First off, forgive me is this is the wrong forum to post in, feel free to move it if it is...

I have had several emails from potential players recently that have asked me to point them toward a client for the new Tiger OS on the Macintosh. As I don't own a Mac or have access to one, I don't have first-hand knowledge of this stuff. We currently have Savitar and Rapscallion listed as viable Mac MUD clients, but I'm under the impression that they might not work with the new OS.

Does anyone know of any good Mac MUD clients that they could share with the rest of us who may not know? Any information would be helpful. Thanks!

I'm not aware of any others (and to be honest, I didn't even remember Savitar) out there. It's a shame too since I know a few MUDders who've quit playing because they got a Mac and can't find a client they like.

Always hear about lots of MUD-related projects people start but it doesn't seem like anyone has considered a decent Mac client as one of them. That'd be worth more than all the projects usually talked about.

Take care,

Jason

Are your users asking if those two clients work with Tiger or if they work with IntelMacs? If they work on older versions of OS X then they probably work on 10.4.x, although there is a chance of weird behavior. As for IntelMacs, the only thing I've heard so far is Java doesn't work under Rosetta.

The sad thing is, zMud being windows only was one of the two main reasons my new computer is a Wintel machine instead of the mac (the other is I wanted a tower, not a macMini/iMac and didn't wanna pay 2-3K for a Dual G5).

Two weeks ago, I bought a new Mac Mini (with the new dual core Intel chip) to play with. My first task was to find a decent MUD client. I tried a few and wound up settling for Cantrip. It did what I needed it to do and supported MCCP compression. I liked it better than Savitar and Rapscallion. It played nicely with the version of Mac OSX on the box (10.4.something).

(That said, a few days ago I unhooked my new Mac Mini and am now trying to find instructions on how to turn it into a DVR. It's a total piece of junk as a workstation, imho. I use a Penguin (debian) box at work and a 3 year-old gaming box (windows) at home, and both severely outperform this little playtoy.)

There are tons of mud clients out there that run on linux and just using the x11 environment that you can run alongside Tiger allows you to make use of those. Therefore the "classics" like tintin++ or tinyfugue shouldn't be a problem. It is of course another thing if you want to use those fancy, flashy graphical things. Those seem to get developed purely for Windows users.

As for the performance, I got a G4 iBook, pumped up to the max of 1.25 GB of RAM. And I can tell you that it is not slower on the average stuff than my 3.4 GHz P4 (which I usually run under Linux).

I've used cantrip, savitar and rapscallion all without much problem on my mac. But I'm only running 10.3 not 10.4.

Savitar I know is updated fairly frequently and if there were issues with it running on 10.4 they'd have been noted in the ongoing updates and bugs reports on the help site. I can't say I know a great deal about the other two clients  running on 10.4 as I found they weren't to my liking so I never bothered to persue it further

I've found savitar suits my mudding needs, I just have to actually read the manual and write my own triggers and macros rather than being able to rely on the stock zmud ones that are usually shared (or traded for cash) around some muds. Some things require creative solutions and I've learnt to not bother asking questions about triggers of the general mudding public, rather I go to a mac orientated help forum. Doesn't bother me too much though, I got a mac because I enjoy the hands on approach and the ease of scripting  

I found cantrip was still a little. erm raw.. and from what I understood it was no longer being developed. So it was what it was, though I could be wrong and that may have changed. Rapscallion just seemed too, commercial for me, it felt like a windows product repackaged for mac.. and no I'm not a mac elietist , I just don't like the feel of windows . Savitar has it's share  of problems but I'm just a sucker for the on screen macro clicker which makes building areas so much easier for me

I've tried many other mac clients, but none were really memorable enough for me to recall the names pure-mac.com has several mud clients listed.

I'm running Rapscallion on Tiger 10.4.5 and have had no significant problems aside from the expected (getting into the editor panel causes difficulties that usually end up in a hang-up), but these are no different from the problems I've had with it since I let go of OS 9.

I agree with the raw state of Cantrip, and found myself leaning away from it until it gains some maturity. It's not there.

I've tried Savitar, probably an older version, and was again disappointed, more by the lack of features when compared to Rapscallion.  True, Raps does have the rewrapped feel of a ported product, but I suppose after all these years, I just tolerate it because it runs, it runs well and rarely fails (unless I do something dumb).

That said, I'd love to hear of other mature browsers for the Mac that don't involve pausing in game development long enough to get a Master's Degree in CompSci to run.

Just occured to me that maybe I ought to offer cash for someone to develop a decent Mac client along the lines of the better PC ones.  Hmmm....

How much should I offer and does anyone think they'd be willing to try?

Take care,

Jason

This is for an OS X MAC version and is pending the release of native Quartz for MAC to make the final native MAC release (curently it requires X11 server on MAC to run)

To date I've invested 17,500 USD in the development of this client. October of next year I will be investing 30,000 USD to bring it to version 2.0

Good luck!
Kyndig

Cool, maybe a few former MUDders I know will get back into it if they like the client. A lack of a decent Mac client is what's been keeping them out of MUDding now for a few years.

Take care,

Jason

It depends what you want out of your client.

If you want triggers and powerful scripting, you can't go wrong with tinyFugue. There are Applescript installers and launchers available so you never have to mess with the shell if you don't want. No client is better supported than TF. It has been constantly updated for years, has an extensive online manual and an active mailing list where you can get quick answers to any question imaginable. (There's also a huge archive of past mailings.) TF is stable as a brick and there's nothing you can't script.

I wouldn't use Savitar if I needed scripting capabilities. The client handles triggers pretty well but there's almost zero scripting syntax. If you just need a stable client with a clean Mac interface, you can't beat Savitar.

Now, there's a third option. Apple just released Boot Camp, software that lets you run Windows XP on your Intel-based Mac. It handles everything. No hacking involved. You have to purchase a Windows license and running Windows on your Mac involves a reboot, but if you want to use zMud or Pueblo or one of the other PC-only clients, here's your solution.

Here are some links:

I took over the development of tintin two years ago and besides several major improvements there are quite a few OS X users who use it. Its simple yet powerful scripting language is used by Zmud, MudMaster and at least a dozen other clients out there, so most people are already familiar with it. There's a precompiled static OS X binary available on the website which should work for 10.2 and higher.

Wow. That is a prodigious investment. What sort of costs were involved? Were you hiring other programmers besides yourself? What are the upcoming costs for version 2.0 that are so huge?

It's the extra profits from operating mudmagic after business expenses.

Everything from the initial specification, to the porting to multiple platforms, icon generation, intro artist work, and program updates. Each update from version 1.0 has been developed by outsourcing. The first version was released in late 2004. The client has gone through regular updates from 1.1, through current 1.8 since that time. Current invested value is minimum when taking into consideration the timeframe it includes.

Most of the updates have been performed from outsourcing. My involvement deals with porting and packaging.

It requires multiple back-end servers to interact with the client for Proxy support, Website/Game interaction, remote storage/retrieval of data, (I informed the company to take Zmud and Mushclient and incorporate everything from those clients [with exception of scripting] into this software), and a full time project manager that is better suited to working with the Software Development company which will be conducting the update.

Thanks for the interest,
Kyndig

new computer, new problems.

So savitar is for some reason playing up on me annd giiving intermittannt crashes. I know the client is well supported and still being developed which is one of the reasons I like it. because the issues will be adressed.

however right now I'm trying to get things done which the crashes really do not help with, so off I goo to download a client to use in the meantime. Rapscallion, I mean everyone uses it right? it is THE mac client according to many websites. I'm not keen on it, but so many users can't be wrong

It doesn't work on my computer, I'm on a imac intel running tiger and classic apps are not supported.. hmm must be a mistake, maybe it's an older version offered on the tucows site, I bet rapscallion has a more current one. hah. No rapscallion site, no longer supported and development ceased sometime ago

Now I'm off to try tinyfugue. I won't even bother mentioning rapscallion as an option to mac users looking for a client, it's like suggesting a mud that no longer has staff, things go ok for a while until you hit a problem then you're on your own

Savitar is my client of choice if I don't need to script. It has a refined Mac interface, handles simple triggers fairly well, and is stable as a rock. The catch is, anything above v. 1.2.4 is trash. I'm using a Powerbook 17 running Mac OS 10.4.6 and have no probs with Savitar 1.2.4. I use it for ten hours every day, typing and copy/pasting immense blocks of text, and it never crashes or does anything funny. Very smooth. Very fast. Just don't try to build complex triggers. The trigger engine is buggy. There's no real scripting syntax, either. If you want a stable client with powerful scripting capeabilities, try tinyfugue. It's not fancy, strictly command-line, but there's nothing better for building big, flexible, complex scripts. I included a bunch of links in a previous post. If you're interested in trying Savitar 1.2.4, drop me an email or IM. My email address is and my screen name is lazybastich. I'd be happy to upload the software to you.

I've been using the carbonized version of Rapscallion for a couple years.  I have Tiger OS currently.  I like this client better than Savitar for mac or ZMUD for windows.