Graphical automap

After a long hiatus, I got a new version of the Alter Aeon Mudding Client built and released for Windows. This version fixes a lot of bugs, but is still subject to the quirks and peculiarities of whatever version of Windows it runs on. This is really irritating, as the URL linking is black (and hence invisible) on some versions of windows, but not on others.

The big update is the graphical automapper, which renders squarish blocks based on terrain and some flags. Auto-generated tiles are what I'm using right now, and all things considered it's not terrible, though it's also not great. Here is a link to a screenshot of the Linux/X version of the client, to give you a rough idea. The Windows version looks similar, with slightly different font sizes and different borders/edges.

As usual, with a new release comes new bugs: the control keys appear to no longer work, the 'vanishing url' problem is still present, diagonal exits don't work (this requires a server and protocol change), and a number of more minor bugs have been reported. It's also lacking blind/visually impaired support, though the default support is already much better than for the old client.

All this (except for blind support, which may be impossible) needs to be fixed before it's suitable to take over the place of the old client. It's getting a lot closer though.

One thing I'm grudgingly coming to terms with is the player desire for triggers and variables in the client. Normal mudders aren't going to use it until it has reasonable features for scripting. I really don't want to encourage scripting, but it may be a necessary evil to getting people to use it.

My hope with this project is that low quality graphics and a visual display are better than no display whatsoever. The game is complex, well balanced, and solid - people who play it tend to stick around and find it entertaining for long periods of time. Getting people into it seems the hardest part.

A possible vote in favor of a bad client being better than no client comes from friends of existing players. I can't even remember how many times I've been told some version of the following:

"I tried to get my friend into it, but he/she just couldn't understand how a game that's only words could possibly work."

Even if it's just a cheesy icon indicating where you are, it at least gives non-mudders a reference: everyone's played old school tile-based games. I hope.

Another major concern I have is that I'm now officially encroaching on what I'd call the territory of other, vastly better funded games. This marks the first real foray into adding graphics to the system; right now that consists of low quality, autogenerated graphics, using a mapping system which doesn't even work reliably (due to area linearity and such.) What I have is crude, primitive, and unartistic.

People can get low quality graphics anywhere; and attempting to compete with modern high-quality rendered 3D games is a non-starter, unless you have a reasonably large budget. Further, the game as it stands is fundamentally not designed to be 3D rendered. It would take a major rework to add support for that, and likely result in the destruction of most of the interesting game content.

So the big question becomes: what is the next step for the client, after it's stable and usable by the default population?

Right now, the only big hitter I have on my list is another type of automap, one that uses the generated area maps from the Alter Aeon World Maps page. The server would send approximate X/Y coordinate pairs, and the client could map them to the appropriate position on the generated maps. This would give people an idea of which areas they were near, and approximately where they were at.

Beyond that, I really don't know. I'm sure something will present itself.