The Anvil

I was recently able to catch Mike Potter (Zugg) of Zuggsoft Software, the creator of zMUD and CMUD and tie him down long enough to answer a few questions for our players about his history with MUDs, his MUD clients, and his future plans for his products.

So without further ado!

Me: Would you relate your first experience or introduction to MUDs?

Mike: In the summer of 1995 I was depressed from the divorce from my first wife.  I discovered MUDs to escape from the “real world” and was hooked!  I didn’t like any of the PC MUD clients available at that time, so I started writing my own.  My clan-mates on Dark Castle started using it and told me that I should make it Shareware and sell it to other MUD players.  A year later I formed Zugg Software and started selling zMUD .  Zugg was my old pen/paper D&D character name, and the name I was using on the Dark Castle MUD.  I no longer play any MUD using the name of “Zugg”, so if you see somebody using that name, they are an imposter.  In 1997, the income from zMUD was enough that I was able to quit my day job and work on zMUD fulltime.  Today, almost 15 years later, Zugg Software is the last remaining full-time business selling and supporting MUD client software.

Me: What are/were some of your favorite MUDs?

Mike: Dark Castle was my first MUD.  I left because I didn’t enjoy the PvP direction that it took, but I still have fond memories of it as “my first”.  I spent a lot of time on Realms of Despair and the various Iron Realms MUDs (Achaea, Imperian).

Me: Woot for IRE!

Me: What features or aspects of those games did you enjoy?

Mike: I’ve always enjoyed the combat-based MUDs (Diku, Merc, Smaug, etc).  I never really got into any of the LPmuds.  My favorite features were always the clan/guild features, and the combat and class systems.  I’ve made many long-term friends from clans on the MUDs I have played.  I enjoy MUDs with multiclass features and deep skill-based systems.  I am an “Explorer” Bartle gamer type, so I love well-designed and well-written zones to explore.  Most modern MUDs are far richer and more detailed in gameplay than their graphical MMO counterparts, which is why I still enjoy playing MUDs.

Me: Are you still playing MUDs? If so, which ones?

Mike: I don’t have as much time to play with other clan members or groups these days, so I mostly solo play on Aardwolf.  I also play many graphical MMOs and other video games, but I still enjoy text-based games.  I do CMUD testing on several different MUDs, including Achaea and other IRE MUDs, but Aardwolf is really the only one that I actively play to relax, just because that is where many of my friends are.  However, most of my online MUD friends actually don’t have any idea who I really am.  I keep my real identity secret because when I’m playing for fun I don’t like to be bothered with lots of CMUD/zMUD questions.  So don’t ask me for my MUD character name…I won’t tell you

Me: When you first started playing MUDs, what really caught your interest? Why did you enjoy playing them?

Mike: I’ve always been an avid reader.  My favorite old computer games were the Infocom games (Zork, etc).  So I’ve always enjoyed reading a good story and being involved in text-based games.  The picture that my own mind can create from the words on the screen are far richer and more creative than any graphical artist can product.  So it was a combination of being immersed in a virtual world that was so huge I could never explorer all of it, along with the normal leveling addiction that goes along with most online RPGs.  Once I got into clans and formed some great friendships, there was no going back.

Me: What are some of your favorite features in MUDs today?

Mike: I love detailed class and combat systems.  Let the masses play the repetitive graphical MMOs with their button mashing.  I like MUDs that make me think about combat and give me lots of options to customize my character skills in different ways.  If I want “twitchy” combat, I’ll play a video game.  With MUDs I prefer detailed tactical combat, even when “slow” or turn-based.  The writing is also a big part.  While it’s nostalgic to see some MUD areas taken from the original core MUDs, I prefer unique zones with high-quality descriptions, quests, and mobs.  Oh, and I don’t do much pking and I hate mazes

Me: What kind of future challenges do you see for MUD games and how would you approach them?

Mike: The challenge for MUDs is to distinguish themselves from the graphical MMOs such as WoW.  Many people ask me how my business has survived, because hasn’t WoW killed MUDs?  Not at all.  While our sales are down just like most any other business these days, there are still plenty of new MUD players every day.  MUDs that focus on their unique game play can still survive.  Just as books have survived the invention of movies.  Some players want the slower and more detailed and absorbing gameplay that MUDs still offer.  MUDs should not be worried about trying to add graphics, or fancy graphical user interfaces.  A MUD cannot compete directly with a graphical MMO, so a MUD should strive to be different and to embrace those differences.

I’d like to see more MUDs focus on the new user experience.  Iron Realms does a great job with this (Imperian comes to mind) with starting areas that suck the new player into their world and teach them the basics of playing a MUD one step at a time.  A good newbie help system and GM team can also help ensure that new players have a good first experience.  You want to grab the new player willing to read and type with a compelling story and game system.

Me: What was your original motivation for creating zMUD ?

Mike: In 1995 the available MUD clients for the PC were pretty primitive.  Remember that we are talking about using Windows 3.1 with network packet driver software and slow modem connections.  At the beginning, I just wanted a client with a separate command line (something that basic telnet clients never have), a nice scrollback buffer, and a good trigger, alias, and macro system.  The very first zMUD had all of those features 15 years ago.  I had also been using the Unix TinTin MUD client and liked its scripting language, so I made zMUD compatible with the original TinTin scripting.  That’s the origin of the #command syntax in zMUD .

Me: Why did you write CMUD?

Mike: Creating CMUD was a difficult decision for me.  As I mentioned, zMUD was originally written for Windows 3.1, and then updated for Windows 95.  In the Windows 3.1 days, memory was precious and the fundamental architecture of zMUD was limited.  Microsoft maintained good compatibility with Windows 95 when Windows XP was released, so I was able to patch zMUD to support limited Windows XP features.  But the internal workings of zMUD were still limited.  Microsoft broke a lot of compatibility with Vista, forcing me to re-think the future of Zugg Software.  It was 2005 and 10 years had gone by since I wrote the first version of zMUD .  I could either kludge it to mostly work with Vista, or I could start from scratch and use my 10-years of experience to write a better MUD client with a more modern internal architecture.  I decided to write a better client: CMUD (named for my current wife’s online character name Chiara).

I started on CMUD in early 2005 and it took over a year to produce the first version.  The hardest part was keeping as much zMUD compatibility as possible.  I knew that my customers would not want to rewrite all of their scripts.  But there were many scripting problems in zMUD that I also needed to fix in CMUD.  When people claim that CMUD is just an upgrade of zMUD with a different name, I smile and laugh.  That comment actually means that I did a good job with the zMUD compatibility within CMUD.  But the core of CMUD is completely different and it was a huge challenge to make it work as much like zMUD as possible.  It was this new core architecture in CMUD that has allowed me to continue supporting it with Vista, and now Windows 7, without all of the limitations zMUD had from Windows 3.1.

Me: What do you think are some of the underutilized features in CMUD?

Mike: That’s hard to answer.  Every time I change a feature that I think is underutilized, I get bombarded with email about it.  The biggest problem that I have seen is old-time players who are writing their scripts in CMUD the same way they wrote them for zMUD .  CMUD has features such as compiled scripts and local variables that zMUD didn’t have.  Utilizing some of these newer CMUD features can really improve script performance.  Some of the old ways of doing things just to get around various scripting limitations in zMUD can be rewritten in CMUD to make scripts faster, easier to read, and more supportable.  But it seems that old habits never die.

The full list of CMUD features is Here.

It’s a *huge* list.  I’m not sure that most players have even looked at this full list in detail.  The help file for CMUD has about 1,000 topics, making it difficult for players to learn about all of the different features in CMUD.

So maybe the most underutilized feature of CMUD is the extensive Help system?

Me: Where do you think CMUD is lacking or needs a more work?

Mike: Well, there are always more bugs to fix.  CMUD is now more than 1.5 million lines of code.  There is no way for one person like me to fully debug such a complex application.  I rely more and more upon beta testers to help track down problems.  So improving stability is always one of my biggest priorities.

Making the mapper work better is also something I’d like to improve in the near future.  While it works well for a large number of MUDs, it’s still an advanced feature and it’s difficult to share a map configuration of a MUD with other players.  Adding map configurations to the Shared Library in CMUD would make it a lot easier for new players to start mapping the MUD they are playing.

Finally, I need to spend more time on documentation and tutorials.  As mentioned above, there are so many features in CMUD that it’s difficult for new players to know where to start.  While the help file is more extensive than any other MUD client, it still needs a lot of improvement.  The web site needs more “how to” tutorials and screencasts.  But it has always been hard for me to spend time on documentation when I could be spending the same time fixing another bug.

Me: What features really put CMUD ahead of the pack?

Mike: The mapper is obviously a huge feature unique to CMUD (and zMUD before that).  Other MUD clients have tried mapping, but usually result in something that only works on a specific MUD or with specific MUD server support.  zMUD was the first client to support mapping most any MUD, and CMUD has continued that tradition.  The latest 3.x version of CMUD has a newly rewritten mapper that allows multiple sessions to share a single map, or allows multiple characters to be tracked on a single map.

I am also personally proud of the user interface of CMUD.  For example, if you look at the script editor, you will find syntax highlighting, code completion, and other features normally only found in real programming editors.  The way it allows you to easily organize a huge amount of scripts into packages and modules is something other clients do not provide.  And while CMUD is definitely aimed at more advanced users, it still has a simple user interface for novice players where they are just two clicks away from playing their favorite MUD and who can ignore that advanced features until they are needed.

The advanced window docking and layout system is a good example of that.  Other clients have added simple “tabbed sessions”, which even zMUD had years ago.  The CMUD window docking system is more advanced than even the zMUD system and  allows you to create any window layout you wish and save it for future sessions.  I couldn’t play MUDs without all of the various chat windows I have organized in my session.

It’s really easy to write a very basic MUD client.  In fact, most MUD clients are just clones of what zMUD already was over five years ago.  It is very difficult to implement all of the little details that all of the MUD players want you to add.  It’s a classic case of 20% of the features taking 80% of the time and effort.  Most MUD clients that are just a hobby and not a full-time business just never get to that higher state of polished features that players demand.

Me: Do you have any big features you would like to bring to CMUD? Are you willing to let us know? Can we get a hint?

Mike: I provide a roadmap to the future direction of CMUD and Zugg Software in my yearly “New Years Letter” on our www.zuggsoft.com web site.  The next big feature in CMUD will be full Unicode support.  Unicode is the handling of languages with more than 256 characters in their alphabet, such as Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.  The Asian market is a large emerging group of avid online game players, and many of them will still be interested in playing text-based MUDs if they can use a client that properly supports their native language.

Beyond that, there are three big features that I want to add: 1) a built-in chat system, similar to what zMUD had with the zChat plugin, but also supporting modern chat standards such as XMPP/Jabber, 2) improvements to the mapper and development of a client/server protocol for improving MUD maps and supporting graphical tile-based maps, and 3) rewriting the current “database” module in CMUD that was directly ported from zMUD and isn’t really a real “database” at all.  All three of these features are important and it’s just a matter of deciding which to do first and to get the time to implement them.  There are always more feature ideas than I possibly have time to implement.

Me: Zuggsoft has a few other projects than CMUD. What else are you currently working on, and can MUD players benefit from these products?

Mike: The big new project this year is TeSSH, which is our Telnet/SSH client for business and sys-admin users.  Some sys-admins have already been using CMUD and zMUD for years to remotely connect to servers.  Having a robust client scripting system adds a lot of power to a Telnet/SSH client and opens up a lot of functionality to make remote system admin easier and more efficient.  While it was possible to use CMUD as a sys-admin tool, I was asked to remove some of the MUD-specific features so people could get their boss to buy it for them and their company as a real business tool.  I have removed the mapper and other MUD-specific features, and then added important sys-admin features such as FTP/SFTP (which were also added to CMUD Pro) to make TeSSH the best professional Telnet/SSH client available.  I plan to release a public version of TeSSH and start marketing it this Spring.

MUD players will benefit from TeSSH because it shares the same code base as CMUD Pro.  Any feature added to TeSSH automatically becomes available for CMUD Pro users.  Also, the increased pool of testers should help improve the stability of both products.

Me: Personally, I have always found the learning curve for MUDs to be pretty high. This includes clients that are not really newbie friendly (by today’s standard for games). I feel like it drives people away. How does your company address that? Is it something you consider when developing?

Mike: This is something I think about all the time.  It was one of the reasons I added startup icons for popular MUDs to the initial CMUD session screen.  New players can just run CMUD, double-click one of these icons, and be playing a strong and popular MUD within seconds.  New players shouldn’t be intimidated by all of the client features they don’t understand.  It’s no different from using a program like Microsoft Word:  yes, there are lots of options in the menus that you might not understand, but that doesn’t stop you from typing text into a simple letter and saving it.  I get frustrated when people say that CMUD or zMUD is only for advanced players.  For novice players, CMUD is just as easy to use as any other MUD client, and they benefit from using a popular client that they can easily get help with from other players when they decide to get into the scripting and other more advanced features.

Ultimately, some players discover that learning the scripting in CMUD is just another layer of game-play, and some people find the scripting to be more fun than playing the game itself.  We have become such a “instant gratification” society where so many gamers are focused on just getting to the “end” of a game (leveling) as fast as possible.  They have forgotten that the *journey* is a big part of the fun.  The learning curve of any software is part of that journey and provides a huge amount of satisfaction as you progress higher on the curve.  Big software companies have become too involved in trying to “dumb-down” software rather than trying to help *teach* people how to use it.

What I think drives away most people from MUDs is when they discover they actually need to read and to type and can’t just sit back, watch pretty pictures, and mash their skill buttons.  Honestly, those type of gamers are never going to play a MUD so we shouldn’t worry about trying to keep them.  Players who get over that initial “hump” long enough to learn the game play of their specific MUD should be happier to have an advanced MUD client like CMUD because it means they won’t need to learn new software when they have advanced to that next “level” and want the more advanced features that CMUD provides.

What I don’t like to do is to just add some fancy looking graphical “skin” to try and fool players into thinking they are playing a graphical MMO.  I won’t “dumb-down” my software just to try and attract kids who are looking for another MMO “fix”.  Text-based games are all about the text, and we should celebrate that and not try to hide it.

An example is the CMUD scripting system.  Rather than create some sort of “wizard” that hides the complexity of scripting and allows you to select simple actions from a drop-down menu, I’d rather highlight and celebrate a real programming environment (CMUD does have a simple Trigger Wizard, but I don’t highlight it).  MUD scripting is a great way to start to learn how to program.  Programming is a valuable “real world” skill, whether it is writing Microsoft Excel macros at work, or writing a Lua mod for WoW, or writing a web site using PHP, or writing enterprise applications in Java or C++.  I’ve gotten letters from many players who learned to program using CMUD/zMUD , decided to go to computer school, and later went on to real programming jobs.

Me: Are you looking for additional help for development? If so, how can someone go about doing that?

Mike: The biggest way anybody can help is to actively participate in the open beta testing program.  Just go to the CMUD Beta discussion forum on the www.zuggsoft.com site and post bug reports and join in the discussion.  There is no way for me to personally test everything in CMUD, so the more testing help I can get the better the product will be for everybody.

As far as actual development help, CMUD is written using the Delphi development tools.  While I still think Delphi is one of the best Windows development platforms around, not many people are familiar with it.  To help with Delphi development of CMUD, I would need somebody who is already a Delphi and object-oriented-programming expert who has a passion about improving some aspect of CMUD.  I did this with one of our Forum Gurus who helped improve the regular expression engine in CMUD and the subregex function, and it was a big help.  However, I’ve also had a bad experience where somebody took the source code for a CMUD module and ran off with it.  So because I’ve been burned in the past, I’m pretty picky about exactly who I work with on the development side.

The other area of help is from the MUD games themselves.  Iron Realms has done a great job in this regard.  Getting MUDs to add support for standards such as MXP (MUD eXtension Protocol) improves the MUD experience for all of their players since many MUD clients now support these modern standards that Zugg Software helped to develop.  The recent improvements to the IRE support of the CMUD mapper has been a big help to many CMUD users.

In conclusion, I am very happy to still be an active part of the MUD community.  MUDs have not died, despite the enormous competition from large graphical MMOs.  The MUDs that continue to survive will embrace their niche and continue to focus on providing rich game-play features.  I firmly believe that without zMUD and CMUD, there would be many fewer MUDs and MUD players today.  I am committed to continuing our tradition of strong customer support and to keep pushing the edge of MUD client development by providing the features that MUD players want the most.

Finally, I ask all players to take the time to think about the value they are getting for their money in these tough economic times.  MUDs are mostly free to play.  I sell CMUD because I need to pay my bills just like anybody else working in a fulltime job.  In return, I fully support our software, fix bugs, add most requested features, and still personally answer each email that I receive.  While CMUD costs money and some other clients are free, I encourage you to look at the long history of Zugg Software and the support we have given the MUD community.  Other MUD clients come and go.  Zugg Software has been around for nearly 15 years to help you better enjoy playing MUD games.  The cost of CMUD is less than a single nice dinner, or less than pizza and a movie.  The result is the most advanced MUD client that will last you for years and years of memorable game play with no monthly subscription fees.  Just something to think about the next time you go out to dinner or a movie.  If you love playing MUDs, tell your friends.  If you don’t like CMUD, then tell me and I’ll try to fix it.  Treat every new player that you meet in the game with kindness and try to help them so they will learn why we love to play MUDs.

Thanks for the interview Mike. I personally bought zMUD before I purchased a single credit on Achaea (my first MUD). I was a horrible typer in those days, and the scripting from zMUD let me become a pretty decent fighter. I even used a good deal of scripting to help automate repetitive tasks while building and running events as a producer on Imperian. Even though I no longer participate in combat or do any scripting these days, I still purchased CMUD when it came out.

I encourage everyone to support the CMUD product by either purchasing or helping out in their forums. My goal this year is to get the IRE games as synced as possible with CMUD to offer more features and enhancements to those of you playing our games with the Zuggsoft products.