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Old 04-23-2013, 09:21 AM   #74
plamzi
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Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"

Originally Posted by plamzi
For the kind of interface that would actually make a difference, the work would be about as much as your efforts on the server.


By "the kind of interface that would actually make a difference", I meant a UI that a modern-day teenager can pick up and just play, something extremely visual and streamlined, where there would be no need to type a command or process a wall of text.

Yes, it's true that something is better than nothing, and that having a rudimentary UI may get you some attention, but most (or all) of that attention is going to come from existing mudders who are fine with the wall of text and the typing (in fact, need the wall of text and the typing) and who view the graphics around that window as a "tactical" HUD that makes it easier to determine one's location, or monitor one's vitals, etc. Those are all passive UI elements.

Show me a MUD UI that actually lets people click, drag and drop, and swipe to accomplish everything they need to play (of course, they'll need to type if they want to chat, or RP/emote). Then tell me that this kind of UI takes only a few hours to make. Yet, this is the kind of UI that will actually make a difference, the kind that actually deals away with the terminal window.

Taking exception from being one of those "people", I too have observed that some people's "license to do nothing" response is that if you're building this kind of UI, why drive it with a MUD server? The reasons are many, and they vary somewhat from one game to another. I've already talked about how MUD worlds compare favorably to those of Browser-Based games. Many are more sophisticated than even the top commercial 3D MMORG's. It would be sad to see all that good work consigned to obscurity.


This is a good start, but again, the wall of text is still there, in the center of it all. For any action you do, the response is a flow of text you have to read through. The window showing your environment is not interactive. NPCs and PCs are little panels, not part of the environment. Everything sits around the text window, just like in any other so-called MUD GUI out there.

For 2% of the time, you did very well. Now, can you share with us the rate of success you've had getting non-mudders to play your game via this UI? I would like to believe that this is enough to get youngsters to play a MUD and tell their friends about it, but until I hear back from you on that, I'm going to be skeptical.

Yes, I've observed the same. Still I can't help but wish that at least one out of every ten MUD developers would show interest in client design. After all, many of us use working on a MUD as a way to acquire new skills. And still it seems that the people *learning* to develop obscure server-side features far outnumber the people *learning* to design UI's.

Working on the latest iOS app update was a bit of a revelation. There is now a lot of high-quality fantasy stock art out there that's really inexpensive. Sci-fi is a lot harder find, but maybe in a few years it won't be. Even for a hobbyist spending out of their own pocket with no intent to make that money back, but who wants to see if they can make their game more appealing, it's worth it to look around.

I assume that you mean "thousands of different items" that can't simply be stacked by item number. So, if you have this mechanic and if "inventory management is like a full time job for some people", then what are you currently doing to make that job easier in your text interface? Do you provide a method where they can view and manipulate only the items in their inventory matching a certain keyword or string, or starting with a certain letter only? Do you let them view the inventory sorted in different ways, by item type as well as alphabetically?

Some of what you may have already done for your text interface can be mirrored in a graphical inventory. A search box appearing if you have more than 100 unique items, tabbed windows that organize items alphabetically, different types of clicks to multi-select different subsets of items. And, let's not forget that graphical inventory windows can scroll endlessly just like a text window can, and that they display more items per line.

So, while this is a great example of why designing a good UI is actually hard, I believe that in this case there are many good design choices that can make your players' lives a lot easier vs. what they have to do now in all-text.

But, and I have to say this, over a thousand unique items in a character's inventory?! To me, that's going overboard a little bit, and I don't mean the realism of it From a game design PoV, I would be asking myself, do all these items really need to be carried around all the time? And even, do all these things actually need to be items?
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