I'm looking for alternatives to Nexus for my MUD client, in case the title of this thread didn't make it clear. One forumer, Vhaas I think, recommended I try out ZMUD, which I did. Unfortunately, I didn't like it that much, mainly for these reasons:

• Lack of GUI stuff. In Nexus there were a couple of graphical features I came to rely on that really (I believe) increased my survivability from 0 to 1 - bars for XP/health/mana/etc., and the compass that showed the exits for the room I was in. In ZMUD there were no such features, or they were buried under so many menus that they were the proverbial needles in a needle factory. Supposedly, I've heard, there are automappers in ZMUD, but again, I didn't have the foggiest clue how to use them.
• Easy to mess up scrolling and windows. For some reason, ZMUD is allergic to autoscrolling. Whenever I manually scroll up to look at past messages, it then becomes impossible to tell when something current happens because then all autoscrolling stops and the text no longer advances, unlike Nexus. Also when you log into Lusternia the main text window is split into two sections - I can get rid of one section, but it'd be better if I could stop it from doing that in the first place.
• Too many menus and features to sift through. Honestly, if ZMUD is the most user-friendly of all the MUD cliets out there, I don't see myself graduating from Nexus. I can log on easy enough, but after that...yipes.

However, I do know that Nexus is pretty much holding me back - as far as I know there's no curing system for that, and I get overwhelmed with text easy so I know I need a curing system. As easy as making a curing trigger is in Nexus, it'd take eternity and eight days just to scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg that is making a effective curing system. But I just don't know any user-friendly alternatives out there.

That's the main thing I'm looking for: user-friendliness. Well, cheap too - I don't want to have to spend more than $10 on a MUD client ($10 is the price of your typical Xbox Live Arcade game, for comparison). And of course it has to support a curing system too, as, well, that's the whole point of wanting to upgrade from Nexus in the first place. So, I'm looking for a MUD client that's all of these.

I know...one doesn't exist, right?

Well, what's the next best thing?

To make it simple on you. MUSH with Treant. It has a neat map in the upper-left corner to navigate with and it even comes with some custom built bars for health, mana and ego. It's readily available, and so many people use it that you're no doubt gonna get plenty of help setting it up.

I personally vouch for MUSH and Treant. I use them

Upper-right corner. The Map also updates as you move (uses the MAP command as you move)

Sorry. Brain-fart. But yeah, if you CONFIG MAPVIEW ON, the map will be automatically moved to the upper-right corner, so you can glance up there whenever you're unsure of where to go.

It's worth noting that no client will inherently have the ability to do health bars and so forth. That's something nexus was specifically designed to do, using the ATCP protocols.

Many people have replicated this in multiple clients through coding, though.

Also: MUSHclient is free, and will do basically anything you want it to do. There is entire threads dedicated to helping people with questions regarding it, and there are systems that other people have written which they will give away for free (Treant comes to mind).

There's no reason you should have to pay a penny to anyone for the basics.

Or you could be crazy like me and start coding a system on CMUD.

I can think of other words more appropriate, after my experience of having to start from scratch on MUSH because CMUD was incredibly slow, even on my bleeding edge machine.

One reason why CMUD turns out so slow its because if you use too much EVENTS, it'll slow down considerably. I've been using it and its been rather satisfactory. Its not slow for me. Reason is, I dont use so much events, only for important stuffs like prompt and herbs. :3

Its fast! Really

All those problems with zMUD are rather strange. I had issues with it myself, but nothing even close to what you describe. Makes me wonder just how you tortured it...

I recommend MUSHclient highly, even though it has a little steeper initial learning curve. It's very stable, very fast, has very powerful scripting, and it's very well supported by the author and the community. And, it's free.

Has anyone played with Mudlet yet? The screenshots look nice, and the concepts behind it and the built-in scripting are interesting, but I haven't actually downloaded it yet. Is it actually ready for real use yet?

It's not something I'd suggest to Parabollus though. He's better of getting MUSH and Treant for free. Simple, easy and very powerful.

I used Mudlet for the first time last week. To put it simply, it's not ready yet. It's got amazing potential, but there are still a lot of little issues and missing bits.

Hokay, just got MUSHclient today and Treant. I followed the instructions to set up Treant on this page here, and I think I got it set up correctly. I got it so that when I double-click on the MUSHclient icon on my desktop it connects to Lusternia automagically (though I still have to log in as my character once connected, of course) and initializes Treant right then and there.

So...I got that part out of the way, figuring it out with the help of that page. But...now I need to figure out how Treant itself works...it's hard to know where to start. I guess one of my first questions is how do I get the automapper? After that, what else do I need to do to get the full benefits of the system? How does it work anyway?

Bottom line is I just don't want this to happen:

From what I understand (and mind you, I don't use it) the basic Treant package just cures afflictions. Nothing more. So, to make it work, you make sure you have a full set of cures at all time, and you let the system know what skills you have. I don't know if you just type AB or some magical alias or what.

I don't think anyone told you this yet, but if you are not accustomed to coding (and by accustomed, I mean good at it), MUSH is a nightmare. I'm terrified that I'll have to switch once I can no longer update my current ZMUD system with simple fixes.

People make too big a deal out of this. Yeah, the GUI is a bit antiquated. Yes, you're going to have to learn a supported scripting language (Lua, for example, has an extremely light learning curve). It's nothing you didn't do when you sat down to learn zscript.
Mush is lightweight and very fast. The only time I've seen it crash is when it was my damned fault for looping. The documentation is very well done and the creator answers questions on his forums quickly. It's really not that bad.

I never sat down and learned zscript. I picked it up as I went. I played on MUSH for three months and I avoided tampering with the system because I knew I could not work MUSH. Lord knows I tried. Maybe not a "nightmare" but nexus to MUSH will be pretty freaking close.

You may be right, but there are a couple of things to consider here: first off, is cost. MUSH is free, whereas ZMUD is not; believe me, if I had the money to spare to get the high end programs that make MUDding easier, believe me, I'd buy them, but alas, I do not. Second thing to consider: documentation and support. Although I'm not a good coder/programmer (tried to become one in college and failed miserably ), if I have clear enough instructions on how to code something, I can do it. I just can't code on my own, is what I'm saying. With the amount of Lusternian player documentation and support out there for MUSH, I can get all the instructions I need to do what I want in MUSH, and can carry them out as long as they are clear and concise to get the desired results. Just don't expect me to code my very own systems; while I know that's pretty much a requirement to become a top-tier combatant using MUSH, I didn't join Lusternia to become a top-tier MUD combatant.

I am but a simple man after simple pleasures.