16 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 61st comment:
Votes: 0
I'd actually rather expend zero effort and have no players than spend so much time on aging-if-not-ancient protocols and have relatively no players. Again, it depends on what your goal actually is in terms of users. You haven't clarified that. Honestly, your entire position sounds like it is based around those years of development you've committed. You could always fall back to keep and just reply "but that's not a mud.". But honestly, hope most of us are interested in designing games. Not just muds.
16 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 62nd comment:
Votes: 0
I somehow doubt you'll actually get an answer to those points, KaVir. So much of this argument is based in a mix of cold hard speculation and design idealism. I don't think I consider a lot of it congruent to reality, and despite three pages of asking for examples, I haven't got any. I've stopped expecting that I will.

If these things people preach are so basic and fundamental as people seem to indicate, then it should be easy to provide examples of it in action. If you cannot provide examples, then it stands to reason that it is, at best, not as fundamental as presented, or less so.

Maya/Rudha
16 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 63rd comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
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

I suppose that repeating straw men that are trivial to defeat is a much easier tactic than addressing the real points people are making. :sad:

Rudha said:
I somehow doubt you'll actually get an answer to those points, KaVir. So much of this argument is based in a mix of cold hard speculation and design idealism. I don't think I consider a lot of it congruent to reality, and despite three pages of asking for examples, I haven't got any. I've stopped expecting that I will.

I'll go ahead and call foul on this on the basis of two points:
(1) you left the conversation despite numerous questions posed directly to you
(2) not a single time did you use the word "example" to actually ask for one
As evidence for (1), I point you to posts #48 (by myself) and #49 (by Bobo).
As evidence for (2), in posts 1-74 of this thread, you used:
- "for example" - 2 times
- "the previous example" - 1 time
- "asking for examples" - 1 time (post #74)

So basically, you are unilaterally declaring victory in the argument despite your reasons for victory being of, at best, dubious factual basis. :wink:
Recall that you opened the "salvo" with the statement that those who disagreed with you were either, essentially, hopelessly idealistic, or trolls. :sad: If you get the perception of people giving you a hard time on this, it might be for that reason.

Incidentally, I even gave you an example of somebody saying a new interface makes a game easier – other people have since said the same thing about KaVir's. So not only did you not ask for examples, but you were given some. In addition, many other examples of very successful games have been given that use single-purpose, graphical clients without any support whatsoever for telnet clients – which is a stronger claim than the one people are making here. For that matter, you gave some yourself in post #18. (!!!) I'm not sure what more you need to see when you've given yourself the example that you demand from other people?
16 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 64th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
I'd actually rather expend zero effort and have no players than spend so much time on aging-if-not-ancient protocols and have relatively no players.

Like Quix you seem to think that telnet is the problem. I don't. It may be old, but it's also well-established with a proven track record, and both server and client developers are still using it to push into new territory. I've not yet found anything I wanted to do that couldn't be done through telnet. In fact I've even considered creating a (small) fully graphical mud using telnet, just to see how well MUSHclient can handle it.

If you want to replace it, can you at least offer an alternative and describe what it would allow me to do that telnet doesn't?

Runter said:
Again, it depends on what your goal actually is in terms of users. You haven't clarified that.

User numbers aren't my priority, but I'm not going to hose my playerbase unless I can see a tangible benefit for doing so. Despite the earlier analogies, telnet isn't the wheel of a car, it doesn't suffer wear and tear and eventually need to be replaced. It doesn't slow down with age, and it doesn't have an expiry date.

Runter said:
Honestly, your entire position sounds like it is based around those years of development you've committed.

Obviously it's influenced by it - I've spent over 15 years designing, developing and running games using the telnet protocol, and the last 8.5 of those were invested into my current mud. If you want to convince me to discard a protocol that does everything I've ever needed then your argument needs to be more compelling than "it's old".

Runter said:
You could always fall back to keep and just reply "but that's not a mud.". But honestly, hope most of us are interested in designing games. Not just muds.

I'm interested in designing muds, that's why I frequent forums like MudBytes, Mudconnector, Top Mud Sites, MudLab, MudGamers, etc. However my definition of 'mud' is pretty broad compared to some people - I consider MMORPGs to be muds, and would even classify Farmville as a simple mud.


Rudha said:
I somehow doubt you'll actually get an answer to those points, KaVir. So much of this argument is based in a mix of cold hard speculation and design idealism. I don't think I consider a lot of it congruent to reality, and despite three pages of asking for examples, I haven't got any. I've stopped expecting that I will.

It strikes me as more of a witch-hunt than anything. A few people feel that muds are in decline, so they look for something to blame - they notice that most muds use telnet, while there are more popular games using other protocols, and they decide that telnet must be the cause.

I feel like I'm being told to sacrifice telnet to the mud gods in exch.... But I'm afraid I lack faith, I only accept cold hard facts. Perhaps I'll end up in mud hell for my blasphemy, but I'll take my chances.

Rudha said:
If these things people preach are so basic and fundamental as people seem to indicate, then it should be easy to provide examples of it in action. If you cannot provide examples, then it stands to reason that it is, at best, not as fundamental as presented, or less so.

We do actually have some examples of text muds that can only be played through custom clients (although I don't know what protocol they use), such as the Simutronics games I mentioned earlier. However it's worth noting that despite their relative popularity, the Simutronics muds have been losing players for many years, even while other muds were rapidly growing - although there are so many other factors to take into consideration that I don't think you could pin the cause on any one thing.
16 Oct, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 65th comment:
Votes: 0
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.

I thought it was fairly straight forward, but I can see where you're coming from. Only risk of working around issues in the text interface by going graphical is that you can alienate your blind players, which is the demographic most likely to grow as more blind people become computer literate.
16 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 66th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
In fact I've even considered creating a (small) fully graphical mud using telnet, just to see how well MUSHclient can handle it.

It is rather impressive that you would say something like this while telling Runter how completely wrong and/or deluded he is.

Runter is showing remarkable patience with somebody so willing to put up straw men of his arguments… KaVir, you are diving deeper and deeper into total bad faith here. For somebody who says other people are attacking you with a witch-hunt, you seem remarkably only able to argue with points people aren't making. Maybe, hmm, this explains the "magical thinking" (sic) that leads you to conclude it's a witch-hunt: you have invented ridiculous arguments that make no sense and then of course you also get to grandly declare victory.

For shame.

Scandum said:
Only risk of working around issues in the text interface by going graphical is that you can alienate your blind players, which is the demographic most likely to grow as more blind people become computer literate.

You never did explain what a screen reader would do with a real-time updated map using VT100, by the way.
16 Oct, 2010, Mudder wrote in the 67th comment:
Votes: 0
Can anyone give examples to replace telnet and why they are better?

Only learning C++ to develop MUDs, my knowledge in this area is very limited to what I've come in contact with. So I have no idea what else is out there that would/could work with a MUD.

I don't think KaVir is opposed to replacing telnet if it offers something better and worth the hassle of forcing his players to get new clients. (It would require another client, wouldn't it?)

EDIT: I don't see the harm in giving blind players a different interface to let them play. It will be an obvious disadvantage, but hey, why not? They're at a disadvantage in life, I'm sure they can deal with it and adapt. At least they won't be lost to any MMORPGs out there!
16 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 68th comment:
Votes: 0
Mudder said:
Can anyone give examples to replace telnet and why they are better?

You see, this is exactly why straw men arguments are a problem: people start believing an argument is being made that isn't. In other words, it's FUD. It's dishonest, underhanded, and detracts from the interesting discussion taking place.

The issue here is a question of medium and interface. You can implement any interface using telnet, for instance by using your own data transfer protocol on top of telnet. Telnet is not the point. A text-only interface is the point. Let's please stop entertaining the underhanded and dishonest arguments that "telnet" is the issue when it's about text-only interfaces.

It is utterly obvious that KaVir himself thinks that text-only interfaces aren't as nice as interfaces with graphics, unless perhaps you think he spent all that time on the MUSHclient custom plugin because he had nothing better to do with his life. In other words, he agrees with the majority of the point being argued…
The point of contention here is with respect to requiring a particular client.
16 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 69th comment:
Votes: 0
Telnet isn't really the issue here. The real issue here was the interface at which players experience the game. Pure text, vt100, or perhaps graphical elements. I know it is confusing to follow this thread but that's mostly because people want to argue tangents of real points abd if you take their word for it ala rebuttle you'll get the wrong impression.
16 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 70th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
Telnet isn't really the issue here.


Really?

Runter said:
I'd actually rather expend zero effort and have no players than spend so much time on aging-if-not-ancient protocols and have relatively no players.


KaVir said:
We do actually have some examples of text muds that can only be played through custom clients (although I don't know what protocol they use), such as the Simutronics games I mentioned earlier. However it's worth noting that despite their relative popularity, the Simutronics muds have been losing players for many years, even while other muds were rapidly growing - although there are so many other factors to take into consideration that I don't think you could pin the cause on any one thing.


I notice no one else addressed that point, myself, but facts a harsh mistress :)

Maya/Rudha
16 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 71st comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
It is rather impressive

What's impressive is that you just don't get the hint. I'm sick of your trolling, your whining, your strawman arguments, your attempts to derail constructive threads, and your repeated failure to understand even the most basic of mud concepts, unless someone spends 30 pages driving them down your throat. I'm trying my best to ignore you, something you actually suggested to me, and yet you keep following me around like a bad smell, trying to provoke me by twisting my words and misinterpreting my comments.

What's your problem Haley? Looking for a new challenge, now that you've driven MudStandards to its knees with your endless snide remarks about their protocols? And yes, in my opinion you were the main cause of MudStandards' collapse - the more you taunted the real developers, the less they posted, until eventually they took their toys and went home.

You'll find I'm not such a pushover, but that doesn't mean my patience has no limits, particularly when you're clinging to my back like some sort of parasite. I'm not interested in your metagame - why don't you go ruin someone else's forum, and leave these discussions to people who actually care about mud development?
16 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 72nd comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
Telnet isn't really the issue here.

As well as the quote Rudha made, I'd also like to add these ones:

quixadhal said:
This community has bent over backwards to cling to TELNET in the hope of somehow retaining its ever-shrinking player base for the glorious day when the magic text faeries will come and bring a resurgence of players to the genre.


quixadhal said:
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.


quixadhal said:
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.


I agree that the interface is an issue - and that's actually the point I've been arguing, having listed several telnet muds that have custom graphical interfaces. What I disagree with is the suggestion (from the above quotes) that there's any need to drop telnet in order to provide such interfaces.
16 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 73rd comment:
Votes: 0
As a general rule, if you don't want to make an issue out of something, you … don't make an issue over it. It seems to me to be acting in bad faith to say the very least to go on railing about something only to then say essentially "OLOL thats not the issue anyways!"

David: You're not acting in good faith at this point, slinging mud like that, which is a kind of ironic thing when you think about it.

Mudder said:
I don't see the harm in giving blind players a different interface to let them play. It will be an obvious disadvantage, but hey, why not? They're at a disadvantage in life, I'm sure they can deal with it and adapt. At least they won't be lost to any MMORPGs out there!


It's worth noting in regards to catering to people with blindness. There's legally blind - which are people whose eyesight while it still exists, is impaired to a point where they are considered to be equivalent to true blindness, and "cant see a damn thing" blind. Screen readers are helpful to the former, but not entirely necessary, but for the latter they are by definition a necessity if you want them to be a player-base for your game.

It's very easy to use an out of band protocol to feed what should be synthesised to a speech synthesiser, the real "problem" is that most screen readers for CLI programs don't support that kind of thing "out of the box".

KaVir said:
I agree that the interface is an issue - and that's actually the point I've been arguing, having listed several telnet muds that have custom graphical interfaces. What I disagree with is the suggestion (from the above quotes) that there's any need to drop telnet in order to provide such interfaces.


I think what people are failing to understand is that correlation does not imply causation. They see "TELNET MUDs are sinking! Clearly it must be TELNET!" Except that this is hardly the only variable in the equation. I've asked them to provide examples of this relationship if it exists, but they continue to (probably intentionally) confuse the issue, so that they can avoid doing so.

As an aside, Threads like this make me wonder if I should perhaps communicate in my first language, as it seems that I'm not properly communicating in English, but really, I think it's less that, and more people intentionally confusing things.

Maya/Rudha
16 Oct, 2010, Mudder wrote in the 74th comment:
Votes: 0
Looks like different groups are talking about different things, or at least parts of different things.

Quix certainly talked about telnet to which a lot of people responded. I thought that was included in the argument of interface. Looking back now I realize neither Runter or David actually commented on Quix's post and continued on.

Though I am still curious what alternatives there are and if they are better at all. (Not including client support, just out of pure technology)

I think most of us here agree that KaVir's plugin is a positive thing and that graphical elements on a MUD can only help the MUD.

So…. What is the actual argument?

EDIT: In response to David and KaVir. …Let's all just get along. :biggrin: aOch5MKFk..."> aOch5MKFk..." type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350">
16 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 75th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm not quixadhal. Anyone can go back from the start and see what this thread is about. Vt100 itself is an aging protocol. I'm not sure why you would make the leap to me talking about telnet specifically other than responding to your years of work on aging protocols. In that context I thought you were responding to the relevant discussion that does not include the merits of telnet.
16 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 76th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir seems to believe that as soon as he enters a discussion, he gets to decide who participates, and also gets to call all those who disagree with him troll. Considering that the only reply to arguments is a rather snarky ad hominem salvo, it's pretty clear who is, in fact, interested in constructive conversation.

Rudha, as for you, you keep ignoring direct questions only to come back with unexplained sniping. I think I was polite to you and gave you the courtesy of explaining myself. It would be awfully nice if you did the same, especially if you are going to attack me personally like that.
16 Oct, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 77th comment:
Votes: 0
Aside from the other arguments being held here, I *do* see TELNET as a problem, not because it *can't* be used to implement whatever you want, but because it's a very archaic way to do it. It also has an attached assumption that shouldn't be there, but is; namely that if you use TELNET, you also have to support all the various TELNET clients out there.

Let me toss out a simple example game. Anyone remember the Ultima series on the C64/Apple II? Those were tile-based graphical games, but you could easily see (I hope!) replacing the graphical interface with a text one. The screen would have a party display in one corner, a main window for room/area descriptioins, another for combat/incoming messages, perhaps a map in the other corner. That's the layout, simple enough.

Now, to mimic the Ultima style of gameplay, you need character mode because every key was a command, and 'c'asting a spell then used the next few keystrokes to determine the spell (runes). Again, not rocket science.

You CAN do this over TELNET. However, the amount of arcane fappery you have to do to get it to work right is stupidly high. First, you need a working TELNET state machine, then you need the right arcane symbols to force character mode. Then you have to obtain the terminal type and size. THEN, you have to decide if you will adapt your display to that size, or just use the size you want to use and leave the rest empty. If you've made it this far, now you have to assume the terminal on the other end will handle the other arcane vt100 sequences the same way YOUR terminal does, because you have to do all the display management from your end. If anything goes wrong in that chain, they get something that looks wrong, or may be entirely garbled.

OTOH, if you require that your players use your client, or one that is 100% compliant with the protocol you choose, you don't have to bend over backwards to try to fudge things for issues where you know the client isn't doing something right, but you also know you can work around it. You can NOT have to micro-manage everything on the server end, and instead build a protocol that works properly as a client/server system.

Example. In vt100/TELNET land, your player moves east one "room". Your server detects "ESCAside from the other arguments being held here, I *do* see TELNET as a problem, not because it *can't* be used to implement whatever you want, but because it's a very archaic way to do it. It also has an attached assumption that shouldn't be there, but is; namely that if you use TELNET, you also have to support all the various TELNET clients out there.

Let me toss out a simple example game. Anyone remember the Ultima series on the C64/Apple II? Those were tile-based graphical games, but you could easily see (I hope!) replacing the graphical interface with a text one. The screen would have a party display in one corner, a main window for room/area descriptioins, another for combat/incoming messages, perhaps a map in the other corner. That's the layout, simple enough.

Now, to mimic the Ultima style of gameplay, you need character mode because every key was a command, and 'c'asting a spell then used the next few keystrokes to determine the spell (runes). Again, not rocket science.

You CAN do this over TELNET. However, the amount of arcane fappery you have to do to get it to work right is stupidly high. First, you need a working TELNET state machine, then you need the right arcane symbols to force character mode. Then you have to obtain the terminal type and size. THEN, you have to decide if you will adapt your display to that size, or just use the size you want to use and leave the rest empty. If you've made it this far, now you have to assume the terminal on the other end will handle the other arcane vt100 sequences the same way YOUR terminal does, because you have to do all the display management from your end. If anything goes wrong in that chain, they get something that looks wrong, or may be entirely garbled.

OTOH, if you require that your players use your client, or one that is 100% compliant with the protocol you choose, you don't have to bend over backwards to try to fudge things for issues where you know the client isn't doing something right, but you also know you can work around it. You can NOT have to micro-manage everything on the server end, and instead build a protocol that works properly as a client/server system.

Example. In vt100/TELNET land, your player moves east one "room". Your server detects "ESC[C" (RIGHT_ARROW) as input from the client and decides they want to move east. So, the server now has to do all the stuff the server has to do to move east, and then send the sequences to move the terminal cursor to the corner of the map and redraw everything by hand, move to the main window's corner and emit a room description, move to the events window and print some stuff, move back to the command window. All this has to be done blind, since the server has no way to know if it worked… it just emits what it hopes is the right sequences and goes back to doing other stuff.

Let's say you instead designed your own protocol. You could use XML, JSON, or just roll your own. However you do it, The user hits the right arrow key, and the client sends "{'player_move' : 'east'}". Perhaps the player hit the "e" key, perhaps they clicked on the map with the mouse. In any case, the client figures out that the player wants to move east and sends the same command. The server gets that and does what it does, and then it sends "{'map_scroll' : 'east', 'map_column' : 'wwg–' }". It probably also sends "{'room_desc' : 'Bunch of text', 'room_title' : 'line o text' }", and similar things for events like an npc that's standing there. The client then takes the data and figures out how to display it… maybe it uses the same vt100 codes the server used to have to build, maybe it pushes it to multiple windows, maybe it turns it into prose for a blind screen reader to parse.

The point is, the server is now freed from having to deal with all the mumbo-jumbo which is really ONLY there to make the client happy. If you want to change it so your server sends the full world map at login and then never has to send row updates, you can. If you want to make the client split tells off into animated bubbles that float away from the window, you can do so without having to dig out the TELOPT lookup page to find out how to pass messages in OOB. You don't have to wonder if Joe Bob will see those tell bubbles on his MongoClient v2.47 running in Firefox 2.01 under Linux. If he's connected, he's using your client and you know what it does.

Everyone else in the gaming industry has accepted that a client/server model with a well-documented packet protocol is the easiest way to keep things maintainable, expandable, and scalable. Adding a new feature just requires adding a new packet type. Layout changes are kept strictly on the client side, where they belong.

This ended up in this thread because vt100 sequences are very much like TELNET. If you are using them on the server side, you are making assumptions and adding requirements to the client side, but have no way to enforce that those assumptions or requirements are met. It certainly can be done, and has been done. I argue that it's a bad idea, because it puts you in the same boat of gussing and hoping what you do on your end will come across properly to the viewers. It's an archaic practice that, IMHO, shouldn't be carried forward. Great for adding to existing MUD's! Not so great for new projects.
17 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 78th comment:
Votes: 0
David: quite frankly, respect is a two way street; if you want to be shown it you have to be willing to give it.

Its funny in the kind of sense of it not really being funny at all in that here's KaVir experimenting with different kinds of interfaces and he seems to have, in an internet sense, been tarred, feathered, drawn and quartered for it. That kind of smacks of trying to have your cake and eat it to. I suppose Im not terribly surprised at the response, given this is a mud forum, but I am nonetheless disappointed that people are so shortsighted that they believe that biting the people trying to exeriment and innovate is going to get them the second coming they so voiciferously demand.

Maya/Rudha
17 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 79th comment:
Votes: 0
Nobody is criticising KaVir for his experiments, quite to the contrary. I suggest you read the thread more carefully.
17 Oct, 2010, chrisd wrote in the 80th comment:
Votes: 0
I believe it was KaVir who earlier pointed out that there were generally around 10,000 players connected to MUDs listed on mudstats.com. I'm not sure how well you can guess total number of players based on the average number connected, so let's multiply it by 10 (I have a feeling that's a bit generous) and say that the total MUD playerbase is 100,000.

Jennifer Government: NationStates is a multiplayer, text-based browser game that is similar (though definitely not identical) to a MUD. Wikipedia informs me that at any given time, NationStates has around 80,000 active players.

Kingdom of Loathing is another example, though it uses quite a few pictures. Wikipedia claims that during the 2006-2007 period, Kingdom of Loathing had around 140,000 active players.

Then there's Urban Dead, which is effectively identical to a MUD in terms of gameplay. Again, it's a browser game. It's got around 18,000 active characters.

These are three single games. They are each comparable in size to the entire MUD playerbase. I happen to believe that MUDs are far superior to these games in terms of gameplay, but perhaps a more objective analysis would find that they are about the same. I would find it hard to believe that anyone could find these games superior to a (decent) MUD, but it is obviously a matter of personal opinion.

It is worth considering why these individual games are doing better than MUDs as a whole, given that they are so similar. I happen to believe that it is a result of the archaic interfaces offered by most MUDs combined with the fact that many MUDs try to appeal to MUD players, rather than players in general.
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