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Roboblox could not be farther from MUDs and only people who played MUDs can appreciate the difference. Lets start with the obvious - MUDs use text and "text is

Roboblox could not be farther from MUDs and only people who played MUDs can appreciate the difference. Lets start with the obvious - MUDs use text and "text is the highest bandwidth medium for our imagination" (quote by Bartle, co-creator of first MUD). I recommend everyone watching this video to understand why is text so superior to any other medium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zctp972y_Eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zctp972y_Eg Incidentally the lockdown inspired me to spend the last five months rebuilding and relaunching the MUD I built in 90s. It is properly hard and properly text and if you want to check it out: telnet playlom.com 4000 (and if you are less hardcore http://playlom.com:4001/ http://playlom.com:4001/ )

biddit 6y ago
I both built and played MUDs from 1994 - 2003. From your comments is seems like you didn't read the article. Of course Roblox is not a text-based MUD. Not even the author is arguing that. Mechanically, it's incredibly similar in social dynamics, creativity and difference of worlds, and the fact that you can design your own world/mechnaics so easily.
- freediver 6y ago
  I understand that. The author does make the claim that "Roblox is a MUD for the TikTok generation." I am making an important distinction in just one - and to me the crucial point - which I highlighted in the original comment above: text is highest bandwidth medium for our imagination. If a game is not using text but other mediums such as graphics, then regardless of social dynamics, creativity, difference of worlds etc it can not be put in the same context as MUDs.
  - biddit 6y ago
    > Roboblox could not be farther from MUDs This statement is a bit extreme no? That's what I was addressing.
    - freediver 6y ago
      I suppose you could say so. But also depends on the perspective, I am very passionate about MUDs obviously :)
manfredo 6y ago
Text is absolutely not the highest bandwidth medium for imagination. Think about what a textured polygon can convey about a character in just one glance: color, clothing, dimensions, facial expression, posture. It'd take paragraphs to convey all this information in text, but with graphics it takes but a glance. If what this quote is referring to is the fact that text based mediums force us to use our own imaginations, it's actually because of the opposite: text is exceeding low bandwidth for communicating imagination, and because of that low bandwidth users need to fill in the gaps with their own.
- freediver 6y ago
  Imagination is our mind's output about things that are not conveyed. Please watch the video as Bartle explains it so elaborately. Text -> low input, high output.
  - manfredo 6y ago
    Right, text is the lowest bandwidth form of communicating imagination. And to make up for that low bandwidth users have to exercise their own imagination. It's like storing actual vertices of a sphere, vs. having the client execute code to generate the vertices given a position and radius. This is as opposed to graphics where the creator has enough bandwidth to actually portray their imagination on the screen. While there's undoubtedly an appeal to exercising one's own imagination, it introduces two key shortcomings. One, the users imagination doesn't always produce the expected output, and two by locking the interface into a text based interface a whole host of gameplay options are off the table. You're never going to have a text based racing game, or anything involving physics. There's a reason why almost all text based MUDs have a graph or grid based world and turn based gameplay: because that's all you can really do with a text based interface. You could build a racing minigame in a text based MUD but it's probably just be rolling checks against some kind of character stats rather than having the player actually guide a car around a track.
    - stOneskull 6y ago
      i made a text based horse-racing game. it's just different. a different medium and experience. i remember an old DOS professional wrestling game that was text and i found it more fun than the wrestling arcade game. my memories of it have better graphics even.
stOneskull 6y ago
thank you for saying that and for the game link. i think MUD should stay as meaning a multiplayer text adventure. you and this whole thread gets me inspired into making a MUD.
resu_nimda 6y ago
Having heard this sentiment a lot during my gaming days (and as well in the context of books vs. movies), I've always felt a certain amount of shame for not being able to get into text games. Is there something wrong with my imagination? I don't think so, I'm a total daydreamer type whose head is always filled with random thoughts and ideas. I like to think there's an axis orthogonal to "imaginative capability" that factors into why some people prefer text and some (ok, most) prefer graphics. An interesting part of this is EVE Online, which has plenty of pretty graphics, but I've never been able to get into that (or any spaceship-based game for that matter), despite being a style of game (sandbox/world-building) that I otherwise really like. Seeing the screenshots of UO and SWG in the article gives me the chills. I was fully immersed in those games (particularly SWG). It seems that running around a world as an individual humanoid character is the most deeply engaging experience to me.

biddit 6y ago

I both built and played MUDs from 1994 - 2003. From your comments is seems like you didn't read the article. Of course Roblox is not a text-based MUD. Not even the author is arguing that. Mechanically, it's incredibly similar in social dynamics, creativity and difference of worlds, and the fact that you can design your own world/mechnaics so easily.

freediver 6y ago
I understand that. The author does make the claim that "Roblox is a MUD for the TikTok generation." I am making an important distinction in just one - and to me the crucial point - which I highlighted in the original comment above: text is highest bandwidth medium for our imagination. If a game is not using text but other mediums such as graphics, then regardless of social dynamics, creativity, difference of worlds etc it can not be put in the same context as MUDs.
- biddit 6y ago
  > Roboblox could not be farther from MUDs This statement is a bit extreme no? That's what I was addressing.
  - freediver 6y ago
    I suppose you could say so. But also depends on the perspective, I am very passionate about MUDs obviously :)

manfredo 6y ago

Text is absolutely not the highest bandwidth medium for imagination. Think about what a textured polygon can convey about a character in just one glance: color, clothing, dimensions, facial expression, posture. It'd take paragraphs to convey all this information in text, but with graphics it takes but a glance. If what this quote is referring to is the fact that text based mediums force us to use our own imaginations, it's actually because of the opposite: text is exceeding low bandwidth for communicating imagination, and because of that low bandwidth users need to fill in the gaps with their own.

freediver 6y ago
Imagination is our mind's output about things that are not conveyed. Please watch the video as Bartle explains it so elaborately. Text -> low input, high output.
- manfredo 6y ago
  Right, text is the lowest bandwidth form of communicating imagination. And to make up for that low bandwidth users have to exercise their own imagination. It's like storing actual vertices of a sphere, vs. having the client execute code to generate the vertices given a position and radius. This is as opposed to graphics where the creator has enough bandwidth to actually portray their imagination on the screen. While there's undoubtedly an appeal to exercising one's own imagination, it introduces two key shortcomings. One, the users imagination doesn't always produce the expected output, and two by locking the interface into a text based interface a whole host of gameplay options are off the table. You're never going to have a text based racing game, or anything involving physics. There's a reason why almost all text based MUDs have a graph or grid based world and turn based gameplay: because that's all you can really do with a text based interface. You could build a racing minigame in a text based MUD but it's probably just be rolling checks against some kind of character stats rather than having the player actually guide a car around a track.
  - stOneskull 6y ago
    i made a text based horse-racing game. it's just different. a different medium and experience. i remember an old DOS professional wrestling game that was text and i found it more fun than the wrestling arcade game. my memories of it have better graphics even.

stOneskull 6y ago

thank you for saying that and for the game link. i think MUD should stay as meaning a multiplayer text adventure. you and this whole thread gets me inspired into making a MUD.

resu_nimda 6y ago

Having heard this sentiment a lot during my gaming days (and as well in the context of books vs. movies), I've always felt a certain amount of shame for not being able to get into text games. Is there something wrong with my imagination? I don't think so, I'm a total daydreamer type whose head is always filled with random thoughts and ideas. I like to think there's an axis orthogonal to "imaginative capability" that factors into why some people prefer text and some (ok, most) prefer graphics. An interesting part of this is EVE Online, which has plenty of pretty graphics, but I've never been able to get into that (or any spaceship-based game for that matter), despite being a style of game (sandbox/world-building) that I otherwise really like. Seeing the screenshots of UO and SWG in the article gives me the chills. I was fully immersed in those games (particularly SWG). It seems that running around a world as an individual humanoid character is the most deeply engaging experience to me.