Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 8:57 pm

I am often asked "What will happen to zMUD?". "Will you continue to upgrade zMUD?".

That's a hard question to answer right now. Right now I'm focused on CMUD. Period. So right now, part of me wants to say that "No, zMUD will not be upgraded". But it's not necessarily that simple. CMUD *does* share some code with zMUD. Specifically, a lot of the parsing code is shared to maintain backwards compatibility with zMUD scripts.

So, it's possible that when I fix a bug in the parsing code in CMUD, that same bug fix will make it into zMUD.

So, it's possible that zMUD will get updated in the future. But people shouldn't count on it. The zMUD 7.21 version is *very* stable, and with the removal of eLicense, it will work fine for a long time. It doesn't need to be upgraded.

The more important question is about support. zMUD will still be supported in the sense that we will still answer email about it, and will still help people with zMUD in the forums. These forums are not going away. Over time, more and more people will start using CMUD instead of zMUD and there might be fewer people to help with zMUD. But we are not going to delete the forums or anything like that.

The biggest issue for zMUD users will probably be when Microsoft releases their Windows Vista operating system. As people buy new computers with Vista pre-installed, they will want support for this new operating system. zMUD will not be officially supported on Vista. zMUD might continue to work fine...it depends upon the compatibility with WindowsXP that Microsoft puts into Vista. But I'm not going to fix any Vista-releated problems in zMUD. I will only be supporting CMUD on Windows Vista.

So, think of zMUD like you might think about Windows 98. Does Windows 98 still work fine for some people? Yes. Can you still ask questions about Windows 98 on the Internet and get help? Yes. Does Microsoft "officially" support it? No.

Finally, read the other thread about the cost of CMUD and the limited-time offers for existing zMUD customers. Notice that zMUD customers only get the CMUD offers during the CMUD beta period. This is important to keep in mind. Someone who buys zMUD after the public version of CMUD is released won't get a free upgrade. We are trying to *strongly* encourage new customers to buy CMUD and not zMUD.

So while we will maintain the zMUD support forums and knowledge base on this web site, you'll discover that it will be much harder to buy zMUD once CMUD has been released in it's public version.

I know that this policy will make some people unhappy. Unfortunately, it's the only way a small family business such as Zuggsoft can stay in business over a long time. We just don't have dozens or hundreds of employees that we can pay to sit and support old products.