Dark, You're not the only person to notice or be bothered by this trend either. As a regular player of Alter, I find the mush-z user's assumption that everyone is a. using mush-z or b. wishes to have the numerous sounds included in the game's sound pack disturbing. I began playing Alter on Telnet. I now use the monkey term scripts developed by Valiant8086, but I also worked with Aaron to strip out a lot of the sounds I did not like. The changeover to kxwt strings has eroded my nonsound position somewhat, but that's more a laziness issue on my side.
The mush client is a real triumph for the contributors: while much of the work was done by one person, many have now contributed to its success on Alter with plug-ins, scripting workarounds, and the like. The emphasis on the sound environment is the blind player's equivalent of moving from mud to graphics based mmorpg. A lot of current gamers probably don't even read the incoming text. At least, I get that impression often while trying to help them trouble shoot issues. That said, I think it was probably a brilliant move to go this route and adopt the existing sound pack and use it as a flagship method of connecting to the mud. It's brought in a number of players, and introduced them to A.A. When I first started playing, a good day was 30 or 40 players online, many of whom were idle or multies offloading equipment. Now, we have upward of 80 or 90 players on at a time with another 15 or 20 idlers and mules. For a mud in this day and age, that is truly amazing. Is it mudding? Probably not in a traditional sense. Is it keeping the idea alive? Yes. Does that present problems of its own? yes. Can it be solved easily? No, not without dedicated people willing to devote time and effort to developing sound packs, and mud admins willing to give feedback and help by setting up cues in the code to alert the client when to play sounds. Do most muds have this kind of dedicated player base and admin staff in the numbers needed to support the project? Maybe, but probably not. My personal answer to your problem proposal is that I don't a. necessarily see it as a problem, though I do regret its impact on mud play b. I don't see an easy solution. A note in the introductory text won't change anything as most people do not read such, and there's no way to develop such an extensive pack for every mud that someone finds interesting or intriguing. The final issue is this one: Most people don't have the savvy and the knowledge to fiddle with a mud client beyond a very basic level. So providing them a tool such as mush-z gives them a platform from which to expand their play and horizons on Alter at least. Don't think I really extended the discussion, but there's my two cents:) Take care, Jeremy -- In the fight between you and the world--back the world! Frank Zapa --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
