Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

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Cherek
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Re: Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

Post by Cherek » 23 Jan 2013 01:23

Well, the magic map in the game is quite nice I think. So the technic stuff is all there, and as far as I know anyone is welcome to create maps to expand it. So thats one way of providing more maps. Luckily it already covers the newbie lands, Sparkle and Gelan so hopefully its enough for a truly new player not to get stuck because they are lost. I'd definitely welcome a mapper function in the client though, if possible, but even without it just aliases and colors would be neat.

Would you be interested in making some generic settings Gruff, and then share for those of us how want, to try it?

I mean, just basic stuff, and perhaps that neat little character info screen you had.

gruff
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Re: Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

Post by gruff » 23 Jan 2013 02:22

Cherek wrote:Well, the magic map in the game is quite nice I think. So the technic stuff is all there, and as far as I know anyone is welcome to create maps to expand it. So thats one way of providing more maps. Luckily it already covers the newbie lands, Sparkle and Gelan so hopefully its enough for a truly new player not to get stuck because they are lost. I'd definitely welcome a mapper function in the client though, if possible, but even without it just aliases and colors would be neat.

Would you be interested in making some generic settings Gruff, and then share for those of us how want, to try it?

I mean, just basic stuff, and perhaps that neat little character info screen you had.
Absolutely!

I'm working on a more sane approach to the info screen, at the moment it's a pretty deranged thing if you look at the code behind the client screen. I'm also trying to get some comments in the new code, to hopefully make people understand how to approach the general customization process. I'll post it once it works somewhat and doesn't look quite as deranged as the current version. (It will look like the screenshot, but it'll handle the info containers on the right side in a better way than they currently do.)

(Basically I've been using a million variables and setting up things in a very non-userfriendly fashion.
I'm aiming at using tables and autoassigning stuff in a more clever way so that it can work on generic characters and not just my little goblin specifically.)

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Zhar
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Re: Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

Post by Zhar » 24 Jan 2013 11:08

gruff wrote: Anyhow. I really appreciate your input Zhar. Anything that you would say should be added to a client if it was tailored for Genesis?
Apart from text coloring, unlimited aliases and some simple triggers? I don't think we need much past that.

A good thing would be having coloring for specific parts already included: combat, talk, exits, health and status (poisoned etc.). It's a lot of work in on itself and choosing the right colors to start with is important (allowing people to change them is important too).

The client should provide some visual aids and a bit of help, if someone wants much automation, advanced stuff and all that jazz, let them get a different client and do it all themselves. The official client should have as little automation as possible, I've noticed that with most triggers turned off I suddenly have a lot more to do in the game and have to focus on it more, which is a good thing (no automatic boarding, looting, closing and opening containers, following leader to non-obvious exits etc.).
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Cherek
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Re: Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

Post by Cherek » 24 Jan 2013 17:20

I definitely think we should have a default set of colors, aliases and maybe some triggers already set up. And then people can change it if they want to, and add things, but they dont need to. I agree with Zhar that we should not add too much automation because that will most likely just confuse a truly new player, if they suddenly autoboard ships and all that... However I definitely think Gruff's little info screen would a be a nice thing to have, that shows your vitals and inventory. Eliminating the need to press health all, i, and v, all the time cant be a bad thing at all.

Zhar: Why should advanced players need to chose a new client to get advanced stuff? Mudlet is already one of the more advanced clients, imho the second best client on the market. And the only one being developed I think, so it has the potential of becoming better than cMud pretty soon. Maybe some say it already is. It looks much more modern than cMud as well, and thats not a bad thing either. Have you tried it?

gruff
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Re: Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

Post by gruff » 24 Jan 2013 21:32

Cherek wrote:I definitely think we should have a default set of colors, aliases and maybe some triggers already set up. And then people can change it if they want to, and add things, but they dont need to. I agree with Zhar that we should not add too much automation because that will most likely just confuse a truly new player, if they suddenly autoboard ships and all that... However I definitely think Gruff's little info screen would a be a nice thing to have, that shows your vitals and inventory. Eliminating the need to press health all, i, and v, all the time cant be a bad thing at all.
Thought I'd throw in a bit of an update and some general thoughts.

Things are looking much better behind the scenes of the client, so I'm almost ready to share some sort of beta version of the client so far. Still needs a bit of tweaking and handling of some loading sequences so that it will work somewhat hassle-free for inexperienced users... I'm sure I'll be able to upload something during the weekend.

As far as what I think should be focused on...

What I've been focusing is basically datamining and formatting the text that I'm gathering. While I obviously use triggers and a bunch of tiny aliases (db disembark!) I dont see any point in sharing or adding these as defaults. Basically two reasons, firstly it's so easy to do on your own, and secondly people will want different types of aliases/triggers/soforth depending on how they want to play the game.

Highlighting (colours and such) is another thing (imo), and it can help players without much experience to sort through more text-intense things like combat. With highlighting items I've gone for a world of warcraft approach, and I'm trying to set up a simple way of letting people mark items that they think are good in green/blue/purple, depending on how good they are.

I still think the best part about the customization is that we as users can do a bunch of (fairly) advanced things that we feel would improve the game, things that would either take quite a bit of wizard coding efforts, if it could be done at all.
Like, I really like the auction tent, but its not exactly the best way to look through a bunch of different items.
Behold customization! I added a little auction helper that lets me brows through it in a very neat way.

Hopefully you guys can try it out in a couple of days and give some feedback. And, of course, make all the customization you want yourself. Thats really the best part after all.

So far it has: the auction helper, the info screen, a bunch of highlights, some logs. And maybe something else that I've forgotten.
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screen3.jpg
AuctionHelper in action. Also, the status screen is kinda broken atm :)
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Cherek
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Re: Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

Post by Cherek » 24 Jan 2013 23:10

I think it looks great Gruff.

I'd like to see the vitals, or parts of those things anyway, in the status screen if possible. Maybe age and align isnt that important, but the rest would be useful for sure. And, the pretty unknown command "v mail" I would definitely add to the status screen too if possible. So you can see if you got new mail or not, because its so easy to miss if you get a mail in all the combat spam. It would really be helpful with a line of text saying you got new mail or not.

Other than that I agree with you, a default set of colors is definitely most important. To increase readability. A bunch of preset aliases is probably not so important, maybe even confusing, like you say. Maybe a few really basic ones that you use all the time, but its not that important.

If this turns out nice I could volunteer to contact the developers of Mudlet to see if we can get Genesis in the list of default muds to connect to as well. And I'll of course add download links on our homepage. But one step at a time. Looking forward to testing it out!

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Zhar
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Re: Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

Post by Zhar » 25 Jan 2013 04:50

Cherek wrote: Zhar: Why should advanced players need to chose a new client to get advanced stuff? Mudlet is already one of the more advanced clients, imho the second best client on the market. And the only one being developed I think, so it has the potential of becoming better than cMud pretty soon. Maybe some say it already is. It looks much more modern than cMud as well, and thats not a bad thing either. Have you tried it?
It depends on what you want from your client. I didn't really like z/cMUD and what it offers (especially not for the price they're asking for it).

Gruff's stuff looks great but there are more and more concerns I'm having with the presentations. It does look great, but should we really allow people to see all of the imbuements' effects and what not right off the bat? Where's the discovery?

Taking your WoW comparison, it's similar to the QuestHelper script. In theory it doesn't change anything, makes your life a bit easier and so forth, but when you take a closer look at it you begin to see how much it actually harms new players.

For those not in the know:
Questhelper tells you how to finish your quests in the easiest, fastest manner. It includes a database of quests, monsters, and items, telling you the exact location of that dang Perfect Satyr Horn you can't find. It also computes the fastest path to complete all your quests - and gain experience - as quickly as possible.
Time is precious. Waste it wisely.

Amberlee
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Re: Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

Post by Amberlee » 25 Jan 2013 08:01

All for this Questhelper!
The views posted by me on this forum is not the views of the character Amberlee in-game.
If you ask for my opinion here, you will get MY opinion, not that of my character.

gruff
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Re: Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

Post by gruff » 25 Jan 2013 09:46

Zhar wrote:
Cherek wrote: Gruff's stuff looks great but there are more and more concerns I'm having with the presentations. It does look great, but should we really allow people to see all of the imbuements' effects and what not right off the bat? Where's the discovery?
Thanks for the input!

Yeah, I'm with you as far as giving too much information can be a problem that harms the game rather than helping/improving the experience. The imbuements-info is a standalone thing and wouldn't have to be included in a finished customization (well, everything is standalone...), its not tied to the auctionhelper thing (which is its own script and just helps you sort and select text and commands, basically.)

About the imbuements, there was basically two reasons I added it.
First was that whenever I found some imbued item, I would hit alt+tab, command+f and search through the list published at the wiki to find out what I got. For me, the discovery part was already not there, really.
And I started doing this because having the imbuements identified cost like 100 platinum coins, and as a new player there was no way I was going to afford that.
If this is what people do, I mean if everyone uses this list to identify their stuff, then the imbuements info can just as easily be included in the client, because then it's not a series of discovery anyway, its just a question of "who has access to the imbuements-list, and who doesn't."

Second reason; once I got restored and had easier access to the money, if I was grinding in Kabal and came across a magic item, running to Sparkle to get it identify simply means a stop in the gameplay as I need to travel to get information that isn't exactly hard to look up in another way. This was basically just being economic with time, and I think, if people play for a pretty short window of time, the discovery part (in general) can be a problem.

So, getting back at your question...
First, we could just skip it, probably the easiest option, and this might be the way to go to not hurt the game.
Another option would be to change the information that it displays, you could make it give much more general information, something like the following: All the imbuements that give +stat could instead have a message that states "You have get a feeling this object would somehow improve your stats" (or something to that effect), or with resist items it could be "You sense this object might help you protect against certain dangers."

A more vague message like this would still support the adventure/discovery/exploration part of the game, but it would give you some general information on wether this specific item could be worth identifying, or worth trying out to see if it could help.

Anyhow, love that you are giving some thoughts and feedback Zhar, it gives me more to think about and will hopefully end up with a better thing when it's done. And I do think your general idea is valid and something we must think about, that we really need to be mindful to not add stuff that just spoon feeds the entire game to the players.

Any thoughts?

gruff
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Re: Client for Genesis (Mac/Win/Linux) (Insomnia adventures)

Post by gruff » 25 Jan 2013 10:13

Cherek wrote:I think it looks great Gruff.

I'd like to see the vitals, or parts of those things anyway, in the status screen if possible. Maybe age and align isnt that important, but the rest would be useful for sure. And, the pretty unknown command "v mail" I would definitely add to the status screen too if possible. So you can see if you got new mail or not, because its so easy to miss if you get a mail in all the combat spam. It would really be helpful with a line of text saying you got new mail or not.
Thanks!

Yeah, vitals really should be there, I just didn't come up with a good way of doing it in a smooth way (if you want some automation to it, just grabbing the text from when you hit v would be a no-brainer). I'll have a go at thinking about it again and see if I can come up with something.

Mail was a really good suggestion, I hadn't thought about it at all, since I never get mail in the game. I'd need some assistance and actually get send a couple of mails to have some thing to set triggers of, maybe we could talk about that in game at some point? Could probably be useful to have messages in general, like with carrier pigeons and whatnot, those tend to slip by me too.

And also... It's not like I'm some lua-wizard or anything even close to that, mudlet is the first time I've done any scripting at all, so you guys could easily do a bunch of these things on your own. Basically what I'm aiming for before sharing it to you guys is a basic feature so that there is some sort of foundation to build off, and that way everyone won't have to reinvent the wheel if they want to migrate to Mudlet.

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