Member Discussions

In the old days of telnet, everyone was used to using a mud window with a standard width of 80 characters.

I'm curious if the convention here has changed with the changes in technology -- 80 chars used to take up my whole screen, but now only take a third or so.

So my question is this: has that changed? Is the default for most mud clients still 80? When you mud, do you use an 80-char wide window, or do you adjust to make it wider?

I use above 80 and I'm sure a number of players do as well,
but you have to remember people still use telnet (no joke).

I prefer an 80 width standard. Some muds adhere to that, others don't. I spend a lot of time switching between them.

80 is old. Be bold to me new. 120 is the new 80.

Sidonie wrote:
In the old days of telnet, everyone was used to using a mud window with a standard width of 80 characters.

Hey, some of us used 40 column Commodore-64's to telnet to Compuserve.
And if my eyes get any worse, I might go back to really big fonts in 40 columns. ;-)

Sidonie wrote:
I'm curious if the convention here has changed with the changes in technology -- 80 chars used to take up my whole screen, but now only take a third or so.

When I'm mudding with my smartphone I prefer an 80 character screen width, but on my PC it depends on the client - as Zeno pointed out, some people still use older clients, and some of those do still restrict you to 80 characters.

Most modern clients allow you to adjust the width, and there's no reason why the mud couldn't detect that and wrap accordingly (or even let the client handle it). However a room description that normally fills 5-6 lines (with an 80 character width) would become just 2 lines when stretched across your whole screen - I'd find that much less comfortable to read. Other things (like score layouts, who list, combat tables, etc) would need to be manually formatted for different widths, which is probably more effort than it's worth.

The convention has changed somewhat with the technology, but generally not by stretching the text window. Instead, it's becoming more common to use that extra space for buttons, icons, gauges, maps, etc.

Our game pretty much adheres to the 80 width.

I find that increasing my font size a few points works nicely
to still fill my screen and makes the text more readable.
Courier 10pt is either a lot smaller on the higher resolutions
screens we have these days, or my eyes have gotten a lot older
:p

I've actually grappled with this problem recently. The 80 character width is a very old standard and the vast majority of people playing MUDs these days will have a screen width far exceeding 80 characters. Nevertheless, there are still a few people who use telnet (with default settings) from time to time, and smart phone MUD clients are becoming more prevalent. The conclusion I ultimately reached was to support the legacy standard, but not allow myself to be limited by it.

Essentially, I was working on some interface changes that would necessarily extend the display beyond 80 characters wide with no viable way to format via wrapping. My solution was to encapsulate the new stuff and only display it with certain configurations enabled. I then use NAWS to detect screen width. If it reports <= 80 (or isn't able to be negotiated), those configurations will be automatically disabled, leaving the default display. They can be manually re-enabled (with a warning) by the player, to cover the case of clients unable to negotiate properly, but where screen width isn't actually an issue.

Arantha is designed to be playable in a standard 24x80 window, though a couple of the lesser-used and Staff commands (obj/mob searching) exceed those row parameters. Haven't really run into any issues yet, but I like the idea that anyone can telnet on in and have no troubles with playing the game.
My personal average MUD window is a little longer than 80 columns, more like 96, and about two-and-a-half times as many rows. On occasion (mostly with a cell phone), I play and work with the standard lines.

the vast majority of people playing MUDs these days will have a screen width far exceeding 80 characters.

More room to watch stuff, surf, etc. while still mudding.

More room to watch stuff, surf, etc.
while still mudding.

Dual monitors isn't commonplace for us mudders? I haven't
worked with a single monitor setup (be it for work or home)
for probably 6+ years.

I could only afford one 32" monitor, unfortunately.

~150 characters should take up about half that then. :P

Unless you run 800x600 on that beast.

1680x1050.

Last monitor was locked to 800x600. NEVER. AGAIN.

When checking in from work via my smartphone my screen width is really limited, so I (as God) prefer that things have a uniformity.
New people, often using archaic telnet utilities or the java telnet capabilities are ALSO limited in screen width.

In the days of competing with Warcrack, Evercrack, Starcrack, etc, we need to stay competitive and keep those customers coming back. (Yes, it is a FREE of charge environment but they are still our customers). Let's make it as easy to figure out as we can! Not easy to play, but easy to figure out.
With regards,
Morrigan

What? Mudders aren't customers, haven't you heard? Mudding
is a privilege where mortals needs to bow down to the imms and
prostrate themselves in thankfulness for having an game open
to play in. If mortals in unison don't like a game feature,
well that's just tough cookies, it's my game and go play
another if you don't like it. If you complain any more, as
imm I will simply tear your character apart.

Players as customers, where do you come up with this stuff?

We're now a little bit closer to learning about the terrible trauma that caused J. to turn into the resident troll of TMC.

Tell us, J., in your own words, where did he put his hands?

I personally find that a narrow column of text is much
easier to read quickly that a wide line of text, and 80
seems to be alright. This seems to be even more true when I
spend hours reading.

There is probably a reason that newspapers use columns
instead of printing one line completely across the page.

But, the best solution is to let the player pick. This only
causes a problem for formatted text that is displayed at a
smaller width (since you can always display something small
in a big window). In that case, you may need to create a
plain text alternative, a minimal size for formatted text,
or a slick graphical wrapper that displays the formatted
stuff in a widget outside of the game world.

I think the worst case is a mix of hard returns in the
middle of sentences and no wrapping at all. This seems to
always produce some odd wrapping when the client controls it
with the middle of a sentence ending in the middle of a
line. If you mix the two, always put a hard return at the
end of a sentence.

(odd wrapping by chrome)

Hades_Kane wrote:

Our game pretty much adheres to the 80 width.

I
find that increasing my font size a few points works nicely

to still fill my screen and makes the text more
readable.
Courier 10pt is either a lot smaller on the
higher resolutions
screens we have these days, or my
eyes have gotten a lot older
:p

A follow up to this... I upgraded my monitor this weekend to
a 23" widescreen and am running 1920 x 1080 resolution... I
had to increase my font size to 15, but the 80 width still
fills enough of my screen with the increased font size where
it doesn't feel like most of my screen is blank. That font
size is a comfortable reading size as well for as many hours
as I tend to stare at it for :p

Hades_Kane wrote:
I upgraded my monitor this weekend to a 23" widescreen and am running 1920 x 1080 resolution... I had to increase my font size to 15, but the 80 width still fills enough of my screen with the increased font size where it doesn't feel like most of my screen is blank. That font size is a comfortable reading size as well for as many hours as I tend to stare at it for :p

I've kept 8pt. font on a 15"-17" laptop screen running at 1920 x 1080 resolution for years. You just need to install cybernetic eye implants. :-p

Lyanic wrote:

Hades_Kane wrote:

I upgraded my monitor this weekend to a 23" widescreen and am running 1920 x 1080 resolution... I had to
increase my font size to 15, but the 80 width still fills enough of my screen with the increased font size
where it doesn't feel like most of my screen is blank. That font size is a comfortable reading size as well
for as many hours as I tend to stare at it for :p

I've kept 8pt. font on a 15"-17"
laptop screen running at 1920 x 1080 resolution for years. You just need to install cybernetic eye implants.
:-p

MY EYES!!!

Seriously, I don't see how any human could stare at that for hours :p

I do need to get new glasses, though, I've had the same prescription for about 4 years now...

I'm looking at that right now actually, for my iPhone (using the TMC Game Client).

What I'm doing is changing the my so that columns display for things like skills/spells/notes etc. Your character then has a column command, simply an integer (1-5)(if it's 0 it defaults to say 2).

Then say each column is 40 chars, 2 column is telnet, 1 column for say the TMC client, 5 columns for fullscreen on Mushclient or such etc etc.

Thoughts?
- Dave.

I think 40 chars to a line is far too few, but for those with a hard time seeing or for phone users might be okay. If you extend the screen to 200 characters, I think that it might end up with extreme long lines. Some folks might be happy with that, but I like stuff I can focus on and read. As long as you keep 3 and 4 40 char columns, you're probably good to go. I personally still like 80, but don't find anything wrong with 120. Much longer than that and its just too many long lines.

One potential suggestion though, you might want another option which just turns line wrapping off. Clients on their own often wrap. So this is just kind of a catch all option for people that don't want the game wrapping for them, leaving them with odd breaks at set intervals.

I found your comment hilarious, being an ex-dealer of
Commodore computers/peripherals. I've tried on and off for
years, trying to successfully get an Amiga 040 to compile
Circle and finally giving up. Back to Linux for me.

I usually code for a 78 width. It's a little less than 80
because some of the clients don't like adjusting to 80 and
things get messed up. Also because every client has at least
78 width now. So you're always guaranteed that your stuff
looks the same no matter what.