[the_logos]

Iron Realms Entertainment is proud to announce that the latest version of our lovely Nexus client is approaching the end of its beta-testing period, and we invite you to try it out in conjunction with Achaea (the testing ground for it) if you wish, by clicking here.

Our goal with the client is to create an experience that is more visually pleasing than what you'd get with something like Zmud. Just as MUDs strive to improve their presentability via ansi coloring or table formatting, we'd like to take the next step and create something that will immediately be attractive to someone who hasn't played a MUD before. Granted, there's no making the pure text interface part particularly graphically beautiful (by its very nature), but a lot can be done here. We also got tired of referring people to 3rd party clients and felt that we should be providing people with a first class client. Nexus is currently quite pretty (and will get a different skin for each game), and has some of the functionality we'll need it to have, though certainly not all of it (windowed communication, a few additions to the scripting, mapping features, etc are all coming in the next versions).

In any case, here are some screenshots. Enjoy!

First off, the initial screen a player will see upon firing it up:



--matt

[the_logos]

Choosing your character name:




--matt

[the_logos]

The race and sex choosing screen:


--matt

[the_logos]

The actual play screen:



--matt

[Hephos]

I see you are using Java afterall, and it looks nice.

[Brody]

Consider me envious. Very well done.

[the_logos]

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Originally Posted by (Hephos @ May 08 2005,23[img http://www.topmudsites.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif[/img]7)]I see you are using Java afterall, and it looks nice.

Yeah, we decided to just continue to develop our java client as after looking into it we realized that we'd really already put quite a lot of work into it. It's been a huge pain in the ass in terms of getting it to work with all the different versions of Java out there (especially the most important one: Explorer's version(s)) though. #### you Microsoft and your ****ty Java implementation (but, uh, don't cancel my Xbox live account please....)

--matt

[Hephos]

I would really suggest that you rewrite your applet into a real java application. This will make it a _lot_ less dependant on browsers (in fact you dont need them at all). By going away from being an applet you will also face a lot less security limits and gain a lot of more freedom on how to make the program.

You can still achieve the nice feature of "click a link to play" by using java web start. It will also do nice things like install the program into start menus and keeping it up2date.

Switching a java applet into a real program isn't much trouble, andyou gain a lot of stability and a much nicer looking program IMO.

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by (Hephos @ May 09 2005,05:29) I would really suggest that you rewrite your applet into a real java application. This will make it a _lot_ less dependant on browsers (in fact you dont need them at all). By going away from being an applet you will also face a lot less security limits and gain a lot of more freedom on how to make the program. You can still achieve the nice feature of "click a link to play" by using java web start. It will also do nice things like install the program into start menus and keeping it up2date.

Yes, we considered that, but it has two problems:

1. Webstart requires Java 1.2.2.
About 49% of users are still running an older version. Requiring that they download Java 2 in order to use our client isn't an option. The barrier to entry has to be as low as possible, given that a text interface is already doing overtime as a barrier to entry for most people.

2. Webstart is a bit flakey. This isn't a black or white problem, of course, but for instance, Puzzle Pirates (a pretty solidly developed graphical mud) managed to crash on us the 2nd time we ran it due to Webstart problems.

Overall though, it's #1 that's the real problem. We may develop Nexus into a proper application, but until Java 2 is on 90%+ machines, we'll have to maintain a Java 1.1 compatible client as well.

--matt

[tehScarecrow]

Old thread, but I just found it. I just wanted to say that I once tried to create a fighting system with the java client, but you guys don't support key binding to the keys insert, delete, home or end. If you read this, please fix that!

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by (tehScarecrow @ May 10 2005,03:51) Old thread, but I just found it. I just wanted to say that I once tried to create a fighting system with the java client, but you guys don't support key binding to the keys insert, delete, home or end. If you read this, please fix that!

Yeah, all those little things like that are being worked on. This release of Nexus is mainly about making it prettier and doing some work on the scripting, but we've got plans for a couple versions beyond this. It's going to be pretty #### nice when it's done. Thanks for the feedback!

--matt