nu.kanga.list.mud-dev

8084: [MUD-Dev] Re: Alternate UOL's

On Sun, 12 Jul 1998 15:17:11 +0200 (MET DST) 
Felix A Croes<felix@xs1.simplex.nl> wrote:

> It could all be a ploy by Origin to father the new Abermud and
> supplant telnet & tinyfugue as the standard mud clients, but somehow
> I suspect that they were caught unawares.

One of the larger hurdles for graphical MUD is artwork.  Its difficult 
to make it attractive, and the people who can do that reliably tend to 
be expensive -- which largely pushes it beyond hobbiest wallets.

UOL comes with a nice collection of reasonably attractive tile-based
artwork ready and ripe for the picking (as long as you ignore
copyright concerns).  Additionally tile-based graphics are easy to
program and do supporting client protocols for (esp compared to full
3D), and are at the level that college students or amateur programmers
can be expected to have mastered with reasonable competancy.

Ergo, I think we'll be seeing a whole raft of UOL clones a couple yers
from now.  I know I entertained the idea of, umm, abusing their
graphic sets.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw@null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder@ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw@under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...