We're pondering a Trillian (consolidated IM program) plugin that would function as a basic mud client, but haven't gotten beyond the 'wonder if it's worth considering' stage yet. Does anyone who is familiar with IM tech and/or Trillian specifically have any input on the feasability of doing this in a way that can provide a decent experience? (low lag mainly for that snappy feel).

--matt

well i dont know about coding for trialian, but i sure know that trilian is kind of obsolete already, there hasnt been any version upgrades for more than a year, and its closed source. I would suggest checking out which is open source IM client with functionality a bit bigger than trillian (imho) and with good plugin interface too.

Actually, Trillian 3.0 is out in Beta currently.

Not only has Trillian 3 been advertised on their site for weeks, but it does lots of things that Miranda doesn't, such as proper Yahoo support, webcam support, etc etc. Besides which, I expect Matt is trying to reach the largest number of potential players/customers, and in that regard Trillian users far exceed Miranda users. There are a few nice plugins for Miranda but nothing I miss when I use Trillian.

I'm pretty sure there are currently no plugins that can work with a MUD, but check out this topic I started on the Trillian forums:



Not much help, but if it turns out more people would be interested in that plugin, we could request it.

Well, the question isn't whether there are any current plugins. We can just develop one ourselves. I'm more wondering if there's anyone who has the experience developing them to advise on whether the technology is suitable in terms of data transfer speed for a mud. Gotta be pretty low latency to be useful.

--matt

I don't need that specific experience to tell you that it'd be more than suitable. There are IRC components for Trillian that work just fine, thus I see no reason why a mud plugin wouldn't. Unless the Trillian designers are extremely incompetent, the "data transfer speed" won't be an issue.

Really? You think an IM client could keep up with the speed muds output info? Can IRC clients? Keep in mind I'm not really a tech person, but don't IM messages get at least some minimal processing on another set of servers before being sent back out to the recipient, as opposed to telnet clients that connect directly to a mud server? Isn't it possible that the IM central servers could be slow enough to add noticeable latency? Again, I really have no idea myself.

Yes, yes, and yes.

Muds are not particularly resource intensive, as far as these things go. Especially on the client side.

Some IM protocols do have messages routed through a central server cluster, but many simply use the central server to dispatch contact information so that the IM clients can directly connect. An IRC server works almost exactly the same way as a mud server would, only it uses a simple protocol instead of plain text.

A plugin would basically mean a telnet client outputting its data to a window that's integrated with Trillian's UI. The backend processing would likely be exactly the same at a high level.

Interesting, thanks. We may look into it.

--matt

Well, umm, if you are writing your own plugin, you don't need to go through IM servers.  Send the messages to your own server.

If that's possible, excellent.
--matt