15 Oct, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 41st comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Scandum said:
Another point that hasn't been properly addressed is why MUDs are supposed to create graphical interfaces with custom user interfaces when most MUDs are incapable of implementing a VT100 interface, and for that matter, most mud clients are incapable of implementing VT100 either.

What is the relevance between these two statements?

That it's highly unlikely that many MUDs will do anything significant with interfaces, and the main reason for this is as argued, that a tactical interface is appealing to players to gain a tactical advantage, but not necessarily appealing to outsiders. I don't think KaVir has seen a sudden player boom. To MUD clients it's more important to support interfaces, as players will go for the clients that give them an advantage. For MUD servers it's just a pain in the ass.

So from KaVir's perspective adding a VT100 interface might be beneficial to keep gameplay balanced for players who can't or won't use his mc plugin, three energy bars obviously won't cut it.

David Haley said:
No. The VT100 interface is limited in resolution to the size of the terminal, whereas a graphical interface has as many pixels as the screen does. You also have far more colors available in a graphical applications than you do in a terminal. In other words, you can display more information with a GUI application than you can with text only, even with VT100.

You're not really following me. Less is often more, especially with tactical information, which is why health is downgraded to a percentage, or a fraction of 10 or 4. So the tactical information doesn't necessarily differ, and might in fact be worse if poor interface choices are made. If everyone uses the same interface the actual quality of the interface doesn't matter much, with MSDP this isn't the case however.

I think WoW had some issues with custom interfaces that were too beneficial, I forgot the specifics.
15 Oct, 2010, balakoth wrote in the 42nd comment:
Votes: 0
LOL, this thread blew up. Good to see some decent debate.

While there seems to be a general argument that MUD clients aren't supporting the VT100 fad. But from all the work ive been doing with interfaces on my project. WinTinTin++ WinTin.net mushClient windows telnet CMUD and putty all support all the features I have tried to adapt. There will always be short comings and certain things need the wheel to be reinvented to try these new systems.

But that being said, with the MUD community dwindling slowly, we need to push the wheel. I would never go graphical for my game, as it would just be worth to go full graphics with custom clients. I enjoy the text side of things, and many of the games I loved playing back in the day ran using Extended ANSI and extended colors on BBS's.

By no means would I be attempting to pull in thousands of concurrent users, so limiting them to 5 clients.. which is still quite a bit heavy (One being already existing on their operating systems, linux telnet as well) doesnt seem that big of a stretch to me, many games out there require you to download a client to play their game.

MUDers use different MUD clients to access different features, if you choose to play a game that has gone a different direction (The VT100 interfaces we speak of) then several of the free clients out there can accommodate them. Our games still offer a much wider, cheaper, and easier way to connect and play at many levels. We are hardly alienating users from our games, just maybe certain style of games. Its not for everyone and if they dont see the draw of downloading a small 500k client to play a different style of MUD, then I don't really feel they would have enjoyed my game in the first place.

I want the players to experience my creations in all their glory, not simply whats accommodating for them. Why spend so much time on these creations if they couldn't be experienced the way we conceived. You can kind of (not really but kind of) compare this to any MMO or graphical game out there that limits its playerbase due to Graphical Chip set or the amount of ram they have installed in their machine.
15 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 43rd comment:
Votes: 0
I wonder if you guys think wow would be as popular if it were the same game presented through vt100 and an obtuse coordinate based spacial system. Somehow I doubt it. I mean people only care about interfaces for minmax tactical reasons right? Not because they simply make complex concepts presentable in a more consumable way.

Also, David, why do you hate those you disagree with?
15 Oct, 2010, Dean wrote in the 44th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
I don't think KaVir has seen a sudden player boom.


For a while, I had been meaning to try out God Wars II. I'm not a PvP guy by any stretch of the imagination but the features I'd heard about sounded interesting enough that'd be worth (to me) giving it a try. So I finally did and I didn't last too long (about an hour) - movement in particular was difficult and frustrating (having exclusively played Diku Derivs over the years). Fast forward a few months and after following his mushclient plugin thread, I decided to give it a go again. Using it improved my experience there significantly (being able to navigate using the map in particular helped a great deal to that end) to the point where I actually stuck around for a few days to play and try out the things that had initially got my attention in the first place.

Point being, intended or no, from my personal experience the plugin's great strength is lowering the difficulty barrier a bit for veterans of other MUDs like myself.
15 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 45th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
that a tactical interface is appealing to players to gain a tactical advantage, but not necessarily appealing to outsiders.

…what?

Scandum said:
I don't think KaVir has seen a sudden player boom.

I also don't think that he's gone out of his way to market the new features. It's not like people will just show up out of nowhere, after all.

Scandum said:
You're not really following me. Less is often more, especially with tactical information

If you think I was saying that tactical information should be rainbow unicorn pukey spew, then no wonder you think it's such a silly idea.

Scandum said:
If everyone uses the same interface the actual quality of the interface doesn't matter much, with MSDP this isn't the case however.

I don't know what MSDP has to do with it, but you are correct that if everybody actually has the same interface, then yes, everybody will also have the same potentially good or bad experience. That is a tautological statement and hence rather uninteresting. If people have the same interface, then they have the same interface. Yay.

Dean said:
Point being, intended or no, from my personal experience the plugin's great strength is lowering the difficulty barrier a bit for veterans of other MUDs like myself.

IMHO it's hard to believe that people would actually argue that the additions were useless, and that the same effect could be achieved with pure text. It's preposterous, really. The interface makes a very big difference; many people think visually, and the spatial navigation is difficult without a visual representation.
15 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 46th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
I don't think KaVir has seen a sudden player boom.

To be honest I've not really noticed any change at all. My playerbase has gone up a bit over the last few weeks, but that was following a dip which (as with most of my playerbase dips) coincidenced with me not doing as much development. Since I got back to putting more time into the mud, the playerbase has crept back up to its usual level.

The plugin has been generally accepted as a "cool feature", but a few players have said they'd rather I worked on Liches or other features instead. However as far as features go it's a pretty sellable one for adverting - instead of another line in the feature list, I can include screenshots. Once the plugin is finished, I may use it to help advertise outside of the usual mud places.

Scandum said:
So from KaVir's perspective adding a VT100 interface might be beneficial to keep gameplay balanced for players who can't or won't use his mc plugin, three energy bars obviously won't cut it.

IMO the plugin doesn't really give a tactical advantage, it just looks pretty, and is easier to keep track of things (compared to memorising what everything means in some lengthy customised prompt). Players get a much bigger advantage from the built-in features offered by most clients, such as scripting and triggers - but that's okay with me, there are a variety of clients out there so players can use whatever they're comfortable with. If they're willing to settle for a more basic client then that's up to them. If they want to stick with their favourite client, they can do that. And of course they can use MSDP to design their own interfaces if they're using MUSHclient, TinTin++, CMUD or Mudlet*.

* Through my ATCP hack.

balakoth said:
I want the players to experience my creations in all their glory, not simply whats accommodating for them. Why spend so much time on these creations if they couldn't be experienced the way we conceived.

Do you not offer your players a choice of class? A choice of race? A choice of skills and spells? Do your players not choose to take part in a quest? Do they not choose to roleplay, or choose which areas to explore?

I consider my GUI a feature. It's one I encourage players to use, but at the end of the day it's their choice. If they choose to use something else, that's up to them.

Around a fifth of my active players are blind, so without that choice they couldn't play at all. Do you know how many blind players are lured away by WoW?

Runter said:
I wonder if you guys think wow would be as popular if it were the same game presented through vt100 and an obtuse coordinate based spacial system.

A more appropriate question is: Do you think WoW would be as popular if it also offered a basic text interface, in addition to the graphical interface it already offers?

Now you could argue "They could have spent that time adding more content", and that's fair enough - but I can't see any of their players caring if there was an alternative interface, and it might even draw in few more players (such as blind players, who could join the same online community as their sighted friends).

In the case of muds, we already have that basic telnet interface, so it's not a question of spending time adding anything new - it's a question of whether we should invest time and effort actively removing the existing support. In my case, that means taking time away from developing other features so that I can invest that time into blocking around three quarters of my players.

Now I'm not the sort of mud owner who puts playerbase as a top priority. I like to have some players, sure, but I'm not afraid to make design decisions I know will put my game firmly into a small niche (my movement system being an obvious example). However even for me, blocking three quarters of my playerbase sounds like a pretty bad deal - and I can't actually see any benefit from doing it.
15 Oct, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 47th comment:
Votes: 0
Just to clarify what was asked about my statements a few screens up…

I was not saying that MXP, itself, is only useful for cosmetic fluff. I'm saying that's all anyone actually DOES use it for. Why? Because if you come up with some use for it that is integral to the game's mechanics, it then becomes a minimum requirement to play. So far, no MUD that I know of has been willing to abandon supporting people using their 20 year old clients with ANSI graphics in a single window.

Yes, you certainly could use vt100 graphics and character mode to create an interface that worked more like a graphical MMO, with hotkeys and independently scrolling maps/chat windows/etc. However, there's not much reason to do this IMHO. The amount of work involved in trying to get this to work properly (so a corrupted display can be redrawn from the server's end), and the fact that a large number of existing clients would NOT support it, means you might as well just write a new client that's specifically designed to work that way.

KaVir keeps arguing that we already have TELNET support, and that it's silly to remove it. My argument is that keeping TELNET support limits the game design to things that work well over TELNET. Any other ideas that won't work with Tinyfugue or MUSHClient or that vt220 with the dust on it, don't get a chance to happen because of that limited palette.

IMHO, there comes a point when continuing to support antique methodology does more harm than good.

Sure, most existing games won't see any benefit to making this kind of change. But, does that really matter? Nobody is saying ALL MUDs out there need to start over. But, as long as the MUD codebases continue to stick to TELNET, all *new* games will continue to be hobbled by the limitations of that single socket with its cryptic options and obscure terminal quirks.

This thread itself is proof of that. vt100 sequences aren't new, they are more than well documented over time. KaVir is not a n00b. Implementing a simple status bar should be a 15 minute job, and it would be… if not for the vast sea of terminals and clients that all do things differently. If you could force everyone out there to use an actual vt100 terminal, you could know exactly what was possible and what wasn't, and that when something worked for you, it would work for everyone.

Twenty years ago, that wasn't an option. Most gamers didn't have the ability to compile their own clients, and also didn't have their own PC's to use. Back in the golden age of mudding, the majority of players were at universities, and sat in the public terminal labs playing on vt220's, unix workstations with xterms, or sometimes PC/Macintosh machines that didn't allow downloads. TELNET was the only client that was almost guarenteed to be available. This is 2010. People are used to playing games by clicking "download client, run installer, play game". Having to actually get a generic client and customize it is weird. Having to futz around with a shell window is even more weird.
15 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 48th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Now you could argue "They could have spent that time adding more content", and that's fair enough - but I can't see any of their players caring if there was an alternative interface, and it might even draw in few more players (such as blind players, who could join the same online community as their sighted friends).

I think the real thing that 'now you could argue' would be that it would be impossible to present a text interface that gave you anything like a similar experience, especially if you want to bring it to the extent of supporting blind players. After all, we're talking about things like VT100 here. What is a screen reader going to do with a map drawn in a corner?

KaVir said:
However even for me, blocking three quarters of my playerbase sounds like a pretty bad deal - and I can't actually see any benefit from doing it.

Of course, put that way, the idea sounds completely silly, doesn't it? But here's the thing: you're assuming that you'd be blocking 3/4 and gaining zero, or at the very least, blocking 3/4 and gaining a smaller amount back. I don't think that this assumption as being particularly well-defended at this point in time.
15 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 49th comment:
Votes: 0
Over in another thread…

Ssolvarain said:
Quote
2002 marked the official shift from Alpha to Beta status, and included a new client that introduced an integrated automatic map which plots a player's movements as they explore new areas. The resulting map was displayed in a tab within the client's upper left corner and had special icons for different kinds of rooms, like taverns, arenas and academias.


Now this is the kind of map I'd like to see come standard with MUDs. Pipe dream, but hey :P

Sounds pretty cool.


I'd like to point to this comment as an example of what people have been saying re: new client interfaces…
15 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 50th comment:
Votes: 0
If wow offered a vt100 interface they'd lose no players. However, nobody would ever use it. Well, botters would use it.
15 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 51st comment:
Votes: 0
Just about anything I could have added has been said at this point, but let me rebuke the statement that I apparently have some sort of deepvseated loathing for David.

I dont.

Were both people who believe strongly in our programming and design choices and conflict in light of that is something thats going to happen; I cant speak for David but I for one appreciate that he gives me some intelligent counterpoints to consider rather than the drivellous trolling some others do.

Maya/Rudha
15 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 52nd comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
A more appropriate question is: Do you think WoW would be as popular if it also offered a basic text interface, in addition to the graphical interface it already offers?

Now you could argue "They could have spent that time adding more content", and that's fair enough - but I can't see any of their players caring if there was an alternative interface, and it might even draw in few more players (such as blind players, who could join the same online community as their sighted friends).

Runter said:
If wow offered a vt100 interface they'd lose no players. However, nobody would ever use it. Well, botters would use it.

So you don't think any blind players would give it a go? Not even if they had a load of sighted friends who were already playing it?
15 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 53rd comment:
Votes: 0
They may if enough effort was taken to make the game playable properly through a text based interface. I'm not sure blind gamers are a significant group. And if they were they'd virtually all be playing games like muds. I'm not sure wow could compete with simple muds in regards to the relatively few blind players out there.

But how does this support only text based interfaces? If the argument is you should cater to every possible segment of players no matter how small–fine. Do that. Start with the largest group. Those who are not blind.
15 Oct, 2010, Bobo the bee wrote in the 54th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
But how does this support only text based interfaces? If the argument is you should cater to every possible segment of players no matter how small–fine. Do that. Start with the largest group. Those who are not blind.


Runter said:
It's just not good design, nor smart "business" logic. The less accessible you make your server, the less it will be accessed. It's … basic cause and effect, really.
15 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 55th comment:
Votes: 0
You attributed something I didn't say to me. And I believe David already disputed the less accessible claim skillfully.
15 Oct, 2010, Bobo the bee wrote in the 56th comment:
Votes: 0
Bobo the Bee said:
Runter said:
It's just not good design, nor smart "business" logic. The less accessible you make your server, the less it will be accessed. It's … basic cause and effect, really.


Runter said:
You attributed something I didn't say to me. And I believe David already disputed the less accessible claim skillfully.


You are completely right, that was Rudha. My mistake entirely.
15 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 57th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
They may if enough effort was taken to make the game playable properly through a text based interface. I'm not sure blind gamers are a significant group. And if they were they'd virtually all be playing games like muds. I'm not sure wow could compete with simple muds in regards to the relatively few blind players out there.

I know a number of people who play games that wouldn't be their first choice, simply because it's where most of their friends play. A lot of people play WoW, therefore I would be surprised if there weren't a sizable number of blind gamers out there who have friends playing WoW.

Blind players may be a minority, and I doubt Blizzard would consider it worth the time investment, but I already covered that when I made my point.

Runter said:
But how does this support only text based interfaces? If the argument is you should cater to every possible segment of players no matter how small–fine.

No, my argument is that that you shouldn't explicitly block the segments you don't actively cater to. It is one thing to focus your efforts on a specific audience, but quite another to actively block everyone else.
15 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 58th comment:
Votes: 0
I like how you skip my real point and cut it off in the quote. You admit blizzard does it because it doesn't make business sense to have even more software to develop and maintain for a small population. Maybe you should think about those players who lost fingers and can only click and milk that small population to mudmillyuns by building a game that requires no typing.

Time and time again the point is made but ill say it again. It depends on what yor goal is. Some people are content with tens of players. Some people like myself consider that the same as none. You made the point to quix that you wanted to see his playerbase at high levels before you'd put any credibility into anything he is saying. What about your playerbase? Is what you're doing working by your own metric of success? As I see it at least one of the models has any hope left of not being a failure. Again, by your own metric. If it just so happens that your goal is to develop the way you wish with no concern to the size of the playerbase then fine. But you should come out and say that instead of insisting thw key to breakout success isn't modern innovation we've seen in almost every nook and cranny of gaming but instead is actually ensuring you're available to the visually impaired.
16 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 59th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
No, my argument is that that you shouldn't explicitly block the segments you don't actively cater to.

Again, when you put it this way, of course it sounds stupid. It would be stupid to actively expend effort to block potential players of the same game, if supporting them costs nothing. But the argument as you have presented it is not the one being made. Nobody is saying that developers should go out of their way to block people! What people *are* saying is that there is no gain (considering the cost) in supporting those segments. People are also saying that at some point, making features for group X forces you to not give those features to group Y, when you cannot render the necessary interface to group Y.

If you're going to make any argument about this specific point and address what people have actually been saying, you need to work on how a game developer can provide the same interface to all people regardless of connection (specific-purpose client, VT100, normal telnet, screen reader over something).
You might also argue that it's ok for one group of players to get a less powerful interface than another group – and therefore be at a gameplay disadvantage – because they're still playing the game. This would be a reasonable argument, although it's unclear how many players would be truly ok with this if competition is an intrinsic element of the game. Perhaps those for whom playing means getting something and not playing means getting nothing would accept this situation.

But the argument as you have given it is simply not the position that people have taken. :sad:
16 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 60th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
Some people are content with tens of players. Some people like myself consider that the same as none.

You mean people who have none?

Runter said:
You made the point to quix that you wanted to see his playerbase at high levels before you'd put any credibility into anything he is saying.

No, what I said was "If you want to convince me to discard telnet and the years of work that have gone into clients and protocols, I first want to see how many players you've got, so that I can see how well you understand the market."

If I were to claim (for example) that muds are dying out because they're clinging to room-based designs, point out that none of the big commercial MMORPGs use room-based movement, and suggest that by changing to true coordinate-based movement systems muds would "reach audiences that are orders of magnitude larger", would you expect mud owners to take my claims at face value and immediately start redesigning their games? Or would you expect them to ask for proof, to see for themselves how well a roomless movement system is received by players?

Runter said:
What about your playerbase?

That's the question other mud owners might well ask me if I were to claim that by discarding rooms they would see a massive resurgence of players. They could then compare my playerbase against that of room-based muds to see if my claim held merit.

And that's what I'm doing here. The playerbase of telnet muds currently recorded by MudStats seems to peak at around ten thousand simultaneous users, with some of the larger muds peaking at several hundred each.

If you want to convince me that dropping telnet support from my mud will suddenly turn it into a "breakout success", a view which I adamantly believe is complete nonsense, then it'll take more than a couple of backseat drivers with an uncompelling argument based on speculation. I mean, seriously, have you any idea just how many times I've heard the old "I've got an idea for the best mud ever" line?
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