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➜ MUDs
➜ MUD Design Concepts
➜ Why no Ncurses MUD servers?
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Why no Ncurses MUD servers?
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| Posted by
| Jasonius
(12 posts) Bio
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| Date
| Reply #15 on Fri 08 Oct 2010 09:52 PM (UTC) |
| Message
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David Haley said:
But honestly -- and of course this is just IMHO -- I think you're missing the point here. If you look at what Nick has done, it goes far beyond simply making a nicer text interface. He has added modern graphical interface elements to the game.
I dunno, maybe I'm just cranky because I feel like playing MUDs, and there's only a handful that come with a reasonably preconfigured client and I happen to not really like those particular ones.
Besides, for me personally, the only reason I use a MUD client is to do the sorts of things you could easily do in curses. Put tells over here, overhead map up there, useful status bar down here, and go nuts.
If the server does it in all, I don't have to care about clients. Doesn't matter if I'm visiting my mom or sitting in a library, just telnet and play.
Quote:
And if it's not that hard, and you are indeed right about all of this, perhaps you could show a proof of concept
I accept your challenge ;)
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| Posted by
| Twisol
USA (2,257 posts) Bio
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| Date
| Reply #16 on Fri 08 Oct 2010 10:15 PM (UTC) |
| Message
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Nick Gammon said:
*Logging - I don't see how you can usefully log a window which is randomly updated with cursor addressing. So your logs are gone.
Server would do it. Probably could provide downloads.
Nick Gammon said:
*Speedwalks - how would something like PuTTY let you enter "#5n 3s 2w" and convert that into directions?
Server would do it; doesn't Aardwolf have something like this?
Nick Gammon said:
*Triggers - since you are moving the cursor all around the place how do you make triggers work? And without triggers you can't detect when in combat etc.
*Scripting - decision-making like drink a potion when health is low. As far as I know PuTTY and other VT100 clients aren't going to offer that.
*Timers - doing something periodically. Again I think you lose that.
Server could conceptually do these things with some kind of text-based interface, though it's unlikely they'd want to expose that sort of functionality.
Nick Gammon said:
*Aliases - without a custom client, you basically have to type everything in longhand.
Server can do it. Achaea has a SETALIAS command that lets you create shorhands. There's no preprocessing - it's just a straight prefix translation - but it works.
Nick Gammon said:
I don't want to discourage someone who wants to enthusiastically advance MUD development. But I can't help thinking that something targetted at the gadgets available in 2010, rather than those in 1980, is going to be more rewarding.
Insert random plug for long-shot web-client project here. :D |
'Soludra' on Achaea
Blog: http://jonathan.com/
GitHub: http://github.com/Twisol | | Top |
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| Posted by
| Jasonius
(12 posts) Bio
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| Date
| Reply #17 on Fri 08 Oct 2010 10:26 PM (UTC) |
| Message
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Nick Gammon said:
*Speedwalks
*Triggers
*Timers
*Aliases
Other than maybe timers, those are things that *everyone* wants. Why do so many servers make me do it myself? It's the principle, man!
They're also easy to implement in-game. Lots of muds have aliases and speedwalks. Triggers and timers, I suspect, would be fairly trivial to implement. Saying "those belong on the client side" seems arbitrary.
Quote:
*Logging
*scripting
Granted, those are tougher. I guess the question is "does the mud engine have to do everything a client can do, or does it just have to do enough to not chase users away by greeting them with a hideous wall of text?
Quote:
I don't want to discourage someone who wants to enthusiastically advance MUD development. But I can't help thinking that something targetted at the gadgets available in 2010, rather than those in 1980, is going to be more rewarding.
That's a valid point. On the other hand, a certain amount of nostalgia is sort of the point. I can't say I've ever found myself wanting to play a MUD on my iPhone, or wishing I had a high-res graphical map instead of dashes and pipes.
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| Posted by
| Twisol
USA (2,257 posts) Bio
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| Date
| Reply #18 on Fri 08 Oct 2010 10:34 PM (UTC) Amended on Fri 08 Oct 2010 10:35 PM (UTC) by Twisol
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| Message
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Jasonius said:
Triggers and timers, I suspect, would be fairly trivial to implement. Saying "those belong on the client side" seems arbitrary.
Many MUDs don't want the user to automate anything, and they would need to be heavily limited anyways in order to keep the server load under control. It's possible, but (a) does the server want it, and (b) can the server handle it? |
'Soludra' on Achaea
Blog: http://jonathan.com/
GitHub: http://github.com/Twisol | | Top |
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| Posted by
| Nick Gammon
Australia (23,120 posts) Bio
Forum Administrator |
| Date
| Reply #19 on Fri 08 Oct 2010 10:41 PM (UTC) |
| Message
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Jasonius said:
Other than maybe timers, those are things that *everyone* wants. Why do so many servers make me do it myself? It's the principle, man!
Oh well, good point! I look forwards to seeing the prototype. :-) |
- Nick Gammon
www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com | | Top |
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| Posted by
| David Haley
USA (3,881 posts) Bio
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| Date
| Reply #20 on Fri 08 Oct 2010 11:01 PM (UTC) |
| Message
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Quote:
I guess the question is "does the mud engine have to do everything a client can do, or does it just have to do enough to not chase users away by greeting them with a hideous wall of text?
Well, no, your question was: why do people bother with clients that don't support ncurses? The answer is that these clients do things that would be difficult to do server-side (or that the server simply would not want to do).
It would be rather silly/dangerous for a server to give players more or less arbitrary scripting -- even if sandboxed. For starters, it provides a perfect vector for DoS attacks, even if people have accidental infinite loops.
If the question is: can the current situation be improved? The answer is of course yes: I think that's why Nick has been doing all that he's been doing. |
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone
http://david.the-haleys.org | | Top |
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| Posted by
| LezChap
(36 posts) Bio
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| Date
| Reply #21 on Sat 09 Oct 2010 02:59 AM (UTC) |
| Message
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Twisol said:
Jasonius said:
Triggers and timers, I suspect, would be fairly trivial to implement. Saying "those belong on the client side" seems arbitrary.
Many MUDs don't want the user to automate anything, and they would need to be heavily limited anyways in order to keep the server load under control. It's possible, but (a) does the server want it, and (b) can the server handle it?
Exactly. Distribute the processing power out for the 10/20/100 (however many your chosen mud hosts) players out to the players and their clients, instead of forcing the server to do it all.
Basically, it's what just about every online game I can think of these days does.
And it's generally cheaper to host and maintain. | | Top |
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| Posted by
| Jasonius
(12 posts) Bio
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| Date
| Reply #22 on Sat 09 Oct 2010 04:01 AM (UTC) |
| Message
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LezChap said:
Exactly. Distribute the processing power out for the 10/20/100 (however many your chosen mud hosts) players out to the players and their clients, instead of forcing the server to do it all.
Basically, it's what just about every online game I can think of these days does.
For anything but a text MUD, I'd agree. Obviously, the server can't be drawing heavy graphics for hundreds of players. But text is easy to process and CPUs have come a long way since 1990.
I just finished compiling tbaMUD, which used to be Circlemud (I'm feeling nostalgic - played a lot of Circlemuds). I'll see if I can staple a Perl Curses front-end onto it this weekend, just for fun. | | Top |
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| Posted by
| Worstje
Netherlands (899 posts) Bio
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| Date
| Reply #23 on Sat 09 Oct 2010 04:22 AM (UTC) |
| Message
| I think the point people are making that a text-based game does not necessarily have to be text-only. Graphical doodahs can make a game that fully consists out of text a lot more attractive to play by adding the bit of window-dressing that appeals ones pleasant tastes.
If text was _ALL_ that mattered, we would not have programs like word with bolding, underlining, sizing, headers and whatnot. Letters would still be made with a single font on a single size.
A game is more than the text it is composed of. :) | | Top |
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| Posted by
| Twisol
USA (2,257 posts) Bio
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| Date
| Reply #24 on Sat 09 Oct 2010 04:46 AM (UTC) |
| Message
| The sheer number of timers and triggers can certainly have an effect. I know people who have used a popular combat system in Achaea, and their system slows down perceptibly. Now imagine just ten players using that system, alongside everything else the game juggles.
Text processing is easy. Managing a game world, regardless of how it looks to the user, is less so. |
'Soludra' on Achaea
Blog: http://jonathan.com/
GitHub: http://github.com/Twisol | | Top |
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