SlothMUD's Flash Client

[*Splork*]

We are very excited to introduce our very own browser based, flash client. We are using this for all of our applications on Facebook and Myspace and it will also be used to login from our home page. You can check it out with the links on our front page to play.

The flash client is based on Fmud, a program written by Matt Adcock and we would like to send him our sincere thanks.

The client has several incredible features including triggers, macros, and actions. It also has a settings box which can be used to customize colors, font size, and the like. Once ingame, helpfiles will be automatically shown in popups and this feature can be turned on or off inside the settings option. The map button displays our very own dynamic map with a listing of where each player and epic creature is. Much of the players information is shown in the upper left hand box and the player's health gauges are displayed in the center left hand box. If a person is fighting a mob, the creatures health status is displayed in a graphical bar in the left hand column, and the creatures name is displayed as well. Another nice feature is the little map in the lower left hand corner, click the directional exits to move!

I eventually plan on having the Avatar button lead to a popup showing your character in a full set of whatever equipment they are wearing. There are also several other smaller features I will be adding soon.

Either way, we are hoping this helps attract a few new players to our wonderful game. I really hope you guys like this as I have been working on this for nearly a year and consider this my gift to a game I love. We realize this is not a client a real player would use but we are hoping it helps get a few newbies hooked to our game before changing to Wintin or Zmud.

Enjoy,
Splork

[Kismet]

So far, I really like this flash client, thank you for offering it =) I was thinking on the tracking where you have your name, class, level, gold, etc... Perhaps you should AC to that, and I thought maybe Stats Would be good there also.

Or maybe just give an option to track certain things there. Add another tab under settings, so you could toggle having your Stats/AC there, and maybe remove one of the under options if you did not want to track it.

Not sure how difficult this would be, or not. I still like it as is, but just a thought

Thank You!

[*Splork*]

Here is a website which will help those of you using the new flash client:

Edit: link died

There are instructions and videos on how to create triggers, actions, etc.

Enjoy,
Splork

[harvey]

First off, I'd like to say that the flash client looks really nice. I think that the design will appeal to people that haven't ever played text based games before.

On to a question I have. I'm not sure this is the best place to ask it, but as it relates to your flash client I guess it'll have to do. I really like having the target with HP percentage bar. I looked around in the various setting and at the mxp stuff, but I wasn't able to see any way to get that information sent to a client other than the flash client. I was hoping to try my hand at constructing a sidebar similar to the flash client's bar for a different client, but if I can't get the target's health info somehow It'll kind of ruin that plan. So, can other clients request info about the current opponent, or is that something that had to be specially set up and only works on your flash client?

[*Breeze*]

splork would be the only one that knows the proper answer to that atm.

half answer is yes, there is special infos sent to the flash client

[*Splork*]

For the moment, this is a feature for the flash client only. Most likely we will add this to MXP and possibly another sort of output since not everyone has MXP.

The point of our flash client was to make it as friendly and attractive to players completely new to text games and we felt this was a much needed feature. We have had hundreds of visitors from both Facebook and Myspace and kept a handful of them. At any given moment, there is between one and five people using the client. Not great numbers but respectable. Remember, the client is just to get them hooked to the game, eventually they would most likely switch to a better client such as Wintin.Net or Cmud.

Splork

[Breezewood]

Love the flash client. Any possibility of getting separate windows for channels?

[*Splork*]

Ive updated the flash client once more. The map box is now functional. Ive only created a handful of maps currently, as Im learning the different types of software to create them, so it is a very slow process. Hopefully the quality of the maps will increase, as my skills do. My goal is to create one map a week until Valkyre is completed.

Currently, Newbatia, Bal Harbor, Newbie College/Guilds, and Blaster's Temple has been created. Here is a small screen shot:
http://www.slothmud.org/images/splork/flash_client.PNG

For those of you using other clients, feel free to test it out at
http://www.slothmud.org/Sloth_Client

Hope you guys like it, this part is taking a ton of effort and time!

Enjoy,
Splork

Next step after maps:
Avatar button which will have a personal avatar which wears, removes, and shows which equipment you have on and in inventory.

[Magi]

Excellent! We finally have proof that Splork is evil! (Alignment -961)

[*Splork*]

A few newer versions of the flash client have been done for quite some time, here they are:
http://www.slothmud.org/Flash/
http://www.slothmud.org/Flash_TwoV2/
http://www.slothmud.org/Flash_Two/


I will put a link to the first one on the front page,
Splork

[Akaya]

Very nice

[cnl]

It looks like a lot of amazing great work was put into the Flash client - but now that Flash has come to EOL due to Adobe sunsetting it - is there anyway to get access to the data the flash client used ie for its live maps etc?

Are there some .xml files or other updated data files out there that can be hooked into via URL or other means?

[*Breeze*]

all the data it used was sent inline with the text the players see.

its a flag on the character if i remember right.

will have to look at the code to see which one exactly

[*Splork*]

Hola!

There were no .xml files. The maps were named exactly as they are in our area files. When a person moved to a certain area, if that area file was found in that directory, it would display.

I looked a while back on the game machine and the maps are still there...

[cnl]

Thanks for the info Splork!

Based on that and with a little poking I see the maps are coming from http://slothmud.org/Sloth_Client/maps/ - keyed off area vnums I assume.

the epics mob query pulls data from http://slothmud.org/support/mapserverClient.php - not sure if this is "live" livedata or delayed from mud. I'll have to compare it to Squip's epic checker next chance to see if its accurate.

the idea of integrated maps is interesting but of course the challenge is the massive amount of work required to both create all the maps and then map room vnums to co-ordinates on them.

I did play around with Mudlet to see how hard it is to combine a background with a map and its doable although I'm not sure how I feel about the results