Clients

[Stephen Zepp]

I once took a strong look at the Pueblo Mud Client, a psuedo-html compliant
interface.  Basically, my thought was to break the text sent to the player down
into logical groupings, and display this information in seperate windows.  I
achieved this goal for the most part, sending room descriptions to one (
overwrite ) window, objects/npcs/people to another ( overwrite ), and
communications and generic events to another, splitting information into a total
of 5 primary and two pop up windows.  Also implemented point-click
object/inventory manipulation, sound support using a downloadable soundpack and
some other interesting features.

I found the execution of mudding as a player using this interface to be much
more realistic...when someone walked into the room they appeared in the Visible
window.  When the sun went down, the room description updated itself.  When I
left clicked on an object on the ground, by inventory and equipped window popped
up, allowing me to manipulate items with point-click until I closed them.  All
in all, I felt it was a much stronger interface then any general "one window per
mud" client.

Players hated it.  I think that out of about 20 people that saw it, one person
actually wanted to use it continuously, and was begging to see the code to
support it on his mud ( another ack ).  I just found that your generic "text
mudder" is pretty set in their ways, and aren't interested in too much change.

For those that may be interested:
 pueblo 2.01 from http://www.chaco.com
 sound files from ftp://ackmud.nuc.net/pub/lots/sounds
 email me for the mud address, and I can also send you the ( diku family )
interface stuff that I worked on.

Please note that 1) Chaco has abandoned Pueblo, so in the long run, it's not a
feasible interface, and 2) I never finished the client interface, due to the
negative feedback from my testers, though the only things needed are table
implementations for formatted code, and one or two other html compliant issues.

Z