Hi everyone.
Thought I should drop in over here to introduce myself. I’m the player responsible for making the Geas MUSHclient and the VI soundpack. Thanks Frowen for linking me to these forums.
Looking back over some of the comments here I hope I can give you a helpful explanation of the soundpack, how it came about, and what’s next for it.
How the Soundpack came about:
The Geas MUSHclient and soundpack was and has been my first attempt at coding and writing plugins. Prior to attempting this, I knew nothing about coding whatsoever so work on this project has coincided with me slowly learning and improving my ability to design features and solve problems in lua.
I started working on this solo as a player of the MUD and for my own purposes. I’m not an admin there. The resulting client is not anything developed by the admins of Geas. Just me, a player with a bit of free time a couple of years back.
I also didn’t set out to create something I could release as a downloadable client. That is something that happened along the way as fellow players began to express interest in it. So this is why the package looks the way it does. It is a subset of what I personally use, with all the quirks and experimental design choices included.
Does it work?
It does but people have had a variety of results from it - some have been delighted, others frustrated. Most people I have spoken to tell me it works for them, but they have had to troubleshoot bugs and crashes. I am sorry about those bugs.
Why is it buggy?
A few reasons:
A. my lack of skill coding and refining the plugins to the MUD
B. my lack of free time to contribute to this project
C. the need to revise some early design choices which calls for more of A and B
What could it be in the future?
This was the first attempt. It’s rough. But it could be amazing.
As a game, Geas is perfectly suited to an immersive soundpack. The combat is slow and realistic enough that every swing of your weapon matters and sounds can put your right in the action. I feel like the game world is also greatly enhanced by ambient environmental sounds, and the roleplay amidst sounds like that that is all the more vivid.
Next steps:
I honestly started playing with the soundpack idea thinking there’d be little interest in it from others. The Geas player community back then was quite small. It has grown a lot since then, and I’d like to see it continue to see new roleplayers find us. For that reason, I think there are three things I could do from here:
Idea 1
As I said, I think the way forward with this is to revisit some of those early design choices that are largely responsible for the instability and issues people generally have with it. I have some ideas here, and I think they need discussion with the Geas admins as well as other players first. Knowing my time constraints (as others) this is probably a longer term goal.
Idea 2
Troubleshooting guide - I could write up a set of clearer installation instructions and help files for the current packs. This might go some way to getting people up and going with the soundpack. It’d take a bit of time but I could knock this over without too much issue, if it helps.
Idea 3
Simplified download - I could package up a simplified download of just the necessary plugins and the sound files for the soundpack. This would be a plugin file, not a zip file of the full mushclient. The current packs include a bunch of stuff in addition to the soundpack. Things like an extensive mapper and simplified hp prompts. This would have those features stripped away.
Happy to take some feedback and suggestions from the forums here, or if you've already joined us the MUD has it's own player forums too. As someone else mentioned we have a discord group and a slack group with a bunch of regular players too. Let me know what you think would be the best way forward from here.