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Old 04-11-2013, 10:15 AM   #25
plamzi
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Join Date: Nov 2009
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Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"

Flash is on the decline due to what seems to be a general sense of inevitability that it will never leave the desktop. HTML5 is clearly the way forward, and it can already do all that Flash only could do several years back. I'd venture a guess that more of us know JS + HTML than Flash.

I understand where this comes from but it's not a reason to go Flash. My HTML5 app already can read MSDP, and sending can be added in a matter of minutes. It's pretty trivial to add multiple protocol support once the binary data transfer piece is working.

MSDP may be better-documented, but it is prescriptive and restricted. If the client is MSDP-only, the protocol specs would need to be expanded significantly in the process.

I know for myself that if the UI logic is in JS, GMCP/JSON would be a constant temptation. You can send any kind of information in JSON, and parse it natively.

There's nothing wrong with a cocktail of protocols. That's not something the end user sees or cares about (in the wider world).

There are two points here. One I agree with 100%, that we need something that does away with the terminal window.

The other point I agree with only to a degree. The nature of MUDs does make them hard to adapt to a modern interface, but it's not an impossible task or a foregone conclusion. And I don't think anyone has tried to tackle the challenges with a team.

Some existing MUDs probably lend themselves a lot more to becoming drivers of a graphics-only interface. But you're right that the input/output layer would have to change, in some cases dramatically. I'm not optimistic that I'll find a lot of excitement there. Ours is an enthusiast field, and we pick our battles. We also tend to pick at each other rather than team up, so the chips are not stacked in our favor. But at least we're talking about what I have for a long time considered to be the elephant in the room. Who knows, maybe

Looking at successful browser-based games can be very educational. To me, it helps to think of a MUD as a next-gen server for a browser-based game. It supports real-time communication / push data, and hundreds of commands instead of several dozen. It has an actual "spacial" world to explore, with thousands of entities, and complex systems for questing or crafting etc, each of which will have to be visualized in an organic fashion. These elements make any MUD a big challenge to harness visually, or present in a way that appeals to casual players, but what if it can be? That would be pretty awesome.
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