A new platform?

[Three-Eyed Crow]

It's also a lot about presentation. I was pretty skeptical that a web portal could replace a game wiki, based on my experience on Arx (I get that this just isn't the focus of developers at the moment, so it's less a complaint than...wiki's currently have features it lacks). What @faraday did with the web portal at Ares largely turned me around on that, though. The reason MUs have sustained is because a lot of the "replacement" platforms like Storium just plain haven't been very good or haven't offered the ability for persistent world RP that was as deep. I can envision a web interface that is an actual, viable alternative, though.

[grapenut]

@three-eyed-crow Don't forget, with the websocket client you can make the same sort of web portal with any MUSH.

[Thenomain]

Something to note:

When all of this was being developed, the idea of 100%ing Metroid Prime was pretty common.

We had less to do with our spare time and more time to do it.

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but doing things better for the people who are used to the simplicity and feedback of Web 2.0/3.0 and social media (tho I still don't know what's simple about Facebook; I think it's more a black hole than anything) with the tools we have at hand is why Ares and Evennia are even a thing.

And even then, catching up to the ability of hyper-focused tools in our app-centric computer experience is going to to be rough going regardless.

--

What I'm saying is: Go team.

[Lotherio]

@griatch said in A new platform?:

I remember a comment by one of the guys from Iron Realms (the company running some of the few remaining commercial MUDs), noting that they loose most of their new players the moment they leave the graphical chargen and are presented with the text interface for the first time.

This.

I appreciate the work to help evolve the UI/E (both player and staff side). But I think in the end its more ignoring the elephant in the room.

Literacy rates slowly rise (for the most part), and this is good. But, and a big but, the literary reading rates continue to decrease. Nearly 60% of US adults read at least 1 book/poem/play/etc. around the mid 1980s, and a couple of years ago, this dropped to nearly 40% (there is a 2015 Washington Post article on this). That statistic is was based on reading 1 literary work (book, novel, short-story, poem, play) within the past year. Not a book a month or more, just one book in the last year to qualify as literary reading. Only 40% of adults currently have read one literary work in the past year and this number is continually decreasing; and this includes on-line works/derivatives to my knowledge. I'm concluding that reading for entertainment and literary reading are the same and that any pool of new potential Mu RP'ers are in this shrinking group.

Then, take various elements people like in Mu, and there is probably for the most part, a better, quicker, more detailed equivalent done graphically. Create a World? Minecraft or some other crafting sandbox. Space mining? Elite or some other space mining app. Faction based combat? Pick your PvP MMO of the day.

I think somewhere, if there is a potential to increase acivity, that just RP, reading/writing/story-telling/collaborating/etc. needs to be more the focus then dice and/or UI. It can be shiny'ed up all we like, but I think the comment @Griatch pulled from the Iron Realms folk(s) was more nail on the head. I think if all the commands were the same, folks would still move right along to something else once they hit wall of text (ie, you have to read to play, there is no skip/easy button to that). We can have an app devided, one side could be a nodebb forum, and the frame next to it could be the text window, below that could be input line(s) and under the forum part could be clickable map with a finger notes on players toggle so if I click any player I see in the room or who, it shows over the map until I close it. It could be the slickest thing ever, but that requirement that it is a reading based hobby will still be a bigger barrier I think.

Personally if we started going more fancy graphical interfaces, I'd probably not go that way. I'd hold out to old Penn and RP with friends.

It feels like this part is being ignored in upgrades.

[faraday]

@grapenut said in A new platform?:

@three-eyed-crow Don't forget, with the websocket client you can make the same sort of web portal with any MUSH.

Not effectively though. You can do a basic web client, but to do more advanced integrations requires a more advanced interface. Just shipping commands like "WHO" to the game and trying to parse ASCII text back out is not going to get you very far.

@lotherio said in A new platform?:

It feels like this part is being ignored in upgrades.

I wouldn't say it's being ignored, just that we have different views of the problem. To me, even if you have somebody who's interested in reading/writing/storytelling/collaborating, they're going to be severely put off by a 1980's era interface. I've heard this from a number of folks first-hand.

I mean, think about the next generation. My kids have never seen a command-line interface in their lives. They approach every screen like it's a touch screen. This is the next generation of potential MUSHers. Even if the hobby still centers around writing, you've got to meet them halfway with an app they can relate to. IMHO.

[Lotherio]

@faraday True, and I agree.

But for UI, we're behind the 8-ball. Iron Realms who made the comment about 'the first wall of text is a turn-off' use some pretty fancy interface.

The top right is chat/channel window, below that is a map that can be clicked on to navigate, click a room you've been to and you autowalk there (autowalk isn't know, MUDS use aliasing to make quick commands much like some older MUs have done). Click an arrow and you try to move/walk/go in that direction. No need to type an exit or direction name. Those images at the top are quick commands for abilities. On MudClient app for smart devices, one can change buttons, its not hard to have a 'who' button that lets you know who is on line. I've seen text data bank scroll wheels to get to common command like tell or pose even, I've used MUDClient to Mu before All that character information stuff on the left could easily just be sheet and finger notes. Enemy information could just be IC info on another character who's name you click on.

It could be super slick, and has been seen in MUDs already. The comment about hitting the part where reading comes in still rings a bell with me of curiosity. Also, learning different page commands isn't an issue for younger audiences, if there is a will there is a way. Various MineCraft servers use a few different ways for communicating personally, because like MUs, there are different systems once can install on their server for communicating.

I'm sure there is a happy medium somewhere certainly. But in the same vein, introducing a Mu as a text based environment where reading and writing is required like upfront could also help, part of the advertising/image. We've known for years that some of the folks that wander in from other mediums start with like RP'ing on WoW or EverQuest or whatever MMO and the RP isn't enough for them and they found MU's. As much as 80s interface isn't for some people, there still needs to be an input for text to write into and an output to read what is going on.

[Thenomain]

@lotherio

You know what I think might help?

Leave the text window the text window. Leave the most basic things there, in text. say, go, even page (tho maybe change it to \w for whisper).

It's our plus-commands that are the problem. I may be re-stating what you're getting on about, but I imagine how easy RP used to be in not only Muds, but in IRC and BBS. What separates Mudding/Mushing from Chatrooms? The depth of their systems.

A challenge would be to make the system not look like ass, as in...well, that screenshot.

Another challenge would be making the Mu* a UI-relevant platform, when keeping things code-relevant is difficult enough. We could absolutely hook HTML5/CSS3 into it, and probably fairly easily, but now you need someone to run the game, someone to code the game, and someone to UI the game. These can overlap, but we're adding to, not simplifying, the requirements for entry.

I would like this, but I fear its feasibility.

[faraday]

@thenomain said in A new platform?:

Leave the text window the text window. ... It's our plus-commands that are the problem.

Yeah, that's basically the approach I've taken with Ares. You can RP strictly through the web portal, but it's a little clunky and I don't expect most people will. The text window will be the primary mechanism for starting a scene and posing and that's perfectly fine because both of those things are principally text-driven activities with very simple command sets.

But does somebody new to MUSHing really need to learn +bbpost <board>=<subject>/<message> when they can read and post to the forums on a web portal without disrupting their RP? Even among the veterans, I know there are a lot of us who prefer to read the forums like, y'know, forums instead of typing +bbnew over and over again. Why do chargen with +raise this and +lower that when you can just click a few buttons on a web form? Those are the places where I think there's mileage to be had.

@thenomain said in A new platform?:

We could absolutely hook HTML5/CSS3 into it, and probably fairly easily, but now you need someone to run the game, someone to code the game, and someone to UI the game. These can overlap, but we're adding to, not simplifying, the requirements for entry.

For a lot (if not most) programmers these days, HTML/CSS skills are part of the standard package. It doesn't take a whole lot of expertise to make a fill-in form for your chargen. If the bulk of the web portal and basic systems are already built, adding just a few new UI elements for your custom stuff shouldn't be a giant obstacle. (If you're talking about Firan levels of custom code, well then yeah... stuff gets complicated. But that's not most games.)

[surreality]

That screenshot is giving my inner design geek hives.

No. No, I think she just ran into a hornet's nest. Full of the angriest of angry hornets. With rabies.

[Thenomain]

@faraday said in A new platform?:

If the bulk of the web portal and basic systems are already built

Giving us even more to re-design to bring the hobby into last decade.

Either way, development times are going to spike. I'm not saying that we will have time from leaving an antiquated and honestly kind of horrible scripting language, but since there are only a few of us doing the bulk of the coding for multiple games via code packages, I still think the development spike is something to be very aware of.

[golgoth]

So, like @faraday mentions, AresMUSH (and Evennia), while they don't have all the answers yet, have a lot of them. Did you know that it is relatively easy to implement an @mail system where all of this @mail dude=<title>/<Stuff> or whatever is hidden behind a simple popup where you fill in the fields and vwoosh, @mail sent?

Same with the +bb system. Make it clickable. Pueblo Enhancements have been around for ages. Speaking of the +bb system. It's just a blog or forum post. Why not export/link all of that to an actual forum or blog? Can be done, has been done.

Shit, I don't know Ruby / Ruby on Rails and now I'm sitting here thinking how hard it might be to implement all of this stuff for AresMUSH.

--- ANYWAY, what I'm saying is that: Let's start putting brains together and start collaborating on implementing methods to abstract all of the scary code and put in its place easy to use interfaces that are more or less intuitive? I'm down.

Edit: I should read the entire thread instead of jumping in at like 25.

[Ashen-Shugar]

@golgoth said in A new platform?:

So, like @faraday mentions, AresMUSH (and Evennia), while they don't have all the answers yet, have a lot of them. Did you know that it is relatively easy to implement an @mail system where all of this @mail dude=<title>/<Stuff> or whatever is hidden behind a simple popup where you fill in the fields and vwoosh, @mail sent?

Same with the +bb system. Make it clickable. Pueblo Enhancements have been around for ages. Speaking of the +bb system. It's just a blog or forum post. Why not export/link all of that to an actual forum or blog? Can be done, has been done.

Shit, I don't know Ruby / Ruby on Rails and now I'm sitting here thinking how hard it might be to implement all of this stuff for AresMUSH.

--- ANYWAY, what I'm saying is that: Let's start putting brains together and start collaborating on implementing methods to abstract all of the scary code and put in its place easy to use interfaces that are more or less intuitive? I'm down.

Edit: I should read the entire thread instead of jumping in at like 25.

With some work you can do this today with AresMUSH, Evennia, and RhostMUSH through the use of extensible API or language backends.

The only thing you, as the end user admin, will have to do is write the web interface to hook into those api's.

A fully featured graphical front-end is just as hard as a fully-featured chargen or skill system is.

It differs by game to game, by player by player, and by interest to interest.

So what we, as game developers tend to do, is give you the tools so you can fairly easily design it how you want yourselves.

A fully turnkey 'run with this config and I have everything' like a MMPORG isn't going to work, especially since we don't have teams of 20-40 people building the backend world for years to make it work, nor are we paid for it so don't have the inclination or time to dedicate fully to it.

Meet us half way

[golgoth]

@ashen-shugar You have me on the wrong end, there. I'm not talking about this as me being the end user admin. I'm talking about this from the framework development standpoint.

I already know for a fact that Evennia has the capability. Hell, a chunk of Evennia's code is just Django (and Twisted and whatnot) but with the word Evennia sprinkled in... I also don't mean that in a negative way, by the way. They've done a ton of awesome extra customization to get to where they are today.

Anyway, I digress. Using Evennia's web interface, you can type something like 'help @create' and it will create a popup for you so that you can read the help file while not filling your main text screen. You can implement this to be used for an @mail system. Type @mail <username> and it should pop up a window with the user field already filled in, and the option to add more, have a subject line, and a body box or whatever.

I also know (I haven't checked in the past month) that they are working on setting it up so some of the stuff that Iron Realms showcases (their chat windows being split off) are built right into the framework.

Anyway, what I am getting at is: As time goes on, we as developers should start looking at some of these things that experienced users take for granted and see how we can make the user experience a little better. I remember when the new bog standard +bb system started popping up. Holy crap, that was badass. I HATED the older boards people implemented. They weren't intuitive at all (Only ones I can think of at the moment are one of the Lord of The Rings ones and an old B5 one)... This newer generation coming up behind us is likely thinking the same thing about our awesome +bb and @mail systems.

I'll go to bed now. I'm rambling.

[faraday]

@golgoth said in A new platform?:

Shit, I don't know Ruby / Ruby on Rails and now I'm sitting here thinking how hard it might be to implement all of this stuff for AresMUSH.

FWIW you don't have to - it's already implemented. Web-based mail, bbs and jobs come out of the box.

@thenomain said in A new platform?:

@faraday said in A new platform?:

If the bulk of the web portal and basic systems are already built

Giving us even more to re-design to bring the hobby into last decade.

:helpless shrug: If folks are going to re-design mail, BBS, finger/profile, repose and whatnot just for the hell of it when it's already built for them, they're not my target audience. Go use Evennia. Seriously. (I don't mean that in a bad way either. Evennia is a great building kit for making your own thing.)

Ares is for the folks who see no reason to re-invent the wheel just to make it look a little different, and just want to run a game. Take all the pre-built stuff, add whatever game-specific stuff you need (which for most games will be very little if we have a stable of different CG systems ready to go) and you're off to the races.

[Thenomain]

@faraday said in A new platform?:

If folks are going to re-design mail, BBS, finger/profile, repose and whatnot just for the hell of it

Who said anything about re-coding anything for the hell of it? I was talking about layout and design, a keystone of the Web 2.0/3.0 I was talking about.

What were you talking about?

[faraday]

@thenomain said in A new platform?:

What were you talking about?

I was talking about how Ares provides all the cornerstones of a basic MUSH setup ready to go out of the box. Of course if you dislike the forum page, for example, you could re-design it. (That's what I thought you were talking about.) But that redesign is not necessary and thus I don't consider it to be generating any kind of "development spike". On the contrary, I think removing the need to code up all that stuff just to get a MUSH off the ground reduces the overall development time.

[SquirrelTalk]

@lotherio That may be so, but just because the percentage is going down doesn't mean there aren't younger people who'd still love to do something like this. Like, a hobby or a passion doesn't have to be shared by a majority to be worth giving them something to work with. Something to FIND for the people who still ARE into it, and aren't just the aging group of us that have been here forever bouncing between sinking islands.

[SquirrelTalk]

@faraday Have you looked at Roleplaygateway.com? It's a complete mess, but it has some really cool ideas involved, like pages for games where you can set up tabs for lists of locations and characters, and make rooms for scenes, and have a basic chatroom for OOC stuff that might be worth looking at, if you haven't. Sadly the site itself is a mess to navigate, and the search system doesn't work, but you can pull up the most played games, I think, and look at what they've been able to build in.

[golgoth]

@faraday Woohoo! See, even better!

[Lotherio]

@golgoth said in A new platform?:

Did you know that it is relatively easy to implement an @mail system where all of this @mail dude=<title>/<Stuff> or whatever is hidden behind a simple popup where you fill in the fields and vwoosh, @mail sent?

There has been a few replies along the line and @Thenomain may have extrapolated some of what I was after.

There are a number of forum and social media platforms that actually can replace in-game clunky systems like @mail or +bboards ... what if the webinterface had a frame with nodebb (or similar forum/social plugin) just like these forums. The frame could toggle on/off, come with size control, things finger touch-screen kids would be familiar with, easily customize-able graphic interface (my MSB is dark background with light text, easier to read for me, but heck get enough interested kids in something like that and they'll learn to design their own faces, add graphics, whatever). Then, instead of bboards we have categories and threads on the forum. We don't need mail, PM'ing works just the same, it notifies us already of new messages with that little red dot thing. We can click a user to get info on them and they can customize those pages. I don't know if anyone is creating divisions here with CSS to try and override the main CSS to really pretty up their profile pages, but I imagine something would be figured out with enough interest.

But it seems we're focused on re-inventing the wheel when web interface already has gadgets/wickets/platforms/extra/etc that could be made to work in a web frame along side a window client for the RP side that is the typical RP oriented things for the mush to work. There are tons of apps/gadgets/gizmos out there that could take a web frame and make it just as clunky as MUDlet, with options of control.

As noted by @Ashen-Shugar

A fully featured graphical front-end is just as hard as a fully-featured chargen or skill system is.

Right now what I think I'm saying is, I'm just trading one way of coding (PennMUSH softcode) for a more adaptable backend code (Ruby or Python or some derivative), throwing in a little more SQL or some other form of data manipulation to pull from server to web, learning a little more HTML/CSS to create some forms and such. I understand the code bits are easier for younger individuals to use as they're more familiar with it, assuming these changes create enough of a draw. But I don't know who its made any easier to set up and run a game, as noted again, graphical front end is more possible these days, but its still just as much work as a chargen/skill system. Is it saving any work, becoming easier? Or is it just adding more options that equate to more work?

I really don't know, part of the issue seems decline in the interest in reading and writing. (No @SquirrelTalk, I'm not saying ignore younger individuals interested in reading and literary arts/hobbies/entertainment). It just feels the advances are moving slightly away from support of a literary medium, not saying I favor a blank green screen and a command prompt and a do it yourself mentality (10 flash; 20 print Hello; 30 goto 10; run program; leave lab with program running knowing the next student will not know how to Escape the program).

I support Ares MUSH as an out of the box, easy to configure MUSH; I awaited its release for years, I look forward to seeing what others do with it. I'm good with FS3 as the primary system, I like it. Except when I want to customize the dice and skills, which can be done by by knowing or learning Ruby. Which to me, I've traded help files for every code command in the system being accessible while in the live text environment to learning back end code via other sites and tutorials; which isn't bad, my daughters are slowly learning Ruby.

So I don't know, is it evolving to something new and easier? Or is it a linear transfer from one way of coding to another? I completely concur Ares and Evannia are a step in the right direction of drawing newer interest by appealing to what they know, but it still takes that step of wanting to know and dealing with the amount of reading required to make the step. New players continue to trickle in, always have, but not in the droves and flocks of the hobby's hayday.

Sorry @surreality, a graphic interface with lots of options including a text window for the actual RP some where in the middle of it all seems like it will come out that way to me. Its no different than how we used to set up spawn windows in clients on the more mathematical gamey games MU'es in the 90s (I'm looking at you battletech), it was an eyesore, but we could customize it to display how we wanted and it worked for the massive overload of fast flowing information we wanted in a text based game played at that speed.

ETA: Sorry wall of text, I was trying to break your telnet buffer by going over 80 lines or something.