[camlorn]

And you just hit button two.

VIPMud is the same level of accessibility as mushclient, which is free. VIPMud does not support half of the protocols in existence, requires one to learn a scripting language that isn't used in anything else (as far as I know, I don't think it even has a name), and throws out windows design, i.e. it uses it's own custom wierd interface involving listboxes.

Get mushreader, I don't have a link but can find one, it's available through google if someone wants to search. There's a portable version: extract and click the mushclient executable, or you can get it as a plugin which works with a regular mushclient install if you copy some files to the right places. Also, let me take this time to counter-plug: mush-z is a great, great soundpack for alter aeon, and is pretty much the only soundpack I can stand: it is the only one that realized that, for a blind mudder, the soundpack needs to replace the messages, not be played over top of them, and should be providing information as well as flavour.

I think that VIPMud was the worst thing to happen to the blind mudding community. I think that VIPMud puts blind people in a box, as so many things do. I say that I'm blind, and everyone immediately assumes that I use VIPMud, because it's so clearly the only option.

VIPMud, which costs $30, gained momentum for a very simple reason: many blind people don't know how to use the computer, not really. I mean, some do, but, in my experience, it's like teaching the computer to your grandfather: "Copy this file." "What's a file?" Some blind people know how to use the computer for something beyond e-mail, I'd say more than I expect, but there's this issue with being able to translate go hit the OK button into something besides press tab 6 times and then enter, or so has been my experience.

I like some of GMA Game's stuff, but the better option would have been to write up instructions for getting mushclient working, not charge $30 for a client that's light-years behind.

VIPMud opened mudding up to people, but at the same time, well, not helping. I mean, if I'm using mushclient, which works just as well if you invest a little time to set it up, I can ask someone sighted for help via my mud of choice., etc. I think part of it is also that labelling something a programming language (lua, I'm looking at you) immediately makes it perceived to be hard to learn, which turns people off of the more powerful clients.

And, for the record, any mud client that can call an external dll via a trigger can be made, at least to some degree, to work with a screen reader. The three major screen readers in the US, Jaws, Window-eyes, and NVDA, all offer apis that programmers can use, and I believe dolphin (now renamed hal, or maybe it's the other way), which is more popular in europe, or so I've heard, may as well.

One of these days, I'm going to try to campaign to get speech added to core mushclient. It actually wouldn't be that hard to do, really, probably the work of a couple hours for someone who knows how to tell if a process is running with a given name: is the screen reader process running? good, which one? start sending speech. The plugin itself, in mushclient, if you disregard the standard xml hey-I-am-a-plugin stuff at the top is under 50 lines: initialization and everything. The more advanced version, also 50 lines, has a simple little bridging dll that gets called, which does the detection (I can't evaluate quality of that dll, unfortunately, as I can't read purebasic, not anymore, but it definitely works, so 5/5 until I hear of a bug in it).

It's like this: VIPMud is very, very simple. But VIPMud doesn't support half the protocols. In VIPMud, I can, for example, start playing an audio file. In mushclient, with a bit of work (or by grabbing a plugin), I can call into openal directly, for full 3d audio. Heck, if I wanted, I could output 5.1 surround sound from mushclient (I'm not sure what the point would be, but it's definitely possible). VIPMud, at last check (and I haven't heard of any updates since it came out), doesn't support mccp, mxp, any of those: I don't think it even supports the telnet negociations that a lot of muds use now for determining terminal size, but I could be wrong on that one.

So, I'm paying $30 to avoid learning a bit about my computer, for an inferior product, and that's how I look at it. I tried VIPMud once, but got the impression that the author never really played muds when writing it. And, I mean, I can't even think of a client for the sighted that's paid, not anymore, though I'm sure I can find one via google. The impression I got was that he saw it was a market that could be targeted, and targeted it without playing muds or reading these forums.

If someone can either (1) tell me how to post links or (2) point me at the documentation for this forum, which I'm obviously missing somehow, I'll post links for mush-z and mushreader.

Again, sorry, but to me that's worse than the "Blind people so obviously can't learn to type" one. I try not to be a troll, or start flamewars, or any of that, but VIPMud pushes my buttons, majorly, for the reasons above: let's all go buy something that's available for free, and the version we're going to buy can't do half the things the free version can be made to do. O, and by the way, only for the blind, forget getting help from someone else who plays the same game you do, because you bought the easy-to-set-up client that only blind people use.