Vt concern - wilderness/overworld/overmap

Azer · Post by **Azer** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 2:54 am

I use zMud, and FK's VT feature to display a minimap while I'm travelling outside of cities so I can see the road.
At night, the minimap disappears (..because there's no light) unless I hold a lamp, which gives me a much smaller minimap. This reduced minimap shows 9 icons: me, and the terrain of the 8 surrounding squares.

However, without the VT feature at night, there's no way at all to tell what terrain types are surrounding you- just "darkness" for each exit name, even if I'm holding a lamp.

So people with the VT feature have a great advantage over users without it, in being able to see terrain, and most importantly, roads at night.
I'm not sure which clients support VT (I'll check telnet soon), zMud will soon start griping at me for payment, and I'll probably move on to another client. This worries me because I don't want to lose my travelling ability.

Could some feature be added/changed that evens out the VT/non-VT travel? Perhaps showing terrain tiles for non-VT users instead of room names if a light is carried (North - "Darkness. Plains." etc), that way the room name won't be shown.

Lathander · Post by **Lathander** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 5:11 am

The version of zmud that you can download from FK is a very old one, however you are allowed to continue to "evaluate" it with no end.

Zach · Post by **Zach** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 5:36 am

Well Lathander. I think I can say that you are off (corsses his fingers)
The VT interface shows what you would see when you "look <direction>" as far as the VT interface shows it would show
Nearby
Farther by
really far

supper far

Donno what the exact words are... but each marker distance from you on the VT is how far you can see...

Now that, that is out of the way... onto the explination

When you "look <direction>" w/o the VT interface while holding (or having a light source) you can still see what the space is. Whether it be a road, forest or what not. With the VT interface you just see it on the interface w/o having to type "look <direction>"

If you do not have a light then the VT is blank as it is when you type "look <direction>"

*Prayes he is right and to not get hurt by Lathander*

Andreas · Post by **Andreas** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 5:52 am

It makes perfect sense to me considering that one "square" on the overland map is representative of 30 square miles. You shouldn't be able to exactly determine the nature of the surrounding terrain beyond line of sight.

Glim · Post by **Glim** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 5:56 am

I am not sure exactly what Zach is referring to, but as to Lathander's suggestion, it should work fine.

Free AND VT compatable. Gotta love it.

Zach · Post by **Zach** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 6:01 am

Zach was saying that when you do not have the VT interface... you can not see the rooms around you... only darkness

But on the VT interface, you can see the rooms around you on the minimap.

But you can see the rooms around you when you type "look <direction>"

The java client Fang is also very awesome and I love it! it's all I use....fast, easy, free, usible on all OS

Azer · Post by **Azer** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 5:58 am

Ah yes, apologies- I didn't realize that the room name did display when you do Look <direction>.

Last thing (I promise): the ? that denote entrance areas on the VT minimap aren't visible from doing Look <dir>, and I personally spent many newbie hours wandering around wondering how to get to that farmhouse people were telling me about. The only way to view an entrance area without VT is to be in the room itself, as opposed to several rooms away with VT.
Erm, however, I can't think of any reasonable way to fix this, and suggest that it just be ignored :P

Isolrem · Post by **Isolrem** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:36 pm

I've never gotten used to zMUD, although it is of course a very effective program, I still use something very basic but handles things perfectly.
PUTTY (search putty download on any serach engine) takes about 2s to dl, requires no installation, and has no serious disadvantages EXCEPT that when it launches the VT interface, it will only display 100 lines inside the vtbox (i.e. no log of previous events). I've never found this to be much trouble.
I guess my point is, it shouldn't be too hard to become VT compatible.

edit: almost all roads can be seen without a light (whereas other terrain are darkness). Travelling the main roads without a light is not impossible even without the VT interface.
Besides, why are you wandering around without lights, considering the RP thing to do would be to set camp, build a fire and rest?

Zach · Post by **Zach** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 10:17 pm

zMud is like using a car... to kill an ant... FK being the ant. It is a semi advanced program to run something a text basic as FK.. fang is PERFECT!

Azer · Post by **Azer** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 11:23 pm

Isolrem wrote:Besides, why are you wandering around without lights, considering the RP thing to do would be to set camp, build a fire and rest?

It's not a roleplaying concern, it's a technical concern. Whether or not I'm roleplaying at the time, the problem persists.

Vt concern - wilderness/overworld/overmap

Vt concern - wilderness/overworld/overmap

RE: Overland Travel