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View Poll Results: Which mud client do you primarily use
MUSHclient 30 28.85%
zMUD/cMUD 22 21.15%
Portal 4 3.85%
RoAClient 3 2.88%
Gmud 7 6.73%
Mudmaster 2 1.92%
SimpleMU 3 2.88%
Pueblo 0 0%
Telnet 6 5.77%
None of the above (please post below which one) 27 25.96%
Voters: 104. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 09-14-2010, 11:35 AM   #81
KaVir
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Re: The mud client poll

I don't think that's necessary, nor even desirable. Not all muds wish to support links, or sound, or graphics, or data compression, or cursor movement, etc, etc. And while it can certainly be advantageous for a client to support a wide variety of protocols, many client developers simply lack the time or interest to add them all, or don't feel certain protocols are appropriate for their client. Bundling everything together into some "Universal Mud Protocol" won't suddenly cause all the client developers to implement it - it'll just result in a load of partial implementations.

In my opinion it's much easier to deal with a library of useful protocols, each serving a different purpose.

I believe the main advantage of browser clients is that they don't require the user to download, install and configure anything before they can play - i.e., it's a great way of lowering the entry barrier for new players. However for established players I would still prefer to offer a customised version of a well established and feature-rich client with years of development behind it.

You could already do that with some sort of generic plugin, and have it create the layout, maps, bars, buttons, etc, based on commands from the server. However the less generic you want your interface to be, the more complex the plugin (and instructions from the server) would become - you'd reach the point where it would be easier just to create a custom plugin for each game and provide a way for the client to automatically download and install it upon connection.

That's not a bad solution (and it's been discussed before), but I wouldn't want to force players to use my interface - I think they should have the option to create their own if they wish.

MXP has display options, it's just that most implementations don't include those features. ATCP and GMCP include a status sequence that's intended to be used for energy bars, but I'm not sure if any clients use it automatically. I would hope not, as that should really be left up to the user, and automatically adjusting their interface could interfere with other plugins they may have running.

There have been more? I thought MudStandards was the first. It's certainly gone quiet, but perhaps it'll pick up again.
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Old 09-14-2010, 01:04 PM   #82
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Re: The mud client poll

I don't recall anyone ever saying that muds MUST support the new protocols. We have a least common denominator: text over telnet. If all you want to do is support that with your MUD, feel free. What I am recalling, though, is several folks wanting clients to support certain standard 'things'. The 'things' seem to be common across a lot of MUDs -- status bars, minimaps, menus, etc.

Generic plugins? So, you're telling me that plugin code I would write for MUSHClient will run without change and provide the identical user experience in other clients? I have yet to witness anything "generic" outside of telnet. What we currently have, as far as I know, is a huge amount of fragmentation across various clients that support various ways to do things( over and above Telnet). You might love that, but I think it stinks and is very inefficient.

Browser clients may indeed require zero install --- but I wasn't referring to browser clients only -- I am referring to "custom clients". And, as stated, there is a HUGE advantage to the developer in creating a custom client as it then provides the user experience that the developer wants.
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Old 09-14-2010, 02:50 PM   #83
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Re: The mud client poll

This is actually a misnomer. Browser clients require zero install if and only if you have previously installed the browser updates and/or plugins required to run a browser client (which aren't really browser clients but really addon feature clients like java/flash).

I've yet to see a browser client that will run from a generic browser.
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Old 09-14-2010, 04:32 PM   #84
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Re: The mud client poll

I was referring to your suggestion that "the concept of using a mishmash of useful protocols needs to disappear, and something standard between all servers and clients needs created" - my point being that "Not all muds wish to support" the various features such a protocol would include.

Thus I think it makes sense to offer a selection of different protocols for different things, rather than design a new Universal Mud Protocol that covers everything.

Sure, but I doubt they all want their bars, minimaps or menus to look the same. People go out of their way to avoid stock gameplay - but in many ways it's even more important for the interface, as that's the first thing new players will see when connecting to the mud.

No, I'm saying you could create a generic plugin that would provide "a widget set (minimap, status bars, button bars, etc), and a way to skin them, and allow that to be controlled by the server (similar to a web browser)". You'd need to create different plugins for other clients, but that same plugin could service multiple muds - so if a player used MUSHclient and installed the plugin, their interface would automatically change depending on whether they were playing MUD X, MUD Y or MUD Z (assuming all three muds supported the plugin).

However, as I also mentioned, the plugin would become increasingly complex the more flexible you wanted it to be.

Actually you said "custom Flash/Java clients", which is why I assumed you were talking about browser-based clients. If the client needs to be downloaded then I don't think it has any real advantage over an existing client with a custom plugin.

You can already get that with a custom plugin - for much less work. Is there something in particular you want that an existing client can't do?

Well there's the and the , but most of them are tied to a specific mud (the version of FMud is particularly nice IMO).
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Old 09-15-2010, 12:07 AM   #85
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Re: The mud client poll

I'm not advocating the creation of a universal mud protocol. We have one: telnet. ;-) We certainly do have a broad set of protocols to choose from. But, we do not have broad adoption of those protocols outside of telnet. I am referring to protocols like MXP/MSP/ATCP etc...

Er, yeah. I agree -- that's why I used the word "skinning" in an earlier post regarding components/widgets. ;-) It would be super neat if there was a skinning standard... a broadly accepted one.


Its a matter of broad adoption of things across multiple clients. Its not about what one or two existing clients can do. Why? Because I cannot guarantee what client a user is going to use(nor can I guarantee what plugin (s)he is going to use, given more than one plugin for a particular feature). Therefore, I cannot create an environment that is consistent throughout the playerbase. Web browsers used to be absolutely terrible in following standards -- now they are only somewhat terrible (and getting better!) But, at least they have some standards which developers can leverage and create cool things with. All without needing to create a plugin for IE, a hack for Chrome, another plugin for Safari, and yet another plugin for Mozilla ... just to implement a much desired DIV tag. Obviously my example is not real, but hopefully it illustrates the point.

Some of the things are so common (minimaps? health bars? login screens? inventories? menus?) that clients should probably provide standard and generic ways to instance, control and skin these widgets without needing people to write plugins. I think that if these things were broadly standardized, more people would code to them.

It would be super cool if clever game developers could write one set of standardized code to graphically render a minimap, status bars, a text output window/input bar, an inventory window, etc... and skin it all, and know that it would look, feel, and behave the same across all MUD clients(without being also required to write and maintain N plugins). If people turn off minimaps, whatever. At least I'd know the minimap would look the same for everyone who had it "on", regardless of what client they were in.

Broad adoption of the HTML/CSS standards would even go a looooong way. Any clients out there use webkit?
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Old 09-15-2010, 12:50 AM   #86
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Re: The mud client poll

Don't know about standalone webkit clients, but there are PHP (PHUD) and JavaScript (Decaf, jMUD) browser clients that basically give you that I think.



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Old 09-15-2010, 01:44 AM   #87
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Re: The mud client poll

Both are flash clients. There are no browser clients that do not require pre-installed add-ons. Which means, in affect, downloads and installs.
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Old 09-15-2010, 06:45 AM   #88
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Re: The mud client poll

Support is , but several of the clients allow you to add your own protocols, so it shouldn't be hard to find one that meets your needs (this really comes back to my earlier point about muds recommending a particular client to their players).

Well if you developed a generic MUSHclient plugin as I described earlier, you could then do the same for Mudlet, CMUD, etc, with each plugin following the same standard. So it's certainly possible to do what you suggest - you'd just need to come up with a standard and a set of plugins. If the standard became popular, perhaps some clients would even add native support for it.

I'm not convinced that that's a major problem. If the player has to download a client anyway, then I think it's sufficient to offer them a "recommended" client. The fact that you also support other clients to some extent is really just a bonus - it means that players who already have a favourite client will be more likely to check your game out. Once they're hooked, they're more likely to be willing to download a different client, or perhaps even develop and distribute a new plugin for their preferred client.

No, the WGFriends client uses WebSockets, not Flash (although it does also offer a Flash fallback for browsers that don't support WebSockets). However Flash is so common that many people already have it installed - particularly if they play browser games. And even if they don't, they're not required to download something specific to your mud.

I would speculate that most first-time mudders these days are more likely to have Flash than even a basic telnet client, and the former can provide a far prettier interface, as well as look more familiar than a terminal window to today's generation.
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Old 09-15-2010, 10:32 AM   #89
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Wink Re: The mud client poll

YAUNWP.

;-) Newworlds, you kinda remind me of Donkey from Shrek....minus the comic relief. ;-)
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Old 09-15-2010, 10:53 AM   #90
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Re: The mud client poll

Yeah, none of this discussion really explores a major problem. Its more a fact there is a desire amongst folks(including me) to see MUDs evolve a bit, especially in terms of the client. This is evidenced by the growing body of custom clients out there. And, maybe that's where it needs to end: with the custom client. *shrug* I just see huge opportunity for the MUD community to embrace a few more standards (yet to be defined?), which in turn will help developers on both the client and server sides work more with less effort. Depending on how far the standards would go, they should also increase usability of MUDs and help inject a lot more players into our shrinking/growing/whatever-your-metrics-tell-you playerbase.
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Old 09-15-2010, 11:44 AM   #91
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Re: The mud client poll

Custom clients remind me a bit of custom web browsers. Years ago some websites actually recommended you what web browser you should use to be able to properly view them. Today that is very rare. You can use a range of different web browsers.

A very big benefit of supporting many MUD clients is that it makes it easier for the players. E.g with zMUD/cMUD you can play on many different MUDs and the software keeps track of them for you. A player also doesn't have to install multiple clients so they can focus to learn the features of one.
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Old 09-15-2010, 01:26 PM   #92
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Re: The mud client poll

I share that desire, but I'm primarily a server developer, and my time is a finite resource. I would rather customise a popular, well-established and feature-rich client that's already had decades of hard work poured into it than create yet another mud client from scratch.

And how many of those custom clients can match the features offered by the big clients?

Throwing away decades of feature development? That sounds like a step backwards to me.
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Old 09-15-2010, 02:36 PM   #93
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Re: The mud client poll

Okay, lets back up the assumption wagon a bit, here. Who says "Throw away decades of feature development"? Actually, what are those decades of features you're not interested in throwing away? I have no idea how creating some new standards by which client developers and server developers should adhere to is a step backwards. Substitute "create" with "adopt" and it's still something else....an addition... an evolution. Which would you prefer? A standard way to display, skin, and control a status bar which would work in all clients that support the standard or come up with your own protocol, select a client, write a plugin for it, and call it a day? In the former, your game will provide the experience you want your players to feel, across all clients(hey! Minimal work for you as a server dev). In the later, your game will provide the experience you want your players to feel in only that one client, and only if they installed your *custom* plugin (Hey! Lots of work for you if you want broad client use).

I guess this does illustrate a major problem: coming up with standards and more importantly, getting client and server developers to implement/conform to said standards. I'm guessing its not gonna happen. That's why I said "that's where it needs to end:..." --- because the real standard is simply telnet. If you want to offer more, then you're free to with your own custom coding/client/plugin/control/mind bending technology/widgeting-ding-a-ling.

It would be cool to see what features are important to players --- and why. Same for developers. You might find that some of those current client features which represent decades of feature development become obsolete when replaced with standards and proper UI elements.

Whatever the case, I'm feeling like a broken record. There are blatant, obvious reasons MUD devs are creating custom clients for their games... and that reason is not hubris.
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Old 09-15-2010, 03:26 PM   #94
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Re: The mud client poll

Perhaps, but when I dumbed down my IE it wouldn't run either of those clients within the browser. Still your point is taken that almost everyone has flash, but flash and java are not part of the install package and are seperate systems/patches.
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Old 09-15-2010, 04:53 PM   #95
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Re: The mud client poll

See here:

If you're developing a custom client rather than customising an established one, then that means missing out on the decades of development and testing that have gone into those established clients.

Things like aliases, hotkeys, triggers, command-execution timing, variables, multi-session support, cross-platform support, ansi/256/24-bit colour, speed-walking, extensive scripting in multiple languages, macros, regex, toolbars, smooth scrolling, scrollback, logging, customisable fonts and colours, compression, chat, built-in text editor, configurable output buffer and text wrapping, debugging tools, text hyperlinks, spell checker, tab completion, configurable command window and input options, mapper, autosay, open protocol support, configurable sounds, NAWS, TTYPE, ECHO, fully customisable graphical skins (including buttons, energy bars, avatars, icons, mouse hotspots, etc), and so on and so forth. Not to mention the years of extensive testing by many, many users.

Of course it wouldn't, why would you think that? My comment was a direct reply to this statement:

If people decide that "the best use of [their] time is certainly not trying to write plugins / scripts for the various clients out there", but is instead to develop their own custom clients from scratch, then they're losing out on decades of development and testing. That is what I consider a step backwards.

I can understand people wanting to create their own client for legal reasons, or because they want it to run from a browser (not much available to reuse in terms of browser-based mud clients), or even just because they enjoy the challenge. But reinventing the wheel just for the sake of it? I can think of better things to do with my time.

Of course I'd prefer it if my plugin worked on multiple clients, but I can't realistically see that happening. What you could do is what I mentioned previously - design a standard for skinning, and create plugins for multiple clients that support the standard. Then any server that added support for the standard could indeed offer the same interface to multiple clients without the need to create any further plugins. No doubt some people would still prefer to design their own plugins, adding things that aren't covered by the generic plugin, but perhaps it would be useful as a backup option for clients you didn't explicitly support, or for muds that lack the skill or desire to do any work outside of the server itself.

Yes, getting client and server developers to agree on implementing a standard is very hard. However the plugin approach sidesteps the client developers entirely (anyone can create the plugins), and if you're already a server developer then you could use your own mud as the prototype for the standard, and/or release a snippet for other server developers to use.

Actually I suspect hubris may be one of the reasons. Others include those I mentioned earlier - legal concerns (particularly for commercial muds), wanting it to run from a browser, or simply for the challenge. Or perhaps just an unawareness of what modern clients are capable of?
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Old 09-16-2010, 04:56 AM   #96
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Re: The mud client poll

Personally, when thinking about implimenting something for Mushclient, back before it got added, I had the thought of using markup to create the "layout" of the design you wanted, then either download that, or have the mud send it. The problem I ran into is that you have to create all custom controls. Why? Because MS doesn't even try to make it easy to use "design mode" for controls, outside their own IDE environments, and that assumes you are using controls that recognize it anyway. Worse, one reason to go with something like Lua, instead of tying the client to something in .NET, or COM, is to, at least in principle, allow someone to port it with a bit less insane recoding. Using Windows "native" system for controls kind of screws that, especially if you actually got design mode to work at all.

I have a vague sense how you could, but its... not documented in anything like a direct fashion. Its more like knowing that you can install front wheel drive, but having *never* seen how the whole system ties into the steering, or being able to find a manual showing how to do it right. Knowing the general idea of how it should isn't the same as actually being able to build it. I drove myself nuts for a while trying to find "anything" clearer than the vague hint buried in MS' own site (and their non-working link to a demo that supposedly used it), before giving up on the whole idea.

In any case, in general, the best solution is "likely" to take something that already has a huge set of features, and works fast, then try to work out how to correct some of its.. oddities. For example, ages ago you could find "fast" text clients for muds, which supported similar features, including scripting and triggers, but also supported text positioning, which Mushclient doesn't. Its not trivial, but not impossible either, everything in existence that is designed to do rich text *has to* be able to remap a document, if you delete internal tags, change the text, or page up/down. This isn't "much" different than what you need to adjust both the buffer display, and what is on the page. In the case of the old days, ones like Telemate, basically recorded the "final" state of a line, once it was no longer on a page, and treated pages just like page breaks in a document editor.

Point being, you could take an existing client, port it to something less platform dependant, as long as it was designed to start with to be that way, then just add the things that are missing. But, only for the open source ones.

Flash... Seriously, I watch movies via that, and used for that, it seems to *eventually* lag what ever it is in, until it either slows the whole system down, or crashes the browser. It has known problems. An interesting alternative seems to be PHP, with java, which, interestingly, has even been used to make things like EyeOS, which is an entire virtual desktop, which runs in the browser. However, Flash is so annoyingly ubiquitous that it even shows up there, for things where it is "easier". So is, imho, trying to use a skate board and a rope, tied to someone else's car, compared to actually having to drive one, but... lol
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Old 09-16-2010, 06:21 AM   #97
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Re: The mud client poll

Couldn't you do it in MUSHclient by discarding the text window, and diverting the output to a miniwindow?
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Old 09-16-2010, 03:57 PM   #98
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Re: The mud client poll

Not.. Efficiently. The mini-window isn't designed for it at all, and coding the extra stuff in script, to handle paging.. It would really have to be done more directly, in the main window, not via scripting, I think. Mind, not a lot of muds actually use the stuff anyway, its just a tiny few that do, and its often buried in the prompt systems (like changing the line of the prompt to update time, or something, without sending an entire new prompt), etc. Its not necessary to even have the feature, but its damned annoying for it to be missing, if you a) need it, or b) want to connect to something running an older game. An example might be trying to run TW2002, via a mud client, so you can take advantage of its scripting ability. It was written for dialup, it works, with some help, via Telnet, but almost nothing in existence supports **all** of the text control functions in ANSI, while also having any sort of complex script system, of any kind at all. FSM forbid someone got it into their head to do some of that stuff on a mud, and found that 99% of the clients either don't support it well (there is no protocol for asking, "Do you support all of ANSI, of just bits of it?", really, and certainly not color, but not cursor movement codes, since the former was added later than the "more critical" cursor controls...), or work poorly, or are almost feature non-existent, if they did.
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Old 09-16-2010, 09:39 PM   #99
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Re: The mud client poll

TinTin++ supports full ANSI (typically called VT100), character mode, complex scripting, and runs on all major platforms.
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Old 09-16-2010, 11:11 PM   #100
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Re: The mud client poll

Hmm, sounds like a winner and we're not even promoting TinTin on the NWA website with some other clients we promote. Send me a PM or email with download/contact info Scandum and perhaps we'll add it.
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