Jiglu: The Blind Mudders information and discussion center: Discussion: Re: General Accessibility Features in MUDs

Hi,

I believe the beauty of LPC is the ability to make those hidden things. I love the fact that I have to work with hidden stuff in quests, rather than "give gold to smith" and "give flower to girl", while you would never figure out why you gave the flower to the girl... it could be given to a boy, or it could be given to another player *cough*.

It all depends on how good the quest-designer in a mud works. Some do have a great story behind them, and most are just random things and it seems you were not meant to figure it out anyway.

The prompts, however, can be gagged and put into variables... that's what I do in Achaea with VIPMud now that I've got it. But I can say, with no hesitation, that the most annoying thing for every single blind mudder in the universe (asuming we have muds on the moon and other planets) is ansi maps, and ASCII thinggies. Imagine you look at a ferry and you get:

wwww&&&~OOOOO&&&&&&&&

Now what kind of a description is that? I think muds are being run over by graphic lovers! Heeeeelp! Lol.

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----- Original Message -----
From: Amanda Robertson
To: ...
Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2008 8:01 AM
Subject: Re: [tbmic] General Accessibility Features in MUDs

Well, I have tried Ancient Anguish and I wasn't too thrilled with it, but that doesn't mean other people might not be. Of course everyone has different opinions, but it just didn't seem like the kind of mud for me. Part of the problem is that it's a bit too detailed. I love extra descriptions and that is awesome that they are there, but I don't wanna spend 5 minutes in one room trying to find all the extra descs for fear of missing something. I am working on making a mud myself, and very few of the extra descs will be hidden objects. If I do that, I will probably have an obvious object like a table, and then talk about the curtains that are on the window behind it or something and have something behind the curtains, but the obvious object is the clue to the hidden one. In general though, for me extra descriptions are just that, extra, and should be used to allow the player to get a better idea of what his surroundings are like. The game looked kind of nice, and maybe with some improvement could be better but there are a few too many hidden things in the newbie zones and stuff. I am all for hiding things from experienced players and challenging them to find hidden stuff, even with the extra desc stuff, but it shouldn't be so vague for newbies. If I am referencing the wrong mud on those things I am sorry but I don't think I am. I have, however tried many muds recently in an attempt to find ones I want to stick with so I could be mixing them up. Another thing I would say would be very good is to have directions to lots of areas, especially newbie zones, and put them all in text. Ascii maps are useless to us. If you start giving out maps to newbies, that might be handy, but make sure to put text directions at the bottom of the map. Perhaps, after further development, I will give ancient anguish another try as it does seem to have a lot of potential, but I am not the most patient person in the world so I probably wouldn't be a very good person to test things. Feel free to let me know when/if it is further developed and all that. Oh and one more thing, assuming I have the right mud, that sewer thing after you get the two hidden objects where you have the three directions, one through the cave and the others forking off through that underground river thingy are a bit confusing. I couldn't figure out just which direction I needed to go or if I would end up back there from any direction so that I could try others. That was a little annoying as a newbie and not knowing the way the mud worked.

--- On Sat, 8/23/08, Orin <...> wrote:

From: Orin <...>
Subject: Re: [tbmic] General Accessibility Features in MUDs
To: ...
Date: Saturday, August 23, 2008, 1:50 AM

Oops. I'm quite tired, sorry about that rant I typed just a bit ago with your message. Didn't see this come threw and I didn't see your other message before either.
On Aug 22, 2008, at 8:39 PM, Theresa Ford wrote:
Good evening.
I am an admin on an older, well-established LP mud. Having been
pointed
to your forum by one of my new friends, I've been monitoring it for a
short while and giving thought to how to make our mud, as well as my
other code, easy for accessibility. I added vipmud to our list of
clients, but as I'm a Mac user, I have not tested it.
For accessibility, what do you find is the most annoying feature of
the
muds you've tried that you wish you could turn off? What feature do
you
most find yourself wishing for? I'm looking for general accessibility,
not pros and cons of individual mud themes, descriptions, culture,
activities.
For example, several years ago, I programmed a working abacus for our
mud and was quite happy with it. Yet, looking at it again from the
perspective of what would be seen with a screen reader, I realize the
string of o's and symbols would not work at all. This is a very
specific
instance. At this point, I'm thinking on system-wide mudlib things
that
might be useful, prompts, navigation directions, etc.
If you want to take a run around our medieval mud and offer specific
suggestions, it's Ancient Anguish, anguish.org port 2222. I would like
to point out, however, that programming changes, especially to our
mudlib take time due to the very intense quality control procedures.
– T (Jerusulum at Ancient Anguish)
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General Accessibility Features in MUDs
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