Attachment to old-school MU* clients
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@derp said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
The CLI style interface is really about the only remotely manageable way to operate a game like this from an administrative level.
At least 90% of admin commands are available on the web portal for Ares, and are far preferable than the CLI for things like handling jobs, adjusting stats, setting up forums/channels/etc.
The remaining 10% could be done too, I've just been focused on other things.
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@tinuviel If the people you want to appeal to are going to cling to the old preferences, then I'm not sure if you want something totally different it is a good use of your time and energy to try and pry it away from them and let their refusal stop you from trying something new with other people (even though it will ve smaller) who are less reactive and might even be receptive given the right environment.
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@mietze said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
@tinuviel If the people you want to appeal to are going to cling to the old preferences, then I'm not sure if you want something totally different it is a good use of your time and energy to try and pry it away from them and let their refusal stop you from trying something new with other people (even though it will ve smaller) who are less reactive and might even be receptive given the right environment.
It's called iterative innovation. Introduce new thing that is similar enough to old thing to get people on board. Make small changes to new thing over time, leaving more of the old thing behind. Eventually you have totally new thing, and nobody really notices.
You're trying to force an absolutist view on this, where one doesn't need to exist.
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Some people will always notice/refuse. I think that's fine, but it would also be fine if someone only wanted to do web based to go ahead and move that direction. I think the slow movement away from being tethered to a client is already well in hand for a significant chunk of people.
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I guess when I read a broader conversation about the need/must for games to be compatible with both client and web based users (Faraday wasn't the first to bring that up, but did point out the drain in doing so, which even as someone who doesn't understand how that works i can see that, which is why I think if you don't want to do that then it should be okay to not), I don't think anyone needs to do that all if they want to go for something different. It is a risk right now to not, but if its something important that they want to try, then at some point the bullet needs to be bitten because worrying about bringing everyone or saying it can't be done because some people are holdouts just seems like a waste.
But anyway, communication seems to be difficult for me this evening, sorry for upsetting people, bowing out.
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@mietze said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
I think probably at some point someone will make a web only thing. Had you asked me 15 years ago if I'd like something like ares I would have said no way. Said the same thing later on for real for any kind of trying to mush on mobile. But now I prefer ares specifically for the web interface that also allows me to comfortably mobile game.
So I'd like to note that there actually are a few web-only MU* systems out there. One example is Written Realms.
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The main reason I prefer dedicated clients is that it's easier for me to keep track of a dedicated window then a browser tab, esp when set up to blink when there's unread messages.
It should probably be possible to convert any given Web infer face into an electron app for the benefit of both though.
What is obvious to you may not be obvious to me and vice versa.
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@groth said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
It should probably be possible to convert any given Web infer face into an electron app for the benefit of both though.
While this is true, Electron comes with its own tradeoffs, one of the big ones being bloat. From memory an Electron app is around 120MB in size. You've also got the problem that every game will have its own customisations so you'd probably have to have one app per game rather than a single client that could connect to multiple games.
I guess you could do something with a web view such that a client is just a really thin wrapper around the website itself, but that probably comes with its own tradeoffs.
All of that said I still want to play with the project, certainly some of these would be surmountable issues with the right combination of technology.
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@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
So I'd like to note that there actually are a few web-only MU* systems out there. One example is Written Realms.
That looks more like a MUD? But yes, certainly there are other types of online text RP. Storium and Rollgate are also web-only and have thousands of players.
The question isn't whether anyone would play a web-only MU, but whether enough of the existing MU community would do so to achieve critical mass for a game. My research and experience tells me no.
Storium and Forum RP is nice and all, but I still prefer the MUSH-style RP, and I want to play with my friends.
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@faraday said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
So I'd like to note that there actually are a few web-only MU* systems out there. One example is Written Realms.
That looks more like a MUD? But yes, certainly there are other types of online text RP. Storium and Rollgate are also web-only and have thousands of players.
The question isn't whether anyone would play a web-only MU, but whether enough of the existing MU community would do so to achieve critical mass for a game. My research and experience tells me no.
Storium and Forum RP is nice and all, but I still prefer the MUSH-style RP, and I want to play with my friends.
It's a MUD platform, it can be used to build one. It's designed to be as user-friendly as possible for people with no experience coding etc., so the tradeoff is limitations in customisation. If you need to create custom commands and novel systems it won't suit your needs unless you can convince the person who made it to add that in, but if you're a builder who just wants to punch in your rooms, quests, combat and NPCs, it fits the bill.
I'm aware it's probably not fit for the kinds of games most people on MSB play (code-lite MUSH). My point was less 'everything we need is already out there' and more 'steps are being taken in that direction'.
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@faraday said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
Ares is successful because it innovates without alienating its core playerbase. That doesn't change the fact that backwards compatibility comes with a cost.
I think you underestimate how wonderful Ares is. Your product is excellent, but backwards compatibility is an added bonus, not, in my opinion, a requirement.
I didn't want to get an iPhone7, but my wants and needs, which require me to have the ability to access cell phone towers, compelled me to get one.
I may want to cling to my Potato, but if I can't use it to get to a game I want to play on, I will get to the game one way or another. And I haven't heard anyone yet say that they would refuse to go to a game that had a web portal only.
That's pretty much how I access Arx.
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For me, it's a simple matter of the Ares web portal doing some things very well and the client doing some things very well. Both can do pretty much what the other can do but some things are simply easier in one than in the other.
In my setup I do poses, forum, wiki-editing, etc on the portal. I do channels, help files, and pages on the client. Spawns means I have easy overview without having to change tabs -- things just scroll along happily outside my browser tab and I click over there when I need to react to something. Just like Discord, really.
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@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
So I'd like to note that there actually are a few web-only MU* systems out there. One example is Written Realms.
I opened it up and it looked like Zork or single player. I looked at worlds and saw only the Zork one, Cave. It looks like a MUD. I found the documentation and indeed it is a MUD. There is nothing wrong with this but my focus as a hobbyist isn't the meaty of a game environment. It looks like its pretty nifty for a MUD runner. I would imagine the various types of MUDs have their own versions. I know a lot of the pay-to-play MUDs have had web interface for a long time so its not a surprise to see them in the web-only interface level of development/production/whatever.
As a player, I prefer story driven play, I've never been on any MU* where staff have run plot/events for me as I've primarily been a daytime player. Not a complaint just saying I'm different than most. I've only stayed in the hobby as a written based medium, I prefer MU to write collaborative story with because it is multi-user live environment dedicated that type of play.
Because I've had to drive my own fun, I tend to (at this stage in life) run games I'd want to play so others like me can come in and easily run things.
The web-only ones look slick. As a player that drives my own fun, I wonder how easy I could roll luck or skill or random dice in general to generate my own story. I know its a MUD, so I know can't have random MOBs that net me random XP.
The other MU*s that are not MUDs make it easier for me to log on and do something without needing to find clothing/armor or weapons in the game. Arx has bridged the gap. I still have no interest in making clothes and armor and stuff to operate in a player driven economy system. I'm in the realm of, if an app is approved saying I'm billionaire Ted, I should be able to use billionaire Ted's Jet to fly half way around the world and no one would bat an eye or question it cause there is no code to support it.
That's as a player, as a story runner or game runner, what I would be good for me is something like the Doctrine page on Written Realms. A menu on the right, if I click on the top it brings up client like interface where I can page players just like on a client. I like Ares chat systems, I can RP in the client and read forums and jobs in the web portal. But even just paging, its easier for me to be in a client and page player1 staff2 and player4=message. Then page player3 player6 and player7=plot info. Its easier in a client to have multiple ongoing conversation with me in an instant by typing over clicking between chat windows. I type faster.
For me a non-MUD MU* as a game runner is something I can quickly add a feature to in support of game system and play. If we need a new dice roller to handle playing cards in game cause people do it a lot, I can do this quickly in a client in an older code base.
If Ares and other new systems approach the level of adaptability similar to Written Realms, where building a game is just as easy, I would certainly change full force. I'm current running an Ares game with someone else, chosen because I wanted FS3 in a simple environment and I knew I wasn't going to want custom code. But if it was similar to written realms, where I could build things and systems to do stuff I wanted as a game runner, that would be slick. Its wishful thinking.
It would have player section at the top for all my paging and posing needs. It would have a builder section where I could build a system from scratch, dice rollers, customizable sheets; am I using attributes and skills, or levels and abilities, how are dice rolled (dice pool where each die has a target number like FS3 and WoD, or dice pool total vs a target number like D6). I could make a system in Ares, it would take me years at this point, I used Faraday's guide to add goals and I still needed a ton of assistance.
I have an Ares game up, I would like a game that utilizes Chaosium Basic Role Playing Game and an estate system based loosely off KAP's book of Manor and Estate; in which the estates inform familial benefits and bonuses and ranks in a system where players can rise to become the king of the realm of focus. I can do this much faster in Penn. I'm in the middle of combat trying to make it look pretty, it takes me a long time being dyslexic it was started last fall but took summer time off and a better map of logic flow to get what I have so far. I am trying a small code project in Ares involving players being able to play Faro while the RP, but had to try to fix goals for an update and all the connected parts baffle me at present.
If the web-only system allowed me to make a sheet and customize resolution systems as needed, I'd be all over it in a heartbeat. None do and none ever will I don't think. My dyslexic brain thinks rng's would be easier and spelling out the logic of what is rolled and when through an interface like Written Realms would be easier. If the was some visual basic code on a platform that didn't require me to still use a code program (or shell or telnet), a virtual machine (or real machine for that matter), and a third web-platform or client, I'd be on it. A window were I can flip to the visual basic code to build a roller, flip to the building of the game window to take the roller and put it into combat, and then flip to my in game window for posing and such or checking forums and DMs. I'd be on it, we all would.
TL;DR, there is a lot of 'you should', you (or someone) should make a clean customizable stuff so everything can be done in one window/tab on web only (play, build, system code, run the box), but you should is aggressive .. I should use my I feel, I need. I feel I want a bunch of stuff, I need to do it myself. You should, I feel, I need. Conflict resolution basics. I can't code what I want, I can only use the tools out there, I feel sad I can't do it, I need to get over my sadness and do what I can do for my own fun. Which is using a client even if I do a lot through web-portal systems that some awesome people have made and put a lot of time and effort into for free because its still a hobby at the end of the day.
ETA: PennMUSH does have web socket/web interface. I am a visual learner, I can only copy what I see and customize as I understand it, I can only do the web-client on the browser thing because the basics for that are out there. So folks can play most of my recent Penn projects through a web browser client. I am not smart enough to make some web socket thingy to emulate reading the forums by being signed into a web interface program, alas, so its limited for me. I think Rhost does have something similar too for web socket/web browser stuff.
I'm just a surge protector doing my job, sir.
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I think a lot of this belongs in a separate conversation. "What is a MU*"?
Is it the ability to pose?
Is it having a persistent grid and a character sheet?
Why is Arx a MU* but World of Warcraft isn't?
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@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
It's designed to be as user-friendly as possible for people with no experience coding etc., so the tradeoff is limitations in customisation. If you need to create custom commands and novel systems it won't suit your needs unless you can convince the person who made it to add that in, but if you're a builder who just wants to punch in your rooms, quests, combat and NPCs, it fits the bill.
You're basically describing Ares though, too. (minus the quests/mobs) You can have a game up and running with no coding experience whatsoever, as long as you're willing to accept the limitations in customization.
Even so, I'd say more than 50% of Ares games do end up with some degree of custom coding. That's the MUSH status quo.
So, yes, I agree with your general conclusion that steps are being taken in that direction - since I'm coding some of those steps myself
What @Lotherio describes in terms of being able to make the MUSH level of custom coding without actually learning code? There are systems with some degree of customization built in (Fate, FS3, TinyD6), but the idea that you could drag and drop some building blocks and make any arbitrary RPG system without touching code is just not feasible IMHO. It'd be nice, but the systems are just too complex and varied.
@ganymede said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
I think you underestimate how wonderful Ares is. Your product is excellent, but backwards compatibility is an added bonus, not, in my opinion, a requirement.
I appreciate the compliment
but I think you underestimate the chicken and egg problem.Yes, a sufficiently cool game might get players to give a radically unfamiliar system a try. But first you have to get the game runners to give it a try. With most MU runners already (rightfully) worried about getting enough critical mass to make their game succeed, that's a very hard sell.
If I had gone straight from PennMUSH to Ares with a web-only Play screen with player-handle logins back in 2007, Ares never would have even gotten off the ground. Gradual evolution is IMHO the only way we're going to make progress.
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I think people are overestimating to some degree the gulf of difference between MUDs and MUSHes. As someone who's played both and whose interest is almost exclusively focused on storytelling and RP, both have the capacity for these things and they share many systems in common. The clients used to connect to MUDs and MUSHes are identical, though you do see some differences in playerbase preference. For example I'm an Apple-user, and most Apple-users who play MUSHes use Atlantis. Most Apple-users who play MUDs use Mudlet, however, because although Atlantis is more stable, straightforward and lightweight by far, Mudlet offers a much greater degree of player-side customisation and scripting that can help you get an edge for complex combat systems or grid mapping. But functionally the information sent/received is the same. People still emote (pose) and RP, they just do it with a touch more game-strategy in the background. Pejoratively this is sometimes referred to as rollplay vs roleplay.
Here's a screenshot of Iron Realms Entertainment in-house web client. It's designed to be as accessible and user-friendly for new players as possible, but most "serious gamers" in that community prefer clients like Mudlet or MUSHClient with which to design their own custom systems:
The gameplay may not appeal to MSB's community and a lot of the information offered in this screenshot may seem pretty useless. Keeping track of your afflictions/buffs isn't beneficial on a MUSH where the pace of conflict tends to me much slower and climactic (over months rather than minutes), but in theory there's a lot here that could be swapped out for what's actually useful. For example a tab that lets you pull up other people's profiles or keep track of activity in other scenes you're following.
I'm aware that Ares already does all of this and I do hope nothing I'm saying comes across as dismissive of any of that. I'm also aware that my balanced interest in both MUDs and MUSHes isn't typical for MSB and so that's why I'm trying to make the point that although I'm looking beyond the bounds of just what's needed for a MUSH, the needs of a MUD/MUSH actually aren't that different. Evennnia for example is a system with web-integration options that can be (and has been) used to create both MUDs and MUSHes.
In terms of @Arkandel's question, 'What is a MU*', I think this coincides with comments @faraday made about figuring out the function that various systems fulfil. If a more modern system like a browser game or a desktop/mobile app could scratch every itch that MU* currently do, I have no reason not to believe people wouldn't make the switch.*
*— except for @faraday's concerns based on extensive experience/research about how to avoid alienating the core community/playerbase these games draw from. Which I'll address in a separate post to avoid getting too convoluted. Please standby for Chapter II.
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@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
I think people are overestimating to some degree the gulf of difference between MUDs and MUSHes.
I mean, don't get me wrong, the interface or whatever looks cool on this one. But. I think you may be underestimating that same gulf.
Especially since, as far as I can tell, on this MUD you're just -- playing with yourself, rather than actively collaborating with other people. And I think that's where the real difference lies.
On a MUD your adventures and encounters come from pre-coded situations. On a MUSH, they come directly from the minds of other people in real time, and that's a big world of difference.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@derp said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
I mean, don't get me wrong, the interface or whatever looks cool on this one. But. I think you may be underestimating that same gulf.
Given current technology, the gulf isn't very wide. That's why you can play a MUD with Atlantis just as easily as you can a MUSH. It's text-in, text-out, maybe a few triggers and bells and whistles. It's extremely similar.
As we start to move away to other platforms, though, I think the gulf widens. For example, MUDs are centered around grid exploration. Ares is centered around scene narratives. This can drive very different modes of user interaction. While that's just one prime example, that same difference in philosophy ripples through the entire interface.
That said, I think @Kestrel has a point that we should not be blind to what other game styles have done. In designing Ares, I looked at some of the nifty web MUDs (Iron Realms, Achea, etc.), some elaborate play by forum systems, Storium... there's a lot of different ways to do online text-based RP that we can draw inspiration from.
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@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
*— except for @faraday's concerns based on extensive experience/research about how to avoid alienating the core community/playerbase these games draw from. Which I'll address in a separate post to avoid getting too convoluted. Please standby for Chapter II.
So as someone who's played and staffed a lot of text-based RPGs over the years in a variety of mediums, my experience has been that, be it a crunchy MUD with extensive quest/combat code or a lightweight MUSH, what keeps people logging in is two things: the community and (by extension) the story. It sounds condescending to say but I feel like even MUD players often don't seem to grasp this, and will chase numbers to their own detriment before burning out and realising the real treasure was always the friends we made along the way.
A lot of people have been asking elsewhere on MSB why people don't leave HavenRPG when they seem so terribly unhappy there. The reason for that is everything mentioned in the above paragraph; the game's been around for a full decade, and for better or worse its community has morphed into a kind of dysfunctional family. It reinvents itself every few years, wiping the slate clean with an apocalyptic story event and then launching a new iteration with some updated code, the chance for new characters to establish themselves from the ground up, while keeping mostly the same familiar lore and faces people have grown accustomed to. During this time a lot of former players tend to return from absentia to give the new version a shot, and a lot of new players come with them to start on mostly even footing with the established community. I'll note that while I've chosen to quit Haven
(said the heroin addict), I remain good friends with a lot of people in the community who've known me for years and genuinely aren't garbage people.Some time ago Tyr, Haven's creator, launched two new games (not at the same time obviously, with intervals). These were CyberRun and Ravencroft, both wholly web-based RP MUDs built on (AFAIK) ground-up custom code. The concepts of both of these games were pretty far out, to my tastes, and I spoke to a lot of other players from the community who shared the same opinion. Yet despite that, neither game had a shortage of interested players at all, most of them drawn from the pool of HavenRPG's established community — even the ones who'd expressed disinterest in the settings/concept still felt curious to give it a try with their friends. For a random gamerunner this would've been a much more difficult, maybe even impossible task, and a waste of a lot of effort to put themselves out there coding something entirely new for no payoff. But for an established game dev with an active fanbase and enmeshed community, drumming up interest is a good deal easier. I've asked people who played these games what eventually caused them to fold, and none of them said it was due to a gradual population drift — everyone said it was solely due a cessation of staff-run metaplot. So interest from the players, assuming they're regularly spoon-fed plot, was not a factor.
To frame this in a context MSB users are more likely to relate to — I can personally say that I'd probably give any game run by @GirlCalledBlu and @Seraphim73 a go based on that information alone, maybe regardless of setting. And I have a feeling that if Arx shut down today and relaunched as an entirely different beast, purely browser-based, most of its current playerbase would go along with that transition and gladly try new things, even if it meant losing their established characters to start from scratch, and even if they wouldn't have been interested in its final form had they stumbled on it as-is, without prior investment in what it had been before.
So, a coder cohort and I have reflected on our options and settled on taking a similar approach. (This thread really helped, by the way, thanks everyone for your thoughtful replies.) We have a story in mind that we want to tell, and we're interested in the idea of exploring platforms other than a telnet client, but his experience as a coder is with Evennia and Python, while mine is largely nonexistent. While I'm willing to learn, that takes time, and learning multiple languages for web development is asking a whole lot more than just learning Python for Evennia. So, we're starting small. If the game actually becomes something in the standard MU* format and develops anything resembling a lasting community, then we'll look at the next step of how to transition our stories and systems onto a more modern platform.
And, if not, then we had fun fucking around with a creative writing project and learning how to code. I can use those skills for professional purposes regardless.
