Re: Why not exploit the telnet protocol?
 

One of the stupid complaints my players had regarding the custom client was that the 'colors were all wrong' when they used it. I had to add color schemes to simulate ZMud and GMud, as well as a 'super bright' option for a handful of others. I'd expect most modern clients let you change the color scheme however you want it; is that currently the case?

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

Re: Why not exploit the telnet protocol?
 

Just wanted to chime in with a couple points:

First, I agree with pretty much everything KaVir said.

Second, having a fully configurable prompt, for me as a blind player, is major. Prompts, for blind players are often not used as such--I personally have a trigger I put in every mud that can send it to a specific spot in the window, but I need to be able to configure it to work with my trigger. Even then, you'd be surprised how often your awsum prompt that's really nifty with color, etc, won't work for the blind.

Third, configurable color, while not used by me personally, can also increase accessibility for a varietty of things; if I weren't color-blind, I could use my limited remaining vision to see the colors, at least, placing really, really bad messages in red, for instance.

Fourth, making a custom game client shouldn't mean no telnet support. If you do that, you're limiting the potential players; blind people probably won't be able to play, nor will anyone who wants to use <unsupported platform>. You can mud even from phones now, so providing both is a really good idea. While I know no one said they were doing this, I feel it is important to mention it.

And finally, go look at just about any mmorpg before you say customization of interface is bad; a lot of the major ones let you completely reposition everything and do all sorts of crazy stuff. My interface doesn't affect you and yours won't change mine. When a player has reached the point of wanting to change the interface from the default, they probably understand the game well enough to understand that others can't answer questions about their custom version. A standard default is good, but it shouldn't go further than that--I'd love a personalized custom score layout, and I generally look for combat spam blocking options first thing when looking at a new mud.

Re: Why not exploit the telnet protocol?
 

Could you please elaborate a little more about prompts and how they aid you?

Re: Why not exploit the telnet protocol?
 

First, let me say that I feel rather stupid. I didn't notice this was a two-page thread started in 2003, and was arguing based on the bit I read...oopse.

As for prompts, sure:

In my particular screen reader, given that most applications on windows like to put "status" information as the bottom-most line in the window--anything from file attributes to download progress to anything--a hotkey was implemented to read this line. Mushclient allows one to set this line.

In my current setup, I've got a trigger that takes any line starting with "status:" and sends it to that line.

Essentially, I don't have to hear the prompt after everything--skipping it will skip a bunch of other stuff--but I can still read it any time. I could spend 5-10 minutes or whatever to figure out your prompt that I can't change well enough to write an equivalent trigger, or I can just use mushclient's ability to import triggers from another world at creation--it has a little thing, import defaults from another world yes/no.

So, I just change your prompt to match my trigger--it normally takes 30 seconds--and I'm done. Truth be told, I should probably use <status>prompt goes here</status> to be extra safe, but all the same.

This becomes a particularly big deal on some of the lpmuds with all sorts of important changing-every-tick guild stats that must be monitored (I'm looking at you, 3 kingdoms); I'll typically make my prompt only numbers, memorize the order, and send it to that bottom line, making reading of the prompt happen in half the time it otherwise would, and essentially giving it a keystroke.

If this didn't help, I can't really give a better explanation, as it's sort of something you have to experience. That said, prompts are the number one answer for the "I can't read the score because it has graphical bars" question, as well. (In fact, with creative aliasing and the ability to imbed newlines in the prompt, you essentially have implemented an unintended custom score; I've never gone this far, but the potential exists.)