[Hephos]

Mythicscape is starting development on ScapeFX, a new MUD client directed towards the mass of text-based MUD games. It is a Java based client with an API for writing java based plugins to customize it for a particular game. The client is started on the MUD's website using Java Web Start technology making it a "click to play" experience.

[Hephos]

[Mabus]

Looks interesting.

Wishing you great success.

[Hephos]

There is now a demo available.



More information is coming soon. The main webpage will also be up shortly.

[Mabus]

Very nice.

Game looks interesting as well.

Is there a way to increase the size of the font? I looked, but couldn't find one.

Doing a fine job with it.

[Hephos]

A more comprehensive version of the site is now availble:

Wiki and documentaion is being worked on as well as updates to the client API! (Such as font selection as mentioned above).

[gth]

Java downloader keeps saying "Download stalled."

edit: Okay, the full-blown client downloaded, but the demo one stalls with about 10 seconds to go. Retrying the basic demo starting link shows it still has 85% of the download cached, but never resumes to finish downloading the last part.

addendum feedback, based on fullblown demo to Sharune:
- client doesn't seem to reconnect (offline message changes to online, but no content is shown in the main window).
- suggest having some more autosizing options for the various windows, or at least some intuitive snap-to behaviour based on nearby points of interest (another window / application edge)
- Suggest "Remove tab" be called "Close tab"
- Status bar could be more configurable (e.g. time online?)
- Resizeable windows look good, indeed overall the client is a very responsive user interface, but perhaps support for *rescaling* a window could added (e.g. maps / groups) ?
- Suggest adding a 'keep on top' option to some of the windows (e.g. map on top of text window?)
- Might want to show a progress bar when downloading news items etc. takes more than a second or so; there's no feedback that the client is doing anything at present.

re. the website/forums/wiki:
- can't see any way to create a user on the wiki to make comments there (a la the discussion pages)... have you linked them to the forum accounts or something?
- forums look very empty... perhaps a basic post showing what triggers/scripting/etc. is possible in each of the areas.. ? (or did I have to register to see all the forum content?)

[Hephos]

Thanks for the feedback gth, we'll look into it

Also, we're changing the licensing so that muds that accept donations fall under the non-commercial type (the cheaper annual fee).

[Saffire]

That's a ridiculous amount of money to pay to license a MUD client.

[gth]

From
Free MUDs (no donations): $350/first year, $700 p .a. thereafter
Commercial MUDs (including donation only): $1,500/first year, $3,000 p.a. thereafter

My biggest problem with the licensing is that a MUD could (in effect) be ransomed for the users that connect using this client. What happens when half your userbase uses such a client - that you've spent so much time configuring and tailoring the MUD output for - only to have the annual fee spike much higher?

I don't know any completely-free MUDs that could come up with this every year, especially given so many of them follow a licensing approach that doesn't include donations. A more reasonable model could be a once-off up-front fee with a much smaller annual fee - at least then you might have the option of a once-off donation drive that your playerbase would contribute to that's in their own interest. But you couldn't sustain that annually.

[Hephos]

Well, honestly i do not see that the reduced license cost of 350 should be a problem to any semi-established free mud. You should be able to accept donations to pay for the license fee no matter what mud codebase you are using. They are donating for the client, not to run their game. (I'm sure this is up for debate though :P).

This sums up to a playerbase of 35 people paying 10 dollars each to play the mud using the client for 1 year. "Normal" fees to play a game is what? 10 dollars per month?

We're not really targetting our product to muds that cannot pay this low fee. Any mud admin that thinks 350 is so high they cannot pay it (even with donations from players that are going to use it) is not the customer base we are aiming our product at. Usually you are not a solo admin running your mud, but a bunch of people that together can finance this. Of course, I realize 90% of muds probably fall into this category, hell, 90% probably doesn't even have 35 players... but these are not our future customers (probably).

Our intention is not to put a custom client codebase into every startup mud out there. It is for the ones that actually have a backend of either lots of players or people with decent economy. Or those that wish to create a kickass commercial game with a nice looking graphical client. (As a side note we will probably in the near future realese a java based game engine codebase as well for licensing).

[KaVir]

An established mud will (hopefully) run for more than a year though, and you're talking $700 per year after the first (assuming the pricing doesn't go up in the future).

But there's another problem: Players usually have a preferred mud client, and if you've already got an established playerbase, the chances are they won't want to change to a different client. So how do you convince your players to donate for a client they don't want to use?

It's mostly going to be the new players who will use this, and it's certainly a nice way to lower the entry barrier for them. But this also reinforces gth's point about the potential for ransom; if you've built up a new generation of players who love the ScapeFx client, and then one day you can no longer afford it, it could kill your playerbase (not to mention flushing years of customisation and plugin development down the toilet).

[Hephos]

We'll see. Perhaps we have to lower it.

We might consider other licensing options as well if necessary.

[Hephos]

Only registered users can modify the wiki. It will be people that have some idea of what they are writing about :P Otherwise to ask questions and similar we will use the support forum for that i think.

The "developer" sections of the forums will be available to licensed users belonging to the developer group. It will hold boards for how to customize the client. The plublic forums available to all will be the actual end user forums with discussions about things like triggers, scripting and so on.

[Threshold]

How is the project going in general?

[Hephos]

It is going well. We should have a sample Eclipse project available on the wiki today where interested people can take a peek at how it looks when customizing the client with plugins.

[tommi]

I cannot see much of a point to anyone other than perhaps a commercial mud ever having need for something like this, and then, a commercial mud would likely have the skills in house to produce something similar. When you have access to free webclients clients like FMUD, or that you can customize MUSHclient and make it available as a download on your website, both of which cost nothing, there is really no excuse for every 1 man mud in existance not to have brilliant free tools for their players, both new and old.

[Hephos]

It is like comparing apples and oranges.

As said "1 man" free muds might not be the target of this client.

Personally i do not call your other options "brilliant". Nor being even near as customizeable as ScapeFX, which is the whole point of the client.

[tommi]

Whats not customizable about MUSHclient? have you scene what Aardwolf did with it? About the only thing missing from MUSH is a skinable interface, but the code is open and i guess any half competent coder would understand how to change the look and feel of it or design a new widget set for it. As for anything else, there is pretty much nothing you cannot do with mini windows and a bit of scripting with the added value of a large active community of users and developers.


So one could either spend their time developing plugins for MUSHclient, or spend $700 a year and still have to spend the same amount of time developing plugins for Scrape. Personally i would rather spend the $700 a year on advertising and beer and not necessarily in that order.

[Hephos]

Yes. So you are saying aardwolf (top listing on this site) is a bunch of worse than "half competent" coders that cannot change the look and feel or design new widgets for mushclient? That is the sum of your post. Which i think is a ridiculous argument. (Since aardwold really aren't using any nice skin or good looking widgets for the mushclient UI: ). They did a nice work with it though i must say.

The idea behind a customizable client like scapefx is that you get AWAY from the looks of mushclient, fmud, zmud or any other "black window with text" client and can expand your UI to include new features.

You will soon enough get some exapmles of ScapeFX in action that shows things that will be very hard to do with mushclient!

And have fun with the beer!