'm weird.


Here's my take on it. I understand how people are weary of their game becoming graphical. One of the things they like most about their mud is the text based nature. However…

If you're going to use ascii to directly represent what is better done by using graphical elements then why not? It doesn't take away from the text based nature anywhere else. This chess board is a good example of what I'm talking about. Using simple graphics like for the chess pieces doesn't require the player to use any less imagination. It simply makes the game more enjoyable.
14 Apr, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
If you're going to use ascii to directly represent what is better done by using graphical elements then why not?

If you want to remain compatible with a wide range of mud clients then you'll need some way to display the same information for clients that don't support graphics. I would like to display a proper graphical map at some point, but I would still continue to support an ASCII map for those who can't use anything better.

But on the whole I agree, if your motivation for avoiding graphics is that you don't like them, it seems somewhat counter-productive to draw ugly, clunky ASCII graphics.
14 Apr, 2010, Orrin wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
While there are definitely people who think a mud can only be presented in a terminal window, I think the idea of including graphical elements where they complement the text is a popular one, and indeed a lot of the work at mudstandards is towards this end.

That said, you can still make a fun game with ASCII graphics.
14 Apr, 2010, Asylumius wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
I don't have any bone to pick with MUDs that go nuts with ASCII graphics and even real graphics through the use of custom clients, etc,. it's just not something I would ever be interested in as a player or a developer.

That said, I think at some point all the extra stuff (graphics, sound, scripting, etc) makes a MUD more of a MMORPG that uses telnet under the hood (though abstracted from the player) than a MUD.

IMHO, I'd rather see more of this stuff either become it's own genre of game with a standardized client for it, or get rolled up into the browser kind of like some of the browser based RPGs we have now, but eventually with all the fancy gizmos that will come with HTML5.
14 Apr, 2010, Runter wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Asylumius said:
I'd rather see more of this stuff either become it's own genre of game


I think we should try to unify behind what we can all have in common instead of trying to push out games from the community that don't meet arbitrary standards. A lot of games intentionally disassociate themselves with the MUD genre and call themselves MMOs. It's kinda ironic when people want to push out anybody who is proud to call themselves a MUD because they use visual queues.
14 Apr, 2010, Asylumius wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
I think the term "MUD" carries a lot of assumptions with it, and I just don't see carrying that name over to games that are clearly very different from "traditional" MUDs to be a good thing. If a MUDs game play becomes too reliant on graphics and/or feature unavailable to me in plain telnet, then that game doesn't really conform to a lot of the things that make a MUD a MUD. It's confusing and inaccurate. While I agree that semantically, any game that is multi-player is technically a MUD, at some point the games need to evolve to the next level.

It isn't that I'm trying to fight back the change so much as I think some of the things that people are trying to do with MUDs are so far different from what a MUD is/was, that it requires some level of distinction when it comes to classifying the genre of the game.

Nobody calls a MUD an MMORPG, even though you could make the same arguments for that people make for calling a game that may eventually have very little to do with text a MUD.

Of course what I'm talking about is a little more than using an entirely optional protocol to draw a health bar in a program that is, by design, a fancy telnet client. That's great, MUDs can do that. It's when enough of the game play is dependant on anything more than telnet or such a significant edge is gained by having the juiced up program that barely resembles a telnet client that I think the system isn't a MUD anymore.
14 Apr, 2010, Runter wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Asylumius said:
I think the term "MUD" carries a lot of assumptions with it, and I just don't see carrying that name over to games that are clearly very different from "traditional" MUDs to be a good thing. If a MUDs game play becomes too reliant on graphics and/or feature unavailable to me in plain telnet, then that game doesn't really conform to a lot of the things that make a MUD a MUD. It's confusing and inaccurate. While I agree that semantically, any game that is multi-player is technically a MUD, at some point the games need to evolve to the next level.

It isn't that I'm trying to fight back the change so much as I think some of the things that people are trying to do with MUDs are so far different from what a MUD is/was, that it requires some level of distinction when it comes to classifying the genre of the game.

Nobody calls a MUD an MMORPG, even though you could make the same arguments for that people make for calling a game that may eventually have very little to do with text a MUD.

Of course what I'm talking about is a little more than using an entirely optional protocol to draw a health bar in a program that is, by design, a fancy telnet client. That's great, MUDs can do that. It's when enough of the game play is dependant on anything more than telnet or such a significant edge is gained by having the juiced up program that barely resembles a telnet client that I think the system isn't a MUD anymore.


Then we have a great differing of opinion on what constitutes a MUD. In your original statement there was the hint that you didn't like any type of graphics in your muds (which is fine) and that at "some point" they should stop calling themselves a mud. Exactly what point should this be? I say as long as someone is proud to call themselves a MUD let them. The community doesn't need any more splintering. Maybe mudstandards.org can write up the standard that defines what a mud is, exactly, so I can get my rubberstamp of approval. ;)
14 Apr, 2010, Asylumius wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
So as long as the coders are proud of it, Diablo 3 or Call of Duty can be called a MUD?

My point boils down to being able to Google "muds" or "list of muds" and get what I'm probably expecting and not something totally different.

I certainly don't think we need an RFC to determine what a MUD is, if that's what you're implying. I just think at some point, it's kind of obvious (to me at least) that a game isn't really what I or most MUD players would know as a MUD.
14 Apr, 2010, flumpy wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Perhap we should then MUTA*s or something, MUD seems kinda confusin now :(


*Multi User Text Adventure
14 Apr, 2010, Runter wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Asylumius said:
So as long as the coders are proud of it, Diablo 3 or Call of Duty can be called a MUD?

My point boils down to being able to Google "muds" or "list of muds" and get what I'm probably expecting and not something totally different.

I certainly don't think we need an RFC to determine what a MUD is, if that's what you're implying. I just think at some point, it's kind of obvious (to me at least) that a game isn't really what I or most MUD players would know as a MUD.


It seems like your point is you want muds to be 100% what you expect from the genre and any deviation should toss the game out of the genre–"at some point" of course.

You're painting my position as extremes when in fact the discussion was about people using visual queues such as ascii graphics in their games for things like playing chess or maps. It's rather silly of you to bring up extremes that nobody is talking about ala MWF2 and Diablo 3. My only point is if you're wanting to push people on the genre let's just see how everyone else stands on the issue before we start declaring what is or isn't a mud on this forum today.
14 Apr, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
I shall call my game a Several Player Adventure Machine. (Hrm.)

Eh, is the name that important? I don't think we're doing things like pedigree competitions where the prize animal must meet extremely specific categories, or various art competitions where strict standards are set as part of the art itself.

In the end of the day, we make games. Games fun. Fun happy. Ugga wugga.

Why argue about a game being this or that or not this or not that?
14 Apr, 2010, flumpy wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I shall call my game a Several Player Adventure Machine. (Hrm.)

Eh, is the name that important? I don't think we're doing things like pedigree competitions where the prize animal must meet extremely specific categories, or various art competitions where strict standards are set as part of the art itself.

In the end of the day, we make games. Games fun. Fun happy. Ugga wugga.

Why argue about a game being this or that or not this or not that?


It's an interesting point tho. Perhaps we should call it "interactive fiction", if that didn't already have it's own type of genre that it describes…

A lot /is/ in a name, even generic ones like "games" or "comics" … Negative connotations can spring up from them. Comics weren't really taken srsly until they became "Graphic Novels" for example.
14 Apr, 2010, Runter wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Why argue about a game being this or that or not this or not that?


Because it's not just about that. On a site like this that's dedicated to MUD development it's not a good thing to try to start casting out impure design decisions of said MUDs from the community based on arbitrary rules about what features a MUD should include.
14 Apr, 2010, Asylumius wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I shall call my game a Several Player Adventure Machine. (Hrm.)
Why argue about …


Because that's [all] we do on MB?

It isn't that every game has to confirm to MY subjective analysis of what MUD should be, it's that at some point the name or label itself becomes too broad and/or inaccurate. Do I really care? Not at all. If I really wanted to seriously argue over all this crap (and more) I'd go to mudstandards and moan about it.

runter said:
You're painting my position as extremes when in fact the discussion was about people using visual queues such as ascii graphics in their games for things like playing chess or maps. It's rather silly of you to bring up extremes that nobody is talking about ala MWF2 and Diablo 3.


Meh. You made an incredibly general and vague statement about a MUD being anything a coder is proud of, so I bit and you got an extreme. Welcome to argument a la Internet. Like I said, I don't think visual "queues" quite quality either, and I did give an explanation of where I'd draw the line.

That's all my opinion though, which I'm afraid you have very little choice in being subjected to if you're going to come here. If I was lobbying for kind of community-wide consensus on the vernacular, again, I'd be arguing it on the standards forum.
14 Apr, 2010, Runter wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
If I was lobbying for kind of community-wide consensus on the vernacular, again, I'd be arguing it on the standards forum.



That's exactly where this nonsense belongs.
14 Apr, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
This reminds me of some guy who was developing a real-time rogue-like and posted a demo video to Youtube (I think donky posted a URL here some time ago). One of the comments was somebody furious about how he dared to break the genre, and how nobody would ever play it because it was real-time and therefore would be a terrible game.

Asylumius said:
That's all my opinion though, which I'm afraid you have very little choice in being subjected to if you're going to come here.

It's kinda funny for you to make fun of arguing about all this stuff, while you're the one arguing about it, while saying things like the above. :smile:
14 Apr, 2010, Asylumius wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
This reminds me of some guy who was developing a real-time rogue-like and posted a demo video to Youtube (I think donky posted a URL here some time ago). One of the comments was somebody furious about how he dared to break the genre, and how nobody would ever play it because it was real-time and therefore would be a terrible game.

Asylumius said:
That's all my opinion though, which I'm afraid you have very little choice in being subjected to if you're going to come here.

It's kinda funny for you to make fun of arguing about all this stuff, while you're the one arguing about it, while saying things like the above. :smile:


Yeah, and I'm getting bored already, precisely why I don't care to sign up for mudstandards. The difference is that here I'm just spouting off my own personal opinion and I don't have to bother actually convincing anyone to agree with me.

Ayway, I'm not saying MUDs with graphics or other optional cool new features are terrible games. I'm saying my opinion is that a game in which the game play is based more on non-text components than text ones isn't a MUD in my mind, and I'm a) not asking people to change my mind or b) change anyone else's mind. :bigsmile:
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