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Posted by

WillFa USA (525 posts)

Date

Sun 18 Jul 2010 09:41 PM (UTC)

Message

Hey Nick,

I realize that with todays hardware and todays bandwidth, performance really isn't too critical on a mudclient (even the slowest client should have enough hardware behind it to handle a paragraph of text every 2 seconds).. But the benchmarks haven't been updated in 8 years.

Recently, a friend of mine asked me to check out Mudlet because he really wanted a native client on his mac, although he's happy with MC when he's not on battery power... Anyway, in their forums I've found comments like " MUSHclient also can't compare to mudlet's display or processing speed.." (http://forums.mudlet.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1584&p=5433&hilit=mushclient#p5433) They also haven't actually published any benchmark numbers...

And, well, their client has some promising ideas in it (tho it performs a lot more like a version 0.7 than a 1.1), but a clean install of Mudlet on my machine is more sluggish than MC - with 9 years of plugins and triggers...

With out stepping into "fanboy" territory, it'd be nice if you still had your BSD box and updated the Benchmark... Let's have 'em put up or shut up.

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (22,975 posts)

bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #1 on Sun 18 Jul 2010 10:40 PM (UTC)

Message

tsuujin said:

MUSHclient also can't compare to mudlet's display or processing speed...

That reminds me of a quote from Alice In Wonderland:

Alice In Wonderland said:

"There's nothing like eating hay when you're faint," he remarked to her, as he munched away.

"I should think throwing cold water over you would be better," Alice suggested: "or some sal-volatile."

"I didn't say there was nothing better," the King replied. "I said there was nothing like it." Which Alice did not venture to deny.

You notice Tsuujin said it "can't compare" not that it was faster or slower. ;)

I don't really want to get into benchmark-envy, and it is interesting that the implied claim that Mudlet is faster is not backed up by any factual claims. For example, if "processing speed" is claimed to be faster, processing what? Triggers? I am happy to test trigger matching against any other client. For one thing I am using the PCRE engine (itself very powerful). A quick browse seems to indicate Mudlet also uses PCRE, so the raw trigger matching should be comparable.

I remember a while back a client was claimed to be faster - indeed the claim was it "must be faster" because it was a console application, not a GUI application. However a test soon showed that this was false.

There is more to speed that being GUI or non-GUI, or written in C++ or some other language.

I just tested running on VMware on my Mac, with Ubuntu installed as a virtual machine, and under Ubuntu I ran Wine, and under Wine I ran MUSHclient. Now this is two virtual machines layered on top of a Mac, in effect, and the performance was still fast enough that a screen-full of description shot by faster than you could read.

Any Mac users out there could easily run MUSHclient under VMware if they had an old copy of Windows around to install on it, or failing that, install Ubuntu for nothing, and still run it, as I just did.

However as you note, performance isn't everything. There are claims MUSHclient is hard to use, and I can't really comment as I am used to it now. I try to make it simple and consistent, but perhaps I don't totally succeed. Version 4.54 improves things a bit by removing some of the extra windows that pop up if there is an error installing plugins.

Sometimes when I try other clients I think "I have to do *what* do make a trigger?" - but again, it is probably a case of getting used to the way a client works.

I wish the developers of Mudlet every success, after all it is cross-platform and open source.

I note that on their home page that "the text display is designed to handle thousands of lines under a second". Again I note that "designed to" and "actually does" are two different things, but for my own amusement I may just check out which client handles a few thousand lines of data faster. ;)

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

Worstje Netherlands (899 posts)

Date

Reply #2 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 12:59 AM (UTC)

Message

I have had 2500+ triggers active at the same time and still had a very respectable speed, although I could notice it getting a tiny bit sluggish. Then again, that's on a laptop that is now 5 years old, and I probably didn't help much by having a buffer that was about as large as my entire internal memory (I could go back a full month, as I always hibernated the silly thing instead of shutting down.)

Last time I saw Mudlet, which was in its very early stages, it didn't lift a candle to MUSHclient. They probably optimized a good deal since, but imo MUSHclient is still the fastest client out there (for me personally).

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (22,975 posts)

bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #3 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 01:16 AM (UTC)

Message

I just ran the first five tests on this page:

http://www.gammon.com.au/mushclient/benchmarks.htm

Both MUSHclient and Mudlet performed at the same speed, as far as I could tell with my stopwatch (basically about 1.8 seconds to process over 5,000 lines of coloured text, matching some triggers, not matching others).

According to the MUSHclient "info" page, it matched 8335 triggers in 0.47 seconds (however during that time it had to process another 10 triggers per line which did not match).

So I can't really agree that Mudlet "doesn't compare" to MUSHclient in display or processing speed. They seem to compare quite well, being pretty evenly matched. Since I believe that Mudlet uses Lua for scripting, I presume any scripting it does will operate at a similar speed (for whatever CPU you have), compared to MUSHclient Lua scripting.

So really, it comes down to personal preference, ease of use, cross-platform compatibility, forum support, and whether any bugs are fixed promptly. :)

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

WillFa USA (525 posts)

Date

Reply #4 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 01:36 AM (UTC)

Message

Well you definitely have them beat on that last one...

They claim to be open source, but I've found no less than 4 git repositories, none of them up to date, some maintained by different people for different aspects of the program (isn't that what branches are for?)

Their client also has some annoying quirks with displaying tabs (messes up the whole display), and their color matching trigger is very annoying... It doesn't check that a line starts with a color combo (like every other client in the world), it checks that it's anywhere in the line... Plus their plugin/package distribution system is annoying (distribute an XML that a user basically imports into their world -yaaa, cluttered trampled _G variables).

That said, I like their idea of having a "lua function" pattern to trigger on (you know how much I like LPEG). I also like that they basically register callbacks for Event Handlers. It makes resize window routines simple for your package and eliminates worrying about trampling someone elses routine, since you're sharing one global environment.

So, I still prefer MC.
Sorry Nick, you're not getting rid of me. ;)

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (22,975 posts)

bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #5 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 03:53 AM (UTC)

Message

I almost wrote to you and suggested you do a JSON reader in LPEG, but I thought that was probably reinventing the wheel (there is one already but I thought it was a bit wordy). Still, if you get bored ...

Yes, LPEG *is* a gem isn't it? Trouble is, if you don't use it a lot you tend to forget how to. Well that happens to me anyway.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

Phaeton Canada (8 posts)

Date

Reply #6 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 06:51 AM (UTC)

Message

Nick Gammon said:

I almost wrote to you and suggested you do a JSON reader in LPEG, but I thought that was probably reinventing the wheel (there is one already but I thought it was a bit wordy). Still, if you get bored ...

Yes, LPEG *is* a gem isn't it? Trouble is, if you don't use it a lot you tend to forget how to. Well that happens to me anyway.

You should mud with WillFa. He won't let you forget LPEG. Ever.

:)

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (22,975 posts)

bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #7 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 07:03 AM (UTC)

Message

Phaeton said:

You should mud with WillFa. He won't let you forget LPEG. Ever.

Lol. Is he in a guild called LPEG? And has a pet LPEG?

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

WillFa USA (525 posts)

Date

Reply #8 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 07:26 AM (UTC)

Message

Ya know that t-shirt that reads:

"There are 10 types of people, those who can read binary"... ?

I just set my title to:

Hellbound lpeg.Cc("your attention") (good)

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (22,975 posts)

bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #9 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 08:19 AM (UTC)

Amended on Mon 19 Jul 2010 08:22 AM (UTC) by Nick Gammon

Message

Well you just gave me an idea ...

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

Twisol USA (2,257 posts)

Date

Reply #10 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 08:29 AM (UTC)

Message

Oh the nerdery!

'Soludra' on Achaea

Blog: http://jonathan.com/
GitHub: http://github.com/Twisol

Posted by

KaVir Germany (117 posts)

Date

Reply #11 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 12:43 PM (UTC)

Message

Nick Gammon said:
However as you note, performance isn't everything. There are claims MUSHclient is hard to use, and I can't really comment as I am used to it now. I try to make it simple and consistent, but perhaps I don't totally succeed.

As a basic user, I found Mudlet a little easier to use - there was a single row of large buttons, and pressing the first one ("Connect") allowed me to enter connection details and start playing. With MUSHclient I had to go to File->New World, which I found less intuitive. Like most users, I didn't bother reading any instructions, I just jumped straight in and started blundering around.

When it came to writing scripts, I gave up with Mudlet. I've seen some nice screenshots of what can be done, but I find their editor really uncomfortable to use, the documentation is pretty sparse, their graphical functionality is limited (eg I have to provide 1024 individual graphical terrain tiles, as opposed to a single terrain strip like I do in MUSHclient) and they don't support open protocols (so I had to hack together psuedo-ATCP support in order to trick Mudlet into reading MSDP data - which I've just discovered causes some strange side effects for CMUD users).

In terms of performance I've not noticed any difference between the two - both run nice and fast, and appear very stable. I've have had a few usage problems with Mudlet (vanishing text and session freezes), but as nobody else has reported them they're probably due to my "experiments" with psuedo-ATCP.

The main reason I'm interested in Mudlet is because of its cross-platform support. I know MUSHclient can be run under WINE and such, but as far as I know, none of the players who have tried have managed to get my plugin working. For first-time mudders, I really want to provide them something that's as easy as possible to get started with (although it looks like the PHudBase browser client might be a simpler option here, as it doesn't require any downloads).

Posted by

Phaeton Canada (8 posts)

Date

Reply #12 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 02:19 PM (UTC)

Message

KaVir said:

Nick Gammon said:
However as you note, performance isn't everything. There are claims MUSHclient is hard to use, and I can't really comment as I am used to it now. I try to make it simple and consistent, but perhaps I don't totally succeed.

As a basic user, I found Mudlet a little easier to use - there was a single row of large buttons, and pressing the first one ("Connect") allowed me to enter connection details and start playing. With MUSHclient I had to go to File->New World, which I found less intuitive. Like most users, I didn't bother reading any instructions, I just jumped straight in and started blundering around.

When it came to writing scripts, I gave up with Mudlet. I've seen some nice screenshots of what can be done, but I find their editor really uncomfortable to use, the documentation is pretty sparse, their graphical functionality is limited (eg I have to provide 1024 individual graphical terrain tiles, as opposed to a single terrain strip like I do in MUSHclient) and they don't support open protocols (so I had to hack together psuedo-ATCP support in order to trick Mudlet into reading MSDP data - which I've just discovered causes some strange side effects for CMUD users).

In terms of performance I've not noticed any difference between the two - both run nice and fast, and appear very stable. I've have had a few usage problems with Mudlet (vanishing text and session freezes), but as nobody else has reported them they're probably due to my "experiments" with psuedo-ATCP.

The main reason I'm interested in Mudlet is because of its cross-platform support. I know MUSHclient can be run under WINE and such, but as far as I know, none of the players who have tried have managed to get my plugin working. For first-time mudders, I really want to provide them something that's as easy as possible to get started with (although it looks like the PHudBase browser client might be a simpler option here, as it doesn't require any downloads).

Well, I've been a MUSHClient fan for a long time. I even paid for it, back in the day. I don't really want to get into a debate about it, but as an OSX user, I will say that there are a lot of problems with the OSX release of Mudlet that can be pretty frustrating. I think it'll be a solid client someday though.

I was excited by some things, like the mapper and whatnot. But now that Nick has been working on a general purpose one for MC, and now that WillFa is working on making it not hate 3k, if I'm honest.. I'm pretty thrilled to just stick with MC :)

Posted by

Vadi (4 posts)

Date

Reply #13 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 05:05 PM (UTC)

Message

Nick seemed to reply everything I would've liked to, thank you! A few points unaddressed:

opensource: Mudlet follows the same code model Lua has used successfully for the last 17 years. I'd say Lua is pretty successful at what it does; hence it's a good model to use for Mudlet development as well. The model is that all the code released is open-source, snapshots are provided during the development, community feedback is taken into all decisions, patches are accepted.

Mudlet on Mac problems: first time hearing this, never heard from other Mac users as well - so unless reported, chances are the specific problem isn't one or won't be fixed.

I'd like to have that benchmark server up to test with. For now, I just tried a localhost connection, made on an XP guest in Virtualbox w/ Ubuntu host:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/84880/mushclient-display.ogv
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/84880/mudlet-display.ogv

With both clients being free and open-source, competition is moot - it's just what the user likes most :)

Posted by

David Haley USA (3,881 posts)

Date

Reply #14 on Mon 19 Jul 2010 06:28 PM (UTC)

Message

It looks like MUSHclient tries to actually render everything, whereas Mudlet renders a bit and then just hangs for a second or so before jumping to the end. Is that intentional or accidental behavior?

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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