[MUD-Dev] Custom Client or Plain ole' Telnet?

[Matt Chatterley]

As many of us do from time to time, I have reached something of an
impasse in the early stages of game design (the really fun first bit
where you write down all your crazy ideas and pick out the ones that
might actually work in a game).

Simply put - do I go with a custom client, or implement a telnet
interface?

I've briefly sketched out the pros and cons of each, and my thoughts
follow - but I also believe that many other people out there must
have asked themselves this question recently, and I'm hoping to tap
into that experience - have you chosen a custom client and regretted
it later, or vice versa? Why?

Telnet's main advantage is that it makes the game immediately
accesible to people playing in many, many places, and on all sorts
of different systems. There are well-written, stable, mature Mud
clients which use Telnet readily available for all major platforms -
someone else has done all of the hard work for me here. Almost a
dream come true!

The main disadvantage is that this restricts me to a text-only set
of input/output streams. Administrators and Builders at least will
require a custom client to perform additional functions (e.g. Area
design is graphical, using a layout tool), and many of my "coolest"
ideas require "extra content" which could not be delivered via
telnet - for example a 'mini map' showing the area around the player
from the top down - as the game is part strategy in design, and the
position of opponents relative to yourself in combat (for example)
can be relevant - this is difficult to relay concisely in text
alone.

That said, it isn't going to be (and never will be) a graphical game
- at least 75% of the content is descriptive text - no images for
rooms or monsters and so forth - I'm approaching this from an
Interactive Fiction perspective as much as Strategy or RPG.

So, are the 'bells and whistles' worth the extra work creating a
good quality, stable client, and the limitation that it will not be
available for all platforms (currently planning to implement the
project in .NET, therefore aiming at windows, possibly Linux,
depending on how the open source .NET implementation is going these
days). Players would also have to download and install the program -
does this prevent people from playing?

Some of the bells/whistles/etc in my notes are:

  Strategic Combat View - where are opponents and allies relative to
  your ava= tar?

  Map View of wilderness areas - "Normal" Mud type areas exist as
  points in a wider countryside/wilderness area which must be
  traversed.

  Point'n'Click inventory

  Shortcut command buttons

  Visual control to manage combat - Combat is to be round-based,
  with all players choosing their actions for the next round ahead
  of time - some sort of visual control would be much easier to
  manage than typing in several commands.

>>From just the short list above, I think the playing experience could
benefit from a custom client - but perhaps a mixed approach would
work? Have the bits above and more available for those who install
the client, but make sure the game can be played through telnet as
well?

Any thoughts from the floor?


Cheers,

--=20

Matt Chatterley
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