[plamzi]

We are talking past each other a bit, even though we have more common ground than not.

I don't understand why you're hung up on the brand new vs. existing thing. Like I said, it takes 30 sec. to branch off any MUD server. So anyone who wants to keep their "pure" MUD can absolutely choose to do so. It would be absurd of me to advocate that people must morph their existing games. They can, if they want, or they can start with a clean codebase, or they can branch their existing customized or custom code, whatever works in their case...

The end goal here is far more important. As it turns out, it seems that my end goal may be similar to what you tried with Primordiax. I haven't seen its UI so I'm totally guessing here. What I'm thinking about is a game that is driven by a MUD server, with all the advantages that offers to developers and contributing players, but with a UI that matches or beats any modern browser-based game. With HTML5, and with high-quality stock art, this is now more possible than it has ever been. Especially if a team of MUD developers pools their resources.

I think this comment is coming from the "purist" point of view that many MUD vets find difficult to abstract themselves from. Why else would you assume that offering a more visual client insults people who have no idea what a MUD is? Do you really think that a teen in 2013 will log into a graphical game and say, "This is so stupid. Obviously, this game was meant to be played as if I'm in a Linux shell, so why are they giving me all these imagination-limiting visuals??".

Anyway, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing and we'll just have to remember that no-one is forcing you to play my game (or any game) with a graphical client, and that I'm not "out to get" your favorite all-text RP MUDs, either. So there.

Keep in mind that I'm not going for full-graphical, really. I'm going for the most graphical hybrid that I can do without losing what I think makes MUDs special and worth preserving for new generations of players. There is still a lot more text than in a adventure/puzzle game, a lot more text than any 2D scroller or 3D MMO, with all the ability to emote and role-play fully intact for both all-text client players as well as for hybrid client players.

With that in mind, many of the advantages of a MUD server continue to apply. It's definitely harder to add new content because you have to have art for it, and it's somewhat harder to implement features in a way that can accommodate full-text as well as hybrid-graphical UI's. But compared to 2D scrollers and 3D MMO's, creating a sophisticated world is a whole lot easier.

Part of the definition of a 'gateway MUD' for me is that it continues to support even simple telnet. So, if you are on a dialup and an 8MB RAM PC that can't run a graphical OS, you'd be able to connect and play via telnet, just like in 1992.

I can think of a lot more advantages than these. I guess that's why I'm trying my best to help teenagers discover MUDs. I wish we could have more ways to wow today's teens, and then tell them, "You know, what you're enjoying so much (because it blows your average BB RPG out of the water) is a type of game that goes back to the early 1990's. And by the way, when you get deeper in it, you may find that the all-text interface is not as 'lame' as it looks on first sight. And by the way, there are hundreds of other games like this one that you may want to explore." That's what I call a gateway MUD.