A review of some mud clients and their usefulness in MUD2

With a new edition of Muddled Times coming out I thought I'd sum up the current status of MUD2 clients from my own experience, and how well they work for mud2. This is totally my own opinion, and your own experience may differ - your mileage may vary as they say. I guess I thought this might be useful for any newcomers who are wondering how best to access and play this game - not all clients are equal by any means and some are downright poor these days - and others are exceptionally advanced, complex and flexible. Choosing the right client for you may well change over time as your knowledge of the game changes or your style of play changes - it is a very personal thing!

I have focussed on desktop or laptop clients here - my experience with tablet based ones has not been good - having tried a few - but not as many as Crowley has - he may want to offer up a similar article on his tablet attempts :)

I have also tried to focus on clients that will run on multiple platforms - preferably Windows, Mac and Linux (not many personal users are running Solaris, Beos, Tandem etc.. after all are they?) - but given the huge number of variations in even the basic OSes I can not claim to have tried all combinations. I have not included Zmud, Cmud, Gnome-mud for this reason (if I were to then I would be rating Gnome-Mud as a 1/10 btw). Another reason for excluding Cmud is that is costs $30 or $40 US, and although it does seem to look good, with a lot of good features the price, and the fact that it is Windows only, mean I am excluding it from this - all the reviewed clients are free.

So here we go - I will run thru them - then there will be a little summary at the end.

http://mudii.co.uk/mudtoo/mudtoo.html

Well this is the client that you connect with if you hit the 'connect now' button on the mudii.co.uk main page. As a web application it is platform neutral so can run from any operating system that supports java. It only works on mudii.co.uk.

You would think, or even expect that the client proudly displayed on our own front page would be a great example of how to use the game - Unfortunately this is not the case. Visually it is not unpleasant and could be rather good, however to actually log on you do have to play around a bit and realise that after entering your id and password in the window you THEN have to type 'mud' at the 'phoenix' prompt as well (which is hidden behind the login box) - this is not intuitive or obvious, never mind documented - if a first time user tried this they might well give up in disgust. Lets hope I do not get fodded for speaking honestly!

Once logged in you get a nice colourful display with the version number (0.41 it clearly never made version 1.0!) displayed on the left side, and an indicator field which should show your current stamina, magic and whether you have any ailments or afflictions - however these fields are never updated so are of no use at all. There is a compass field which is a nice little graphic which you can use to click to go N, S, E, W, U, ZW etc. which does work but would not be of any use to an experienced player - only a new user.

Justification for Rating: partially implemented functions, features on screen not working, no logging

• Author - unknown (hope it wasn't Karya, Foddy, Turrican or Hawumph!)
• MUD2 functions supported - (partial)
• Logging abilities - None
• FKeys - none
• Macros - None
• Mapping - None
• Age - uncertain
• Overall Rating - 3/10

http://www.wabe.org.uk/clio/

A lot of players like Clio and it does have some nice features. It supports both MUD2.com and mudii.co.uk - reading the source code shows some little tweaks that are included for each site. It supports many of the MUD2 specific function codes that Richard has written into the game for use by clients, so if you want to jump when the dragon dies try this with the sound effects on! It has a stamina line at the top of the screen, supports logging and allows you to define function keys for specific commands. Its a good starter client for many people. HOWEVER - it is not currently being supported, and to get it to run under Linux I had to email Tabitha for some detailed assistance, and to run under windows 7 or windows 8 does need some persistence in getting the right set up. The MAC version available for download if for PPC macs (old ones) but many Unix versions are available, as is source. The Unix versions are not the same version as windows and there appears to be less support of come functions - notably sound. You are restricted to a fixed terminal width and to change the font size is not straightforward - in windows you have to change a windows setting not a clio setting.

Justification for rating - needs 'help' to run on current OSes but does support MUD2 functions, logging and Fkeys.

• Author - Tabitha the witch
• MUD2 functions supported - extensive - includes dreamword capture
• Logging abilities - plain text or html
• FKeys - yes
• Macros - None
• Mapping - None
• Age - last updated c2004
• Source code is available (C)
• Overall Rating - 6/10

Tintin++

Tintin was originally produced in the early 1990s and influenced several other clients over the years such as Zmud. It has continued to be maintained under many authors and continues to offer a lot of flexibility. It's the one I use personally most of the time, even though it does not support MUD2 functions directly. With a bit of work you can add some nice tweaks like a status line similar to mudiiclient or clio, and things like dreamword capture - but you have to do it yourself - so its not a client for a total novice. Programming experience is almost mandatory to be able to make use of its flexibility. Mapping support is available, although it can not handle the more complex areas of The Land (think about the old MUD1 rooms for example).

Justification for rating: flexible, customisable, good logging, loses out for mapping and non support of MUD2 functions

• Author - various
• MUD2 functions supported - NONE
• Logging abilities - raw (exactly what the client receives) plain (escape codes are stripped) or html logs supported
• FKeys - yes
• Macros - support for triggers and aliases
• Mapping - partial
• Scripting - yes - extensive proprietary built in and CLI interfaces to python, lua and others
• Age - originally 1992 - most recent version within the last year and active forum support
• Overall Rating - 7/10

Mudiiclient

Our very own Havoc has produced a client which is dedicated to mudii.co.uk, so you know it will work here. It won't be of any use elsewhere - not even mud2.com. It has a very similar look and feel to clio, but it works out of the box so to speak, and does not need any tweaking for different OSes. The download and startup instructions should be streamlined though.

There are a couple of nice features to this client. Logging is on by default, and in html so it looks like what you saw on the screen. The screen can be resized by simply dragging the frame, and the font can be resized using ctrl+ or ctrl-. Mudiiclient also keeps track of who is in the game and will autocomplete player names when you hit a tab - e.g. if Cenedra is in the game just typing "cen" then the tab will expand to the full name. Haven't had a chance to try this fully - like what happens when folk go invisible - cos there haven’t been many around while I've been writing this article.

Justification for rating: Its just works! Download it and run it. Loses out because of lack of customisability, and flexibility, but if you want a straightforward client that does the job this is a great option to start with.

• Author - Havoc
• MUD2 functions supported - partial - includes dreamword capture
• Logging abilities - automatic by default - html logs only
• FKeys - no
• Macros - partial in development
• Mapping - None
• Scripting - no
• Age - after a long holiday Havoc has restarted development
• Source code is available (java)
• Overall Rating - 7/10

www.Mudlet.org

This is what I would probably call the 'Rolls Royce' of mud clients at the moment. It is modern, supports extensive scripting, all sorts of macros, and its mapping capabilities should even be able to handle the somewhat unusual geography of some areas of The Land (think about the old MUD1 rooms for example). I haven’t tried all the options in the mapper - or even fully explored the scripting - this client has huge potential and to be honest the only down side I can think of is that it does not support the MUD2 specific functions - that said it might be possible to do but would probably require more effort than could be justified. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

Justification for rating: This client can do almost anything with a bit of work, but still works well out of the box. As I say above its only downside is that it doesn't directly support MUD2 functions.

• Author - various
• MUD2 functions supported - NONE
• Logging abilities - raw or html logs supported
• FKeys - yes
• Macros - triggers and aliases supported
• Mapping - None
• Scripting - yes - Lua supported
• Age - first release was in 2008 - ongoing development and support
• Source code is available (C++)
• Overall Rating - 9/10

Summary

More on this topic from the archives:

• MUD2 Clients - Turrican
• MUD2 Telnets - an Update - Turrican