Re: The inevitability of GUIs in text-based mudding
One important aspect to consider is that a graphical interface is often a tactical interface. A tactical interface gives a player a huge advantage, so the question is not so much if the players use a tactical interface because they really want it, or because they feel forced (or tempted) to use it in order to compete.
I should point out that a skilled scripter can create a powerful tactical interface for any mud, the most obvious, easiest, and (arguably) most advantageous, fully client side tactical interface would be zmud's automapper.
I think MUDs could benefit from non tactical graphical interfaces, though I question the advantage of tactical interfaces as it increases the gap between blind and sighted players.
I think better physics handling and dynamic description generation are areas where MUDs can outperform graphical games, while all the interfaces I've seen are poor imitations of the graphical genre.
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