07 Apr, 2011, Idealiad wrote in the 261st comment:
Votes: 0
07 Apr, 2011, Twisol wrote in the 262nd comment:
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That's cool, I had no idea anyone else had done that before. It's a shame there isn't much meat on site. And I can guarantee that by locking it behind a subscription, far fewer people use it than they would otherwise. My theory (untested) is that it's safer to charge MUD admins and let players play for free.
07 Apr, 2011, Scandum wrote in the 263rd comment:
Votes: 0
Twisol said:
recv() directly returns the length of the buffer. If you throw that away, I don't know what to tell you.

Merc throws it away, it's not like I'm making this up.

If you're gonna be dealing with simple data and competent developers NEW-ENVIRON isn't a bad choice, but otherwise I've heard from very capable people that plain text is the way to go:

client: NEW-ENVIRON-TEH_REAL_IP=123.4.5.678\r\n

server: NEW-ENVIRON-START\r\n
server: ABOUT_TEH_REAL_IP:THIS USER IS MULTI-ING, PLZ PUNISH!?!\r\n
server: NEW-ENVIRON_END\r\n


the \r\n is very important, it's TELNET standard. *nods wisely*
07 Apr, 2011, Twisol wrote in the 264th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Merc throws it away, it's not like I'm making this up.

"You" in general; I don't actually think you're lying. :wink:.

I also don't see why you couldn't make a simple struct netstring { size_t length; char* data; } to carry it around in, if it's that hard.

Scandum said:
the \r\n is very important, it's TELNET standard. *nods wisely*

Yep, it is. Unfortunately I've seen a couple codebases that send \n\r of all things… I think Anachronism deals with it well, but I haven't actually field-tested that.

EDIT: Looks like that's a Merc problem too: I found some \n\r's while fishing around in the Merc source for the offending recv().
07 Apr, 2011, Vigud wrote in the 265th comment:
Votes: 0
If I remember correctly, Diku started it, and it's a problem in almost all Diku derivatives. Some MUD admins would want to fix that in their MUDs, but they're afraid of breaking compatibility with some shitty MUD clients potential players might use.
07 Apr, 2011, Twisol wrote in the 266th comment:
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?_?

…Excuse my Unicode.
07 Apr, 2011, quixadhal wrote in the 267th comment:
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Yes, because MUD admins already feel their players are right on the edge of deserting to go play World of Warcraft, and so they gibber in fear at any mention of a change that might make ONE player jump ship. Thus, we're still using clients from 15 years ago, connecting to servers from 20 years ago, on a 30 year old protocol, designed to work with 40 year old equipment. Woot progress!

Yeah, DikuMUD started the reversed LFCR nonsense. I would guess a couple extra beers while coding in back in 1989 was the cause. Since most MUD admins didn't (and still don't) understand the code they're modifying, nobody questioned such a mistake, because (a) the code was handed down from the gods, and (b) they didn't actually use TELNET anyways… they used raw tcp sockets which happen to work fine when a TELNET client connects (as long as it doesn't EVER do any negotiation).

I started a crusade a few years back to try and shame some people into doing the global search & replace to flip the order around, and at least pretend to be TELNET compliant. A few people did it. A few laughed and said it couldn't possibly be wrong and the RFC must be wrong. One, the maintainer of a java codebase, even got angry and first said I was wrong, and then said "Well, MUD's don't use TELNET, they have their own standard."

In many ways, I sympathize. This must be how the buggy manufacturers felt when the auto industry started taking off.

EDIT: There is NO excuse for unicode. :devil:
07 Apr, 2011, KaVir wrote in the 268th comment:
Votes: 0
Twisol said:
And yes, it is likely that I will charge at some point. God, nothing like the insane ScapeFX prices though.

Still, that's the part that would make me hesitate.

I've invested quite a lot of time and effort into my plugin, and now more than half of my players use MUSHclient. If (for the sake of analogy) Nick Gammon were to introduce a licencing fee for mud owners, it would leave me in a very uncomfortable position.

I could drop support for MUSHclient and focus exclusively on my Mudlet GUI, but I'd still lose players if MUSHclient users were blocked from connecting to my mud, because quite a lot of them now like MUSHclient, and wouldn't want to change.

So the question then becomes "How much am I willing to pay to keep those players?". And in the case of an annual fee like ScapeFX, "How long am I willing to pay to keep those players?"

That doesn't mean I wouldn't use your client - the lower entry barrier makes Aspect ideal for bringing in new players. But I would try to ween them off it as soon as I could, and persuade them to change to a free (preferably open source) client that I had more control over.

I have no objections to you making money from your efforts, but I tend to view muds and clients as symbiotic - when a player uses client X to connect to mud Y, it benefits them both. I wouldn't charge you anything to allow Aspect to connect to my mud, but neither would I be willing to pay you for it.

A good example for this would be CMUD. You can pay Zugg to actively promote you..., and he'll pay you to activ..., but you can still use zMUD/CMUD to connect to any mud, and (almost) every mud allows zMUD/CMUD to connect.
07 Apr, 2011, Twisol wrote in the 269th comment:
Votes: 0
I completely understand what you mean, KaVir. I'm considering going the pay-for-perks route, but then I have to decide what perks I can offer. It certainly appears that there are more perks a player would want than an admin would want. Pricing is still completely ephemeral right now, and I don't really know how to tackle it.

KaVir said:
That doesn't mean I wouldn't use your client - the lower entry barrier makes Aspect ideal for bringing in new players. But I would try to ween them off it as soon as I could, and persuade them to change to a free (preferably open source) client that I had more control over.

Unfortunately, that puts Aspect on the same playing field as Nexus, FMud, and the other entry-level clients: only particularly good at attracting players. There are already a number of such clients one could use, so Aspect really isn't bringing too much to the table. I want Aspect to actually be an attractive choice for serious use.

KaVir said:
I have no objections to you making money from your efforts, but I tend to view muds and clients as symbiotic - when a player uses client X to connect to mud Y, it benefits them both. I wouldn't charge you anything to allow Aspect to connect to my mud, but neither would I be willing to pay you for it.

I can sense that this is a dead end, but you wouldn't really be paying to let people use Aspect to connect to your MUD. Registration in itself is just a formality to prevent Aspect from being used as an open proxy. Really you'd be paying for the developer API and a place in Aspect's MUD listings. Anyways, I'll repeat again that everything involving payment is just about as far as you can get from being set in stone.
07 Apr, 2011, KaVir wrote in the 270th comment:
Votes: 0
Twisol said:
I completely understand what you mean, KaVir. I'm considering going the pay-for-perks route, but then I have to decide what perks I can offer.

A direct link from the front page, with a graphical icon to make the mud even more prominent. Charge monthly, quarterly or yearly.

Access to a large repository of images and sounds that can be used for customising the interface. One-off charge for different packages, or perhaps a tiny per-image licencing charge.

A personal repository for uploading additional images and sounds, so that the players don't have to download them directly from the mud. Charge for quota.

A selection of individually licenced (with one-off payments) predefined plugins that can be used out-of-the-box, saving mud owners the hassle of creating their own.

Twisol said:
Unfortunately, that puts Aspect on the same playing field as Nexus, FMud, and the other entry-level clients: only particularly good at attracting players. There are already a number of such clients one could use, so Aspect really isn't bringing too much to the table. I want Aspect to actually be an attractive choice for serious use.

Understandable, but it's a two-way street.

Twisol said:
I can sense that this is a dead end, but you wouldn't really be paying to let people use Aspect to connect to your MUD. Registration in itself is just a formality to prevent Aspect from being used as an open proxy. Really you'd be paying for the developer API and a place in Aspect's MUD listings.

So people could still use Aspect to connect to my mud if I didn't pay, but I wouldn't be able to customise the interface, and my mud wouldn't be included in the listings?

I guess the listings issue wouldn't be a problem if I could just provide new players with a direct link (like I can with FMud or PHudBase). I'd need to do that anyway if I was going to use Aspect in my promotions, otherwise I'd be sending prospective players to your mud list instead of my game.

But without the ability to customise the interface, I suspect Aspect would lose much of its appeal. Your users would look for a different mud, and my players would look for a different client.

That's the same reason why I wouldn't charge you anything to give Aspect access to MSDP, MXP, MSP, etc. Such protocols could be used to make your client more appealing for my players, but they'd also make my mud more appealing for your users.

Twisol said:
Anyways, I'll repeat again that everything involving payment is just about as far as you can get from being set in stone.

Then now's the best time to discuss it!
07 Apr, 2011, Twisol wrote in the 271st comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
A direct link from the front page, with a graphical icon to make the mud even more prominent. Charge monthly, quarterly or yearly.

Access to a large repository of images and sounds that can be used for customising the interface. One-off charge for different packages, or perhaps a tiny per-image licencing charge.

A personal repository for uploading additional images and sounds, so that the players don't have to download them directly from the mud. Charge for quota.

A selection of individually licenced (with one-off payments) predefined plugins that can be used out-of-the-box, saving mud owners the hassle of creating their own.

Definitely some good ideas there…

KaVir said:
I guess the listings issue wouldn't be a problem if I could just provide new players with a direct link (like I can with FMud or PHudBase). I'd need to do that anyway if I was going to use Aspect in my promotions, otherwise I'd be sending prospective players to your mud list instead of my game.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I do want Aspect to be embeddable, like with an <iframe>. And I don't see a problem with providing permalinks that automatically load a specific MUD profile.

KaVir said:
But without the ability to customise the interface, I suspect Aspect would lose much of its appeal. Your users would look for a different mud, and my players would look for a different client.

That's right. That's the differentiating feature. What if most of the developer API was free to use (since I want players to be able to use it too), but I offered advanced APIs for a price? (I have no idea what those advanced APIs would be… perhaps a built-in mapper API or something.)

KaVir said:
Twisol said:
Anyways, I'll repeat again that everything involving payment is just about as far as you can get from being set in stone.

Then now's the best time to discuss it!

I agree. I just don't want you to think I'm dead set on anything, and everything so far is just stuff I've come up with that I think could work.
08 Apr, 2011, KaVir wrote in the 272nd comment:
Votes: 0
Twisol said:
What if most of the developer API was free to use (since I want players to be able to use it too), but I offered advanced APIs for a price? (I have no idea what those advanced APIs would be… perhaps a built-in mapper API or something.)

If it's something that encourages a mud's existing playerbase to switch from their current client to Aspect, then I would suggest offering it for free. Maps are a pretty popular feature, if your client didn't offer them (regardless of the reason) then there are definitely some players who would switch to a client that did.

If you want to make money from mud owners, I would personally suggest focusing on things that help the mud but not the client. For example if my mud is on the recommended shortlist on the front page with a cool graphical icon beside it, that's great for me, as it'll bring in new players - but if I decide not to pay for that option, it won't discourage anyone from using your client.
08 Apr, 2011, Twisol wrote in the 273rd comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks for the insights, KaVir. :smile: As Aspect progresses I'm sure I'll return to the topic of paid features, but for now I think I'm just going to let it mature a bit in the back of my mind.
14 Apr, 2011, KaVir wrote in the 274th comment:
Votes: 0
Twisol said:
(EDIT: Wait, ScapeFX is free now?)

Hephos just announced it officially.

Still, I suspect he may have missed the boat on this one. ScapeFX looked visually impressive when it was announced a couple of years ago, although it was weak on protocol support. It doesn't seem to have changed since then, but it's now possible to create the same sort of GUI using MUSHclient, Mudlet, etc.
14 Apr, 2011, Runter wrote in the 275th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Twisol said:
(EDIT: Wait, ScapeFX is free now?)

Hephos just announced it officially.

Still, I suspect he may have missed the boat on this one. ScapeFX looked visually impressive when it was announced a couple of years ago, although it was weak on protocol support. It doesn't seem to have changed since then, but it's now possible to create the same sort of GUI using MUSHclient, Mudlet, etc.


Yeah, I think I agree there. Maybe he felt at the time he had something others were lacking. I think he just misjudged the demand for such. (who are willing to pay)
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