[MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds

[Chris Gray]

[Caliban:]

:Have you been reading the Gunslinger series by Stephen King? How exactly did
:you feel about the multiple-year wait between "The Waste Lands" and "Wizard
:and Glass"? Was it any less agonising than the wait between "The Empire
:Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi"? Aren't you anxious for the NEXT book
:in the series? Me, I read the Belgariad when it first came out. Volume by
:volume. One by one. I waited for each and every book with baited breath. I
:cared about what was going to happen and how it was all going to turn out.
:That's the mark of a good author.

Agreed. I'm so far behind in my reading, however (about 200 fiction books),
that what I tend to do is collect the entire series before I even start it.
I have such a poor memory that reading the volumes a year apart is much
less satisfying than reading them together. Just got volume 7 of Wheel
of Time, but haven't even opened the first one yet.

:But we don't really mean books. We mean TEXT. Let's say I show you a picture
:of a dragon. To use something we can all look at as a frame of reference, I'll
:give you a URL: http://www.darklock.com/fantasy/gallery/drag/drag.html --
:which is, if you ask me, a pretty damn terrifying dragon. IF -- and this is a
:big if -- you look at it properly.

Will do - keep it there for a while, though, 'cause it will take me a while.

:"The rocks crack and shift under the weight of a tremendous dragon, its scales
:gleaming a deep crimson in the fading light of sunset. Twin slit-pupilled eyes
:burn beneath a sharply ridged brow, twin horns jutting back from the skull as
:it swings from side to side, searching, the nostrils flaring as it sniffs the
:air searching for prey, and its lip curls in anticipation to reveal rows of
:glittering needle sharp teeth as the eyes turn and fasten on you."
:
:Two sentences. Less than 1K of space. And if you ask me, it's a hell of a lot
:more effective than putting a picture up on the screen. The fact of the matter
:is, a picture will never startle you either. You walk around a corner and are
:confronted by a picture of a dragon. Wow, you think, cool picture. And off you
:go. Might and Magic never immersed me.

A single picture will possibly not hold the same fascination. Imagine, however,
that a good 3-D rendering of the dragon did exactly what you just described.
Now *that* would be attention getting! Combine it with good, synchronized
sound effects, so that you can hear the dragon sniffing. Show some minor
effect in the eyes as it looks at you - perhaps just a widening. Wonderful!

:If you really want to make a graphical MUD, look at the Quake technology.
:That's where people want a graphic MUD to go. Throw out all the concepts of
:just adding graphics to existing MUDs. Graphic MUD players will want a
:real-time dungeon crawl.

Agreed. Love to. Can't. That takes the resources of a commercial group,
which I am not. Therefore I concentrate on fringe areas where one person
can make a difference. Laugh at my efforts if you wish, but don't expect
me to bow down and stop doing what I enjoy doing.

--
Chris Gray   cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA