[tommi]

Originally Posted by Hephos If you are a ScapeFX customer, support is free. Upgrades are free.

So what you are saying is that we would have to trust that you will deliver the product and not take the money and run.

You claim that this client is intended for commercial and larger free muds that have the revenue to pay for this, yet you fail to offer even the most basic levels of protection that any right minded company would ask for. I would have a very hard time putting my money and faith in your product when one bug you do not fix in a timely manner could ruin my business and or drive away all of my players. To which they would have no recourse.

Maybe you need to go away and have a rethink about all this and come back with a real business plan and to have a proper understanding of the market and the needs and requirements of those whom you perceive to be your customers, because at the moment your all over the place and cannot even provide answers to basic questions that any commercial entity would be asking of you, your company and your product.

So i pose these questions again,

Do you have some type of Service Level Agreement for the fixing of bugs within your software, if so, what happens when you fail to correct a bug within a specified time frame?

How do you plan on dealing with additional functionality? Will this incur additional cost if so what is the pricing structure for additional functionality, and time frames for delivery?

Will there be a formal contract so that customers know exactly what they will and will not receive, or will they just have to take your word for it and trust you, if you do plan on having a formal contract, how will you deal with variances in international contract law?

What types of remediation does a customer have if you fail to deliver on any of your obligations, will things like this be made clear before anyone signs on the dotted line?

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by tommi So what you are saying is that we would have to trust that you will deliver the product and not take the money and run.

You seem to have a real grudge for this client do you? Mind telling us what game/company you represent?

Originally Posted by tommi Do you have some type of Service Level Agreement for the fixing of bugs within your software, if so, what happens when you fail to correct a bug within a specified time frame?

No that is not what you are paying for. If you want that support, feel free to contact us for an SLA and we'll give you one for a standard market fee. You are paying to use the product API, not an SLA. Do you get an SLA when you use the Java API for example? Or do you get that with FMud or Mushclient (since that is what you are proposing people to use instead)?

Originally Posted by tommi How do you plan on dealing with additional functionality? Will this incur additional cost if so what is the pricing structure for additional functionality, and time frames for delivery?

Upgrades are free. We don't give any time frames.

Originally Posted by tommi Will there be a formal contract so that customers know exactly what they will and will not receive, or will they just have to take your word for it and trust you, if you do plan on having a formal contract, how will you deal with variances in international contract law?

No there will not be a formal contract for an SLA, unless you explicitly order one.

Originally Posted by tommi What types of remediation does a customer have if you fail to deliver on any of your obligations, will things like this be made clear before anyone signs on the dotted line?

None. And it should already be made clear. Nothing out of the ordinary.
"... the Licensed Software and Related Materials are provided to you "as is" and Mythicscape disclaims all warranties and representations ..."

Happy now Tommi? Or do you want to know something else before you order the product? :P

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by tommi A custom client is the ultimate way to go. Muds need to come into the 21st century and use all the tools available to them and a custom client is certainly one of those tools. That said, if all your going to do with the client is to offer a dull black screen and a connect button aka any telnet app out there, and by app i mean everything from windows telnet to zmud and mushclient then you might as well just embed some dumb java app into a website and call that connectivity. Take a look at the Bat Mud Client for inspiration, those guys have written a truly amazing client for their mud. Its has good features and is easy to use and enhances the game play experience.

I'm taking the liberty to quoting you "tommi" from another thread. You changed your mind about mushclient?

Also, you realize that we are the developer behind Bat Client? Bat Mud hired us, Mythicscape to produce it for them. There is nothing that prevent mudadmins from customizing ScapeFX into something similar. (Although it would take A LOT of work since Bat Client is very advanced compared to the raw ScapeFX API). But the possibilities are there.

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by tommi My argument is that the only thing i can see that MUSH does not have that scape does is a skinable interface

Actually, yes, it does.

Originally Posted by Hephos Myself, I've never understood the idea behind those protocols when you have a CUSTOM client you can do your own protocol for. Nonetheless, easy additions to ScapeFX.

Many muds and clients already support existing protocols - which means at worst a mud owner has plenty of examples to follow, and at best their mud already has them built in. Inventing your own protocol can be a lot of work, and it's unlikely other mud clients would add support for it, meaning you'd most likely end up either adding support for two protocols that did the same thing, or alienating the players who preferred their existing mud clients.

Take a look at MCCP for example. Back in 2001, Lasher gave some statistics for the amount of bandwidth it saved Aardwolf, which showed that with a little under 250 MCCP users the bandwidth usage dropped to around 18-19% of its original amount. He went on to say "if we ever have to move to a host that charges for bandwidth it could very well mean the difference between being able to afford to stay online or not". You've said you're targeting large muds, so I think this is definitely the sort of thing that's worth looking at.

Now perhaps Lasher could have created his own compression protocol, but his goal was to encourage as many people as possible to use it, and that means it's in his best interests to have a widely supported protocol. Not everyone will use the same client, so using a standardised protocol supported by multiple clients makes a lot of sense.

[tommi]

Originally Posted by Hephos I'm taking the liberty to quoting you "tommi" from another thread. You changed your mind about mushclient?

Originally Posted by Tommi if all your going to do with the client is to offer a dull black screen and a connect button aka any telnet app out there

You seem to miss the point often and read to much into what is actually being said, but while we are into digging up history, why don't you tell the good people who read this just what you would charge for a client like batclient? I seem to recall it being something in the vicinity of US $12000, at least that was the number quoted for a very similar product.

So the reality is for $350 per year you get a pretty basic telnet app which you have to put in all the effort to write plugins for to give it any real functionality, and if you want something that is actually unique then you will be up for around US $12000 to get it.

Those were the figured quoted to me a little over 12 months ago.

Have a nice day

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by tommi You seem to miss the point often and read to much into what is actually being said, but while we are into digging up history, why don't you tell the good people who read this just what you would charge for a client like batclient? I seem to recall it being something in the vicinity of US $12000, at least that was the number quoted for a very similar product.

Which point did i miss?

Originally Posted by tommi So the reality is for $350 per year you get a pretty basic telnet app which you have to put in all the effort to write plugins for to give it any real functionality, and if you want something that is actually unique then you will be up for around US $12000 to get it. Those were the figured quoted to me a little over 12 months ago. Have a nice day

ScapeFX is more than just a basic telnet app. If you take a look at the feature listing you should see that. ScapeFX Mud Client

Ohh okay, so you have contacted us regarding a client in the past? We don't publish financial information about our customers on a public forum which i'm sure people will understand. I'm sure the quote you got for your client were reasonable or even cheap compared to development costs in the REAL world. But i guess you figured you would instead try find your own programmer? And give them "Some financial reward". Perhaps you like to tell us the vicinity of that sum?
Seeking Java Programmer
How did it go by the way?

Anyways, we've cut those costs a lot for people interested in a custom client since they can license the core ScapeFX engine for a very cheap fee now. Of course if you are looking to get a product like batclient or equivalent and you want to hire us for all the programming you are looking at a (although cheap compared to others) real development cost that is a lot higher than $350. Keep in mind that a real software company charges AT LEAST $100/hour for consultant jobs (more or less). That is three weeks of work for the quote you said you got from us.

With ScapeFX you have the opportunity to do a lot of the work behind the custom features yourself, from a codebase that is already functional. So any mudadmin with access to programming skills should be able to go a long way on their own without having to pay for hiring additional programming from whoever they seem fit.

I'm happy to answer any more questions you have. And if you aren't just trolling this promotional board perhaps you could take your flames to another forum. Feel free to send them to us in mail. There is a contact form on our website.

Btw, for interested people there is soon a sample Eclipse project available on the wiki. It will be possible to use this to build your own client and add your custom features to test with. You will be able to do this during a trial before you actually purchase the annual license.

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by Hephos With ScapeFX you have the opportunity to do a lot of the work behind the custom features yourself, from a codebase that is already functional. So any mudadmin with access to programming skills should be able to go a long way on their own without having to pay for hiring additional programming from whoever they seem fit.

On TMC you compared the price of ScapeFX against the cost of developing your own custom client, saying that "you get a complete custom codebase for a client", and that "You have the chance to get a custom client ready for your game for $350". From that, I got the impression that the client was already complete, and that the licencee could customise it relatively quickly and easily.

However your recent post seems to suggest that the licencee would still be required to do significant further development in order to customise/personalise the client to any worthwhile degree. If that is the case, then Tommi's point (despite the aggressive phrasing) is actually a valid one - what do you offer over MUSHclient?

ScapeFX would be a little easier for the player to install (one click instead of three or four), and is relatively platform independant (MUSHclient requires a separate download for different operating systems), but that alone wouldn't convince me to shell out $363/year.

Is your client easier to customise perhaps? Do you have better documentation? Maybe you provide a larger library of prewritten plugins? Do you support multiple scripting languages? Better handling of separate windows? More flexible graphics support?

I know what the competition can do, but what is it that you offer above and beyond them? What could your client do for my mud that would make me think "that's the client I need"?

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by KaVir On TMC you compared the price of ScapeFX against the cost of developing your own custom client, saying that "you get a complete custom codebase for a client", and that "You have the chance to get a custom client ready for your game for $350". From that, I got the impression that the client was already complete, and that the licencee could customise it relatively quickly and easily. However your recent post seems to suggest that the licencee would still be required to do significant further development in order to customise/personalise the client to any worthwhile degree. If that is the case, then Tommi's point (despite the aggressive phrasing) is actually a valid one - what do you offer over MUSHclient?

Well of course you cannot get a CUSTOM client right off the bat without having to do some modification yourself... It would be kind of hard to accomplish that from our side :P But the raw ScapeFX client works in the default state when you install it on your site. Simply creating a skin plugin should get you a fairly nice client without much effort.

Originally Posted by KaVir ScapeFX would be a little easier for the player to install (one click instead of three or four), and is relatively platform independant (MUSHclient requires a separate download for different operating systems), but that alone wouldn't convince me to shell out £363/year.

249 euro for a free mud. Not sure what your price tag is but i guess you done the calculation to that currency right And you are right, platform independent and "Click to Play".

Originally Posted by KaVir Is your client easier to customise perhaps? Do you have better documentation? Maybe you provide a larger library of prewritten plugins? Do you support multiple scripting languages? Better handling of separate windows? More flexible graphics support? I know what the competition can do, but what is it that you offer above and beyond them? What could your client do for my mud that would make me think "that's the client I need"?

I cannot tell wether it is easier to customize or not, but I certainly believe so. Mushclient is not my line of field and I never said it was so i shall not comment on its features.

The wiki should contain all info necessary to judge that yourself soon though. We're working on it.
SampleProject - ScapeFX Wiki will be a good start for anyone interested in customizing ScapeFX.

And we will provide prewritten plugins when we get requests for it. (Such as different mud specifc protocols that might be of interest and so on...)

[tommi]

Originally Posted by Hephos I cannot tell wether it is easier to customize or not, but I certainly believe so. Mushclient is not my line of field and I never said it was so i shall not comment on its features.

So you do not know what features MUSHclient provides, yet, your claim is the ScrapeFX has superior functionality and offers better customization abilities. From my own observations it would seem that the only thing that your client offers that MUSHclient does not, its 1 click install and play which i do not think represents US350 a year worth of functionality.

In fact it sounds like all your offering is a very basic telnet application which just so happens to be customizable. This does not make a custom client, only potentially one, and then only if the end user has the skills and abilities to code in beanscript and or java. There is no library of pre-built plugins that require minimal modification to get working, everyone will have to reinvent the wheel and make their own chat, health bars and other typical plugins, there is no MXP, MCCP, MSP or peublo, all of which are mud standard protocols.

MUSHclient comes out of the box with a number standard plugins for health bars and the like, you can script in a language of your choice, including but not limited to Lua, VB, Perl and Python. So im yet to be convinced that Scrape offers US$350 value per year of investment.

Oh and you can be assured that i have no interest in this thread other than to bring the facts to the surface for all to see, i am not a representative from a competing company, i am not developing a competing product, no matter what you might like to imply from my previous posts. So rather than worry about what i have said in the past, maybe you should stay focused and concentrate on the issues i am raising now.

In business there are some standards you should always follow before you announce anything,

1. know your products strengths and weaknesses,
2. know your competitors products strengths and weaknesses,
3. know what the market wants and needs,
4. know who your customers are and the best way to reach them.

Some food for though, NO.

In reality you have potentially 25 - 30 customers at a stretch 50, of those 1/2 will not require something like this and 1/2 the remainder will not have the funds to pay for it, so that leaves about 10 games to which you could market this directly do. With everything you need to have a plan, without one your going to come across looking really amateurish.

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by tommi So you do not know what features MUSHclient provides, yet, your claim is the ScrapeFX has superior functionality and offers better customization abilities. From my own observations it would seem that the only thing that your client offers that MUSHclient does not, its 1 click install and play which i do not think represents US350 a year worth of functionality. In fact it sounds like all your offering is a very basic telnet application which just so happens to be customizable. This does not make a custom client, only potentially one, and then only if the end user has the skills and abilities to code in beanscript and or java. There is no library of pre-built plugins that require minimal modification to get working, everyone will have to reinvent the wheel and make their own chat, health bars and other typical plugins, there is no MXP, MCCP, MSP or peublo, all of which are mud standard protocols. MUSHclient comes out of the box with a number standard plugins for health bars and the like, you can script in a language of your choice, including but not limited to Lua, VB, Perl and Python. So im yet to be convinced that Scrape offers US$350 value per year of investment. Oh and you can be assured that i have no interest in this thread other than to bring the facts to the surface for all to see, i am not a representative from a competing company, i am not developing a competing product, no matter what you might like to imply from my previous posts. So rather than worry about what i have said in the past, maybe you should stay focused and concentrate on the issues i am raising now. In business there are some standards you should always follow before you announce anything, 1. know your products strengths and weaknesses, 2. know your competitors products strengths and weaknesses, 3. know what the market wants and needs, 4. know who your customers are and the best way to reach them. Some food for though, NO. In reality you have potentially 25 - 30 customers at a stretch 50, of those 1/2 will not require something like this and 1/2 the remainder will not have the funds to pay for it, so that leaves about 10 games to which you could market this directly do. With everything you need to have a plan, without one your going to come across looking really amateurish.

Do your own research if you are interested:
Mythicscape
Sharune
ScapeFX Mud Client
ScapeFX Mud Client <--- Your "basic telnet app" features i guess?

Try our custom firebolt ScapeFX implementation (click to play):
Firebolt

And compare it to Aardwolf's "customized" mushclient (just to take an example, it seems like a nice bundle up of mushclient):
Aardwolf mud - Web based and downloadable clients

Take a minute, sit right back and figure out which client will attract more NEW players or even get people to understand how to connect to the game. You yourself did a research about this tommi: "and none of them could work out how to use mushclient even when it was installed already for them". (custom clients. Good or bad?)

The number one point of a custom good looking client is that new players have an easy entry into the game. People that may never before have tried out muds. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you "inbreed" mushclient (or whatever client) users to immediately shut them down and start with a new custom client. It doesn't work. We knew that several years ago. Get yourself a "click to play", good looking custom client and start attracting NEW players into muds!

Otherwise, keep up with the good work putting fire in the thread so it is at the top everyday tommi, thank you very much!

[Hephos]

Btw, a feature I haven't mentioned in ScapeFX is the log "recording" and "playback" tool.

Instead of just logging the text you can choose to log it as a timeline and replay it realtime with the playback tool. You will then watch the log as it took place. It will update your client UI accordingly so you see things like health meters, group displays etc getting updated as well.

So you can record a nice log and put it on your website for others to download and watch. Make your own "in-mud" storytelling, theatre, standup comedy or whatever :P

http://scapefx.com/wiki/images/Sshot6.jpg

[tommi]

Originally Posted by Hephos I'm not gonna sit here and tell you "inbreed" mushclient

It does not make good business sense to call all of your potential customers who read this thread INBREEDS, it shows a clear lack of interpersonal and dispute resolution skills. While i might have been asking tough questions of you, your customers are going to be much asking a hell of a lot more when bugs show up and they want them rectified yesterday. Calling them a bunch of INBREEDS, and being all smug is certainly not the way to get repeat customers. When your potential customer base is already very small and your selling a boutique product, being professional is everything.

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by tommi It does not make good business sense to call all of your potential customers who read this thread INBREEDS, it shows a clear lack of interpersonal and dispute resolution skills. While i might have been asking tough questions of you, your customers are going to be much asking a hell of a lot more when bugs show up and they want them rectified yesterday. Calling them a bunch of INBREEDS, and being all smug is certainly not the way to get repeat customers. When your potential customer base is already very small and your selling a boutique product, being professional is everything.

I said people that are "inbreed on mushclient" is not going to be using another client whatsoever. They are already settled in. The same goes for any client. These are not our customers primarily. Nor did i call ALL of our "potential customers inbreed". There is a difference. You took the word out of its full sentence.

I'm not gonna respond to any of your post from now on tommi as you have no intention whatsoever to discuss something without turning the whole issue around as a flame against our product.

Since you have no interest in our client, I'm gonna respectively aks you to quit posting in this thread. Thank you very much.

[tommi]

Originally Posted by Hephos I said people that are "inbreed on mushclient"

No, what you said was,

Originally Posted by Hephos I'm not gonna sit here and tell you "inbreed" mushclient users

Which says you consider all MUSHclient users to be inbreeds. Maybe you would like to retract the derogatory statement?

Originally Posted by Hephos Take a minute, sit right back and figure out which client will attract more NEW players or even get people to understand how to connect to the game. You yourself did a research about this tommi: "and none of them could work out how to use mushclient even when it was installed already for them". (custom clients. Good or bad?)

Interesting you should bring that up, sure my own research showed that 12 year olds do not understand enough about the telnet protocol to be able to use MUSHclient to connect to a mud, this is primarily due to them not ever having exposure to the protocol. What they did understand however were the mechanics associated with MMO's download client, install client, click icon to start client and then be in chargen. When presented with client mechanics they understand, even 12 year olds can connect to a mud, progress through chargen and play the game.

At the time i did not know that MUSHclient could be redistributed and configured in such a manner as i was not a user of that client, i had been a Portal GT user for many years and was going to license that client for my game as i liked the simplicity of and used extensively within my code the MIP protocol. which dealt with routing of data to separate windows, the displaying of status bars and gauges, the displaying of images and the playing of sounds. These things should be bog standard features of any client that is offering a rich client experience.

So far you have not shown that you're offering US $350 per year worth of additional functionality over the products you're competing against.

There are not a lot of mud owners who do any actual outreach and promotion in ways to grow new players that are not current mudders, there is IRE and a few others, but other than that, the vast majority of them work by word of mouth or promotion within the existing mud community. Existing mudders are rather precious when it comes to the client they use and are reluctant to change, so the real worth of Scrape is with targetting non mudders. This leaves you in a real predicament, because you have a potentially great product that has no real market. Unless you can convince mud owners to try and tap into the vast amount of casual gamers, like the 500,000 players of Farmville on Facebook for example, converting 1% of those would amount to a huge influx of mudders.

[Hephos]

You can now sign up for a free 20-day trial to test the ScapeFX API and build your own client before you make a purchase. With the trial you will receive the SampleSFX project from which you can build a client that you can deploy for your own game.

ScapeFX 20-day trial signup: ScapeFX Mud Client

SampleSFX project info at wiki: SampleProject - ScapeFX Wiki

ScapeFX licensing info: ScapeFX Mud Client

ScapeFX screenshots: Screenshots - ScapeFX Wiki

Click to play the Firebolt ScapeFX implementation: Firebolt

[Saffire]

Tommi, why are you so intent on trolling this thread into oblivion? You made your points a long time ago. Now it just seems like you're trying to flame the OP for no apparent reason, and you're making yoursef look really silly and chidlish in the process. Perhaps you could take your discussion with Hephos to PMs or e-mails.

[Lasher]

Originally Posted by Saffire Perhaps you could take your discussion with Hephos to PMs or e-mails.

Seconded. Asking tough questions about the client itself is fair enough but now it's getting personal.

I don't believe Hephos' intent was to refer to regular Mushclient users as "inbreeds". Please keep in mind there is a language barrier here too and give him the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway, personally a big fan of Mushclient but also very interested to see how ScapeFX turns out and learning more about what it does (and doesn't) offer compared to traditional MUD clients.

[Newworlds]

I have spoken in emails and pm's with Hephos and he is very respectful and excited about his client. NWA has been seeking a better Java client than what we currently have and I really enjoyed looking at his system.

Before you scoff at someone trying to earn some money for their hard work and system, perhaps try it out and give it a chance. No one is forcing you to use it or pay for it. I appreciate innovative people trying to make our MUD community better.

I feel sad that everytime it seems someone wants a little compensation for hard, quality work, everyone is so up in arms about it. As if our community should pay you to be part of it.

Good Job Hephos. I for one applaud your hard work.

[Mabus]

Originally Posted by Newworlds Before you scoff at someone trying to earn some money for their hard work and system, perhaps try it out and give it a chance. No one is forcing you to use it or pay for it. I appreciate innovative people trying to make our MUD community better. I feel sad that everytime it seems someone wants a little compensation for hard, quality work, everyone is so up in arms about it. As if our community should pay you to be part of it. Good Job Hephos. I for one applaud your hard work.

I am in complete agreement with this.

Looking forward to further updates, Hephos.

[Lanthum]

I agree with Lasher, Newworlds, and Mabus. I spoke with Hephos over email maybe 18 months ago looking for a price quote for a custom client, and my experience with him was very positive! Difference in geography, and therefore language, is something we need to keep in mind on the internet.

It looks good so far Hephos and I wish you success with your client. I do wish there was more support of commonly accepted MUD protocols built in. I also hope you will finish the sample plugins section soon! I think this could go a long way to helping hobbiest mud admins so they can focus more on the game and less on the client.

But I am excited so far, and I know I will be looking into it more when the time comes.

[Delerak]

I feel warm and cuddly inside after all of this..

[Feodrith]

I must say, I can vouch whole-heartedly for Hephos' work. This client is a fantastic piece of work, and the gaming experience can be vastly improved for players.

I have been involved in Sharune MUD (Hephos' own MUD, using Firebolt client which uses ScapeFX) for many years now, and Hephos' work is sound and professional. He is regularly adding new features, updating current features, and if any issues do arise he is quick to fix them.

Firebolt client is brilliant! Give it a try if you don't believe me.

[SlothMUD]

We think this looks rather promising and are going to give the free trial a try.

I'm still not sure if we could afford it since we already pay close to $1100 per year out of own pockets in support of the game...

SlothMUD
text based rpg game
multiplayer free online rpg game

[gth]

Originally Posted by tommi It does not make good business sense to call all of your potential customers who read this thread INBREEDS, it shows a clear lack of interpersonal and dispute resolution skills. While i might have been asking tough questions of you, your customers are going to be much asking a hell of a lot more when bugs show up and they want them rectified yesterday. Calling them a bunch of INBREEDS, and being all smug is certainly not the way to get repeat customers. When your potential customer base is already very small and your selling a boutique product, being professional is everything.

Actually, I read Hephos' statement as a common approach that all admins take in not trying to screw their existing players around - e.g. don't force your entire existing playerbase to use a new client, just keep them happy and work on getting new players instead. Perhaps the word 'incestuous' would have been a better choice? Best to at least ask what the poster meant than assume their intent and go full thottle on the flamethrower. :\

I'm glad the cost has come down. I guess my own preference would be some kind of cross-promotion deal rather than money, but everyone has to pay the bills somehow so I don't begrudge someone running their business the way they see fit.

Are all plugins developed by any MUD sharable with anyone else? Between each other and/or via ScapeFX as a repository? If a MUD's plugins are normally their own and a closed development, would a MUD that donated all their plugins back into the ScapeFX repository be of interest? I guess I see it as 'if there's a MUD you'd never make a sale with under your current model, what do you lose if you let them contribute to the resources that all your other clients would then get to enjoy?'... I gues the answer is EU$249/year, huh? The $1100 figure mentioned earlier is a very clear explanation of why the whole "get a few players to donate $10 a year and you're sorted" doesn't work. MUDs are very rarely a profitable enterprise, period.

Alas, it's a pity everyone is busy building their own empires and protecting their own 'turf'. I believe web-based click-to-play clients will soon be a necessary (if not the only) method to expose MUDs to a huge, new audience - installed clients will only be a preferred stepping stone for players that stick around (assuming they are technically capable). Over time, simple platform diversity will inhibit installed clients too... e.g. how many MUD websites have preferred client statements for Windows 7?

[Hephos]

I'm glad the cost has come down. I guess my own preference would be some kind of cross-promotion deal rather than money, but everyone has to pay the bills somehow so I don't begrudge someone running their business the way they see fit.

I'm sure we could arrange some promotion deals to get away from the license fee for muds. We've offered free clients (that we could get promotion with) to both TMC and TMS (customized for their game lists, graphics etc) but haven't heard from any of them. (Click on the link in their mudlisting and open the game in a customized scapefx).

We've also contacted a few muds to give them opportunity to get the client for free so that we could use it as demo on our site, and are working to get some of them ready.

Are all plugins developed by any MUD sharable with anyone else? Between each other and/or via ScapeFX as a repository? If a MUD's plugins are normally their own and a closed development, would a MUD that donated all their plugins back into the ScapeFX repository be of interest? I guess I see it as 'if there's a MUD you'd never make a sale with under your current model, what do you lose if you let them contribute to the resources that all your other clients would then get to enjoy?'... I gues the answer is EU$249/year, huh? The $1100 figure mentioned earlier is a very clear explanation of why the whole "get a few players to donate $10 a year and you're sorted" doesn't work. MUDs are very rarely a profitable enterprise, period.

We will have a page with sample plugins on the wiki. Currently there is only a sample of a portal MIP reader there. But we plan to expand it to include more plugins in the future. If some mud would contribute with plugins that are of value to other games, I'm sure we can make a deal so they get their license for free, as you say.
The plugins are shareable, as long as they do not use any particular code that is not inside the plugins or any jar files that are shipped along with it.

Alas, it's a pity everyone is busy building their own empires and protecting their own 'turf'. I believe web-based click-to-play clients will soon be a necessary (if not the only) method to expose MUDs to a huge, new audience - installed clients will only be a preferred stepping stone for players that stick around (assuming they are technically capable). Over time, simple platform diversity will inhibit installed clients too... e.g. how many MUD websites have preferred client statements for Windows 7?

We'll see in the future. Perhaps we'll simply allow free muds to use scapefx under a free license... Just to make the use of it more spread and get more plugins available.