Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 10:31 pm

So, Zugg's posted his New Years' Roadmap for this year, and very interesting stuff it is.

I think everyone's excited about the mapper improvements. Zugg's clients are the only clients with a mapper worth talking about and it's probably one of the biggest draws to them. Seeing it get better can't be a bad thing.

I'm also very interesting CMUD lite. It's often said of copy protection that the only secure protection is one that "calls the mothership" when it's run to validate with some kind of account - MMORPGs do this all the time, and nobody plays WoW fraudulently on the public servers. From a security perspective, it's very interesting indeed.

I also think it'd be really nice to get some more surveys done. It's been almost ten years since the last survey. I don't think the forums are the place to do it - the vast majority of customers don't use the forums regularly. I'd much rather see something like the famous Valve Hardware Survey, where every six months or so, CMUD very politely asks you to send in your hardware spec and answer a few quick questions. Valve's survey has been instrumental in developing their products, and I'm sure it'll be useful for Zuggsoft as well.

EDIT: And as an addendum, this thread would make an excellent subject for a survey.

What're everyone else's thoughts about the plans for 2008?

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:15 am

I don't think the intention is for CMUD lite to be a free client. The idea, I believe, is that you'll pay to have your sessions on MyMUDs.com and then they'll be available anywhere with CMUD lite. CMUD lite won't be able to create sessions of its own.

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 4:45 am

I'm very eager and pleased to see the bit about the upcoming map work. It's what sold me on Zmud in the beginning and it's why I'm still here now.

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 6:12 am

I really like the MyMuds idea and I think it will be a great CMUD addition, although i wonder how much use I will get from it. My laptop outclasses my desktop now so most of what I do is on the laptop.

The features I want to get my hands on are new Mapper, new Database module and scriptable forms. It's the code junkie in me that wants these features though. I'm often more interested in coding up features for MUDding using z/CMUD than actual mudding.

Adept Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 246

Unfortunately, I find that I have only marginal interest with any of the new features, though I have some comments:

Delphi/Vista upgrades: I hope that doesn't end up meaning less compatibility for XP users. I don't see myself migrating to Vista until I positively have to.

TeSSH: as a UNIX developer I use command line windows all the time. And while I might sometimes find a z/CMUD interface useful, those are really few and far between. My shell (bash) has all the command line editing and recall I need, really, though being able to mouse around the edit buffer would be a plus. But I would hate losing the auto-completion capability (file names, variables, history expansion). Also, a must for any telnet client is to be able to support full window cursoring, so I can use vi or another visual editor (like emacs). Generally speaking, I wouldn't write a client script to automate functions, I'd use the shell, since that is more portable and would be useful to anyone running any client. About the only use would be other interactive programs that don't have a command line editor, but that isn't something I do a lot (UNIX tends to not have programs that act like that). There's already a pretty good telnet client that's called AbsoluteTelnet. It has SSH support, and acts like a virtual terminal. It doesn't have any of the triggers, etc., but like I said, I don't miss those.

Improved Mapper: As I play exclusively in MUSHes these days, I find the mapper to be of limited usefulness. The very free-form input and output of MUSHes probably makes having a good mapper difficult: a) generally no prompt; b) generally, exits do not use cardinal directions, but names (i.e., instead of "west", you might see "city library"); c) not even a requirement that exits align with cardinal directions; d) no actual limit to the number of exits from a room. I'm not even sure it would be very useful to figure out how to support MUSHes better, since they generally have low room counts anyways, and there's usually support to teleport or have the MUSH take you wherever you want to go.

Hmm... you know what I might be interested in someday soon? A client for a smart phone. I was thinking that I had little interest in mymuds.com.... but maybe if it integrated with a phone (or PDA) client....

Apprentice Joined: 29 Dec 2000 Posts: 146 Location: USA

Oddly enough, I think the comercial product he speaks of could be a real nice thing.
I currently use refelections to connect to my phone switches. it does ok, but there are a lot of things I could do with trigger like abllities....
for example, opening a com port, and dialing a pager # if a certain error is displayed on the screen.

another big one, on my nortel phone switches, -- when entering commands, you get SCHXXX error codes.
you then have to enter a command to decode the SCH code.. would be real handy to kick off a trigger when it sees SCHXXXX, and automatically display the info. :)

I'm interested ...

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 6:18 pm

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 7:11 pm

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 8:30 pm

I always wondered, actually, what the source of the TeSSH name was. I wondered if you had a friend called Theresa :P

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 9:00 pm

Daft name for the database program = CDabber
which kind of matches with CMapper

Adept Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 246

Apprentice Joined: 29 Dec 2000 Posts: 146 Location: USA

This is probably not the right place for this (I don't see the what do you NEED thread any more)
Since you mentioned re-working the mapper... I have one request-- PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE include an undo function.
I don't know how many times I've deleted 40 rooms by accident, and just been stuck. It has made me better at backing up my map databse :)

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:58 am

There'll probably be a suggestions thread for the new mapper closer to the time (and if there isn't, I'm sure you could make one ;) - make sure you check back in the future and make sure your favourite feature is on the to-do list :)