[Hephos]

Mythicscape is starting development on ScapeFX, a new MUD client directed towards the mass of text-based MUD games. It is a Java based client with an API for writing java based plugins to customize it for a particular game. The client is started on the MUD's website using Java Web Start technology making it a "click to play" experience.

[Hephos]

Our client codebase for ScapeFX is almost ready for release now. It is going to be released with an annual license fee for mud administrators to use. You will pay a fee to be able to use the client for your game free of charge for your players. The license fee will be different for FREE (totally free) and commercial muds. You will host it on your website and you will have access to the Java based API with which you can create customized plugins that are easily added to the startup file. Some example of plugins are customized network parsers, telnet negotiators, GUI skins and graphical components such as health monitors etc.

We will be releasing our "Firebolt" client which is built using ScapeFX for Sharune II as well as an example client using the API.


However, to get feedback and help with making the API easy for developers we need one single beta tester MUD. You will receive one year free license and we will help you setup the client for your game and give some free coding for any particular components you may wish to have (based on how much time we have available of course).

If you are interested please send us a mail at: Mythicscape

Include the following information:
* Your name and your position in the mud
* Name of your mud and URL to website
* A short description of your MUD
* Some ideas of what you want to have in your client

Requirements:
* You need to have some experience with Java programming
* Your mud should have daily player peaks of at least 25 players

Extra bonus:
* You have a talented graphical artist for making your client skin and GUI components

Best wishes
Emil
Mythicscape

[Mabus]

Looks interesting.

Wishing you great success.

[Hephos]

There is now a demo available.

ScapeFX Wiki

More information is coming soon. The main webpage will also be up shortly.

[Mabus]

Very nice.

Game looks interesting as well.

Is there a way to increase the size of the font? I looked, but couldn't find one.

Doing a fine job with it.

[Hephos]

A more comprehensive version of the site is now availble: ScapeFX Mud Client

Wiki and documentaion is being worked on as well as updates to the client API! (Such as font selection as mentioned above).

[gth]

Java downloader keeps saying "Download stalled."

edit: Okay, the full-blown client downloaded, but the demo one stalls with about 10 seconds to go. Retrying the basic demo starting link shows it still has 85% of the download cached, but never resumes to finish downloading the last part.

addendum feedback, based on fullblown demo to Sharune:
- client doesn't seem to reconnect (offline message changes to online, but no content is shown in the main window).
- suggest having some more autosizing options for the various windows, or at least some intuitive snap-to behaviour based on nearby points of interest (another window / application edge)
- Suggest "Remove tab" be called "Close tab"
- Status bar could be more configurable (e.g. time online?)
- Resizeable windows look good, indeed overall the client is a very responsive user interface, but perhaps support for *rescaling* a window could added (e.g. maps / groups) ?
- Suggest adding a 'keep on top' option to some of the windows (e.g. map on top of text window?)
- Might want to show a progress bar when downloading news items etc. takes more than a second or so; there's no feedback that the client is doing anything at present.

re. the website/forums/wiki:
- can't see any way to create a user on the wiki to make comments there (a la the discussion pages)... have you linked them to the forum accounts or something?
- forums look very empty... perhaps a basic post showing what triggers/scripting/etc. is possible in each of the areas.. ? (or did I have to register to see all the forum content?)

[Hephos]

Thanks for the feedback gth, we'll look into it

Also, we're changing the licensing so that muds that accept donations fall under the non-commercial type (the cheaper annual fee).

[Saffire]

Originally Posted by Hephos Thanks for the feedback gth, we'll look into it Also, we're changing the licensing so that muds that accept donations fall under the non-commercial type (the cheaper annual fee).

That's a ridiculous amount of money to pay to license a MUD client.

[gth]

From http://www.scapefx.com/license.php:
Free MUDs (no donations): $350/first year, $700 p .a. thereafter
Commercial MUDs (including donation only): $1,500/first year, $3,000 p.a. thereafter

My biggest problem with the licensing is that a MUD could (in effect) be ransomed for the users that connect using this client. What happens when half your userbase uses such a client - that you've spent so much time configuring and tailoring the MUD output for - only to have the annual fee spike much higher?

I don't know any completely-free MUDs that could come up with this every year, especially given so many of them follow a licensing approach that doesn't include donations. A more reasonable model could be a once-off up-front fee with a much smaller annual fee - at least then you might have the option of a once-off donation drive that your playerbase would contribute to that's in their own interest. But you couldn't sustain that annually.

[Hephos]

Well, honestly i do not see that the reduced license cost of 350 should be a problem to any semi-established free mud. You should be able to accept donations to pay for the license fee no matter what mud codebase you are using. They are donating for the client, not to run their game. (I'm sure this is up for debate though :P).

This sums up to a playerbase of 35 people paying 10 dollars each to play the mud using the client for 1 year. "Normal" fees to play a game is what? 10 dollars per month?

We're not really targetting our product to muds that cannot pay this low fee. Any mud admin that thinks 350 is so high they cannot pay it (even with donations from players that are going to use it) is not the customer base we are aiming our product at. Usually you are not a solo admin running your mud, but a bunch of people that together can finance this. Of course, I realize 90% of muds probably fall into this category, hell, 90% probably doesn't even have 35 players... but these are not our future customers (probably).

Our intention is not to put a custom client codebase into every startup mud out there. It is for the ones that actually have a backend of either lots of players or people with decent economy. Or those that wish to create a kickass commercial game with a nice looking graphical client. (As a side note we will probably in the near future realese a java based game engine codebase as well for licensing).

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by Hephos Well, honestly i do not see that the reduced license cost of 350 should be a problem to any semi-established free mud.

An established mud will (hopefully) run for more than a year though, and you're talking $700 per year after the first (assuming the pricing doesn't go up in the future).

But there's another problem: Players usually have a preferred mud client, and if you've already got an established playerbase, the chances are they won't want to change to a different client. So how do you convince your players to donate for a client they don't want to use?

It's mostly going to be the new players who will use this, and it's certainly a nice way to lower the entry barrier for them. But this also reinforces gth's point about the potential for ransom; if you've built up a new generation of players who love the ScapeFx client, and then one day you can no longer afford it, it could kill your playerbase (not to mention flushing years of customisation and plugin development down the toilet).

[Hephos]

An established mud will (hopefully) run for more than a year though, and you're talking $700 per year after the first (assuming the pricing doesn't go up in the future).

We'll see. Perhaps we have to lower it.

We might consider other licensing options as well if necessary.

[Hephos]

- can't see any way to create a user on the wiki to make comments there (a la the discussion pages)... have you linked them to the forum accounts or something?

Only registered users can modify the wiki. It will be people that have some idea of what they are writing about :P Otherwise to ask questions and similar we will use the support forum for that i think.

The "developer" sections of the forums will be available to licensed users belonging to the developer group. It will hold boards for how to customize the client. The plublic forums available to all will be the actual end user forums with discussions about things like triggers, scripting and so on.

[Threshold]

How is the project going in general?

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by Threshold How is the project going in general?

It is going well. We should have a sample Eclipse project available on the wiki today where interested people can take a peek at how it looks when customizing the client with plugins.

[tommi]

I cannot see much of a point to anyone other than perhaps a commercial mud ever having need for something like this, and then, a commercial mud would likely have the skills in house to produce something similar. When you have access to free webclients clients like FMUD, or that you can customize MUSHclient and make it available as a download on your website, both of which cost nothing, there is really no excuse for every 1 man mud in existance not to have brilliant free tools for their players, both new and old.

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by tommi I cannot see much of a point to anyone other than perhaps a commercial mud ever having need for something like this, and then, a commercial mud would likely have the skills in house to produce something similar. When you have access to free webclients clients like FMUD, or that you can customize MUSHclient and make it available as a download on your website, both of which cost nothing, there is really no excuse for every 1 man mud in existance not to have brilliant free tools for their players, both new and old.

It is like comparing apples and oranges.

As said "1 man" free muds might not be the target of this client.

Personally i do not call your other options "brilliant". Nor being even near as customizeable as ScapeFX, which is the whole point of the client.

[tommi]

Originally Posted by Hephos It is like comparing apples and oranges. As said "1 man" free muds might not be the target of this client. Personally i do not call your other options "brilliant". Nor being even near as customizeable as ScapeFX, which is the whole point of the client.

Whats not customizable about MUSHclient? have you scene what Aardwolf did with it? About the only thing missing from MUSH is a skinable interface, but the code is open and i guess any half competent coder would understand how to change the look and feel of it or design a new widget set for it. As for anything else, there is pretty much nothing you cannot do with mini windows and a bit of scripting with the added value of a large active community of users and developers.


So one could either spend their time developing plugins for MUSHclient, or spend $700 a year and still have to spend the same amount of time developing plugins for Scrape. Personally i would rather spend the $700 a year on advertising and beer and not necessarily in that order.

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by tommi Whats not customizable about MUSHclient? have you scene what Aardwolf did with it? About the only thing missing from MUSH is a skinable interface, but the code is open and i guess any half competent coder would understand how to change the look and feel of it or design a new widget set for it. As for anything else, there is pretty much nothing you cannot do with mini windows and a bit of scripting with the added value of a large active community of users and developers. So one could either spend their time developing plugins for MUSHclient, or spend $700 a year and still have to spend the same amount of time developing plugins for Scrape. Personally i would rather spend the $700 a year on advertising and beer and not necessarily in that order.

Yes. So you are saying aardwolf (top listing on this site) is a bunch of worse than "half competent" coders that cannot change the look and feel or design new widgets for mushclient? That is the sum of your post. Which i think is a ridiculous argument. (Since aardwold really aren't using any nice skin or good looking widgets for the mushclient UI: http://www.aardwolf.com/tmp/aardwolf-mud-2.jpg). They did a nice work with it though i must say.

The idea behind a customizable client like scapefx is that you get AWAY from the looks of mushclient, fmud, zmud or any other "black window with text" client and can expand your UI to include new features.

You will soon enough get some exapmles of ScapeFX in action that shows things that will be very hard to do with mushclient!

And have fun with the beer!

[Hephos]

We changed the licensing cost (due to lots of interested people asking for a cheaper license in email). Instead of offering a signup bonus we lowered the actual cost for both the free and the commercial license.

Reduced (free mud) annual license: 249 euro
Commercial annual license: 1499 euro

A sample project should also be available for download at the wiki very soon that shows how to customize the client and build your own instance of ScapeFX.

ScapeFX Mud Client

[tommi]

Originally Posted by Hephos Yes. So you are saying aardwolf (top listing on this site) is a bunch of worse than "half competent" coders that cannot change the look and feel or design new widgets for mushclient? That is the sum of your post. Which i think is a ridiculous argument. (Since aardwold really aren't using any nice skin or good looking widgets for the mushclient UI: http://www.aardwolf.com/tmp/aardwolf-mud-2.jpg). They did a nice work with it though i must say. The idea behind a customizable client like scapefx is that you get AWAY from the looks of mushclient, fmud, zmud or any other "black window with text" client and can expand your UI to include new features. You will soon enough get some exapmles of ScapeFX in action that shows things that will be very hard to do with mushclient! And have fun with the beer!

I think you are joining dots that were not there to begin with. My argument is that the only thing i can see that MUSH does not have that scape does is a skinable interface and that MUSH can do everything else that scape does and more, with a much bigger user base and has the bonus of being open sourced and free, and supports mxp pubelo and sound protocols.

So to take YOUR logic to the nTH degree, it could also be argued that Aardwolf (Your Target Customer) considers skinable interfaces to be not worth the effort and that MUSH is a superior product to EVERY other client out there, im sure 300+ online players average speaks for itself. Or perhaps they consider FMUD to be a better option for a web client as they use it as well. Hmmmm

I should also mention that for US $300 per year you could licence Portal GT for all your users as well.

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by tommi I think you are joining dots that were not there to begin with. My argument is that the only thing i can see that MUSH does not have that scape does is a skinable interface and that MUSH can do everything else that scape does and more, with a much bigger user base and has the bonus of being open sourced and free, and supports mxp pubelo and sound protocols. So to take YOUR logic to the nTH degree, it could also be argued that Aardwolf (Your Target Customer) considers skinable interfaces to be not worth the effort and that MUSH is a superior product to EVERY other client out there, im sure 300+ online players average speaks for itself. Or perhaps they consider FMUD to be a better option for a web client as they use it as well. Hmmmm

Well, your argument is kind of pointless and we're talking your own stray of logic here, its your moot arguments that has come up in the first place. We made ScapeFX available just a couple days ago. Of course Aardwolf or any other game aren't using ScapeFX yet. (Hopefully some will eventually :P)

If you wish to promo Mushclient as a superior product to EVERY other client out there feel free to do so in your own promo thread? I'm not gonna express my own feelings about that client or FMUD here myself. Lets just say our players at Sharune fancy our Firebolt client over any of those.

Have a nice day!

[Hephos]

But lets not argue here which client is the best. It is like asking which mud is the best.. There are no good answers to it.

I'll just point out that ScapeFX is a client which mudadmins get access to a fairly powerful API that can be used to create professional looking "click to play" entries into their games. All for a fairly cheap cost compared to what it would have cost to produce one themselves from scratch. With ScapeFX free muds get the option to create clients that looks and behaves like some of the commercial games that have spent thousands of dollars to develop... It is an opportunity for mudadmins to compete with the commercial games by having a pro looking customized client for a low cost.

[tommi]

Originally Posted by Hephos But lets not argue here which client is the best. It is like asking which mud is the best.. There are no good answers to it.

Why stop now when you have been doing an admirable job at arguing how great your product is and how its worth ever cent being charged for it without ever providing a shred of support.

So does scrape support any of the following features or is it just scraping the bottom the barrel when it comes to mud client features,

Character Mode
Go Ahead
MCCP
NAWS
VT100
xterm 256
MCCP
MXP
MSP

Can you script in a language of choice? Or do you force a scripting language upon users?


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?

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by tommi So does scrape support any of the following features or is it just scraping the bottom the barrel when it comes to mud client features,

Please bear in mind this is the "promotion" section of the forums. It is designed for people to promote their mud or mud related activities.

While your points may very well be spot on, it is not terribly nice to hop into someone else's promotion thread and slam their mud/product.

[Delerak]

Originally Posted by Threshold Please bear in mind this is the "promotion" section of the forums. It is designed for people to promote their mud or mud related activities. While your points may very well be spot on, it is not terribly nice to hop into someone else's promotion thread and slam their mud/product.

Whatever. Is he supposed to take the time to create another thread dedicated to criticism for the product? This may be an advertising thread but this is also the internet where we don't have to be polite. What better place to debunk or show your criticism of something than in the place that they are promoting it? If I am reading the promotions and greatness of a product I will value that somebody is properly responding with valid criticism so that I can have more than just one (the creators) viewpoint on the thing.

Not that I would ever pay for the client. I've happily used zmud for many years.

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by tommi Why stop now when you have been doing an admirable job at arguing how great your product is and how its worth ever cent being charged for it without ever providing a shred of support. So does scrape support any of the following features or is it just scraping the bottom the barrel when it comes to mud client features, Character Mode Go Ahead MCCP NAWS VT100 xterm 256 MCCP MXP MSP Can you script in a language of choice? Or do you force a scripting language upon users? 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?

We've left out those protocols intentionally (MXP, MSP etc) to not clutter the client with unwanted features that will eat up resources. HOWEVER, it is very easy to add your own network parser plugin for features like this and if some customers request a protocol for these things we will create sample plugins for it that can be downloaded for free.

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.

If you are a ScapeFX customer, support is free. Upgrades are free.

[Hephos]

Originally Posted by Delerak Whatever. Is he supposed to take the time to create another thread dedicated to criticism for the product? This may be an advertising thread but this is also the internet where we don't have to be polite. What better place to debunk or show your criticism of something than in the place that they are promoting it? If I am reading the promotions and greatness of a product I will value that somebody is properly responding with valid criticism so that I can have more than just one (the creators) viewpoint on the thing. Not that I would ever pay for the client. I've happily used zmud for many years.

You as a player do not pay for the client. If you happily used zmud and make that an argument you do not seem to have grasped the idea behind this client.

The mudadmin pays the license, install it on the website and the players use it for FREE. 1, 10 or 10.000 players.

[Hephos]

Can you script in a language of choice? Or do you force a scripting language upon users?

Mudadmins build their plugins to modify the client with Java.

Players write their scripts with BeanShell. BeanShell - Lightweight Scripting for Java