I'm thinking about going from zmud to mush to buy a combat system here. Now, I only have experience in zmud and nexus. Soooo, I know nothing about mush. Would any of you know the pros and cons of each? Thanks!

Both clients have a large following here in Lusternia, which means you can get help fairly easy for questions you have with either.

I'm sure someone will list the benefits for Zmud, but here are some for Mushclient.

Mushclient:
-Free to use, though it is nice if you spend the ($10?) to register.
-Responds faster than Zmud (You can find the tests for this on both the Mushclient and Zmud sites, just gotta dig for it)
-Allows you to write your scripts in VB, Lua, Python, or Pearl.
-Free system (though not so good anymore) can be downloaded from these forums.

Zmud:
-More user friendly, though mroe restricted in script functions
-Has the option for flashy GUI's (Mush can have GUI's ported, but not as flashy as Zmud)
-More systems have been developed, though they usually cost a good deal more than Mush systems.

When I bought zMUD, it was $25, though the price is up to $30 now. When I bought MUSHclient, it was $20.

After having used zMUD and MUSHclient for good periods of time and developing combat scripts for both, I must say that I prefer zMUD still. It's definitely more user friendly, even for an experienced computer user or software engineer. I had a difficult time getting started with MUSHclient, partially because I had so many options on ways to create my scripts and couldn't decide how to go about it. I really missed my buttons, my mapper, and my easily updatable scripts (plugins are a bit of a pain).

You can technically use any WSH-compatible scripting language in either MUSHclient or zMUD, but MUSHclient definitely supports the languages better than zMUD. zMUD's built-in language does have a lot of power, despite the quirks and problems other people have in getting things to work. Like any language, in the hands of the right person it can do quite a lot and in the hands of the wrong person it can constantly screw things up. Heh.

MUSHclient:
- Faster loading
- Better language support (Lua is great)
- Not free software, despite what many people think

zMUD:
- Easier to learn and use
- More users means more support
- Automapper
- GUI buttons and gauges are very customizable

Why would MUSHclient be not free? It just requires you to wait a couple of seconds for loading.

Alot of users believe that it's respectful to pay for your copy. It's the best way to support a client you believe in. I registered and I suggest everyone to, but its free to use otherwise. there is no time limit on its use and nothing is gimped on it, you justh ave to wait the 10seconds for the load screen.

Ah, I understand what you meant by 'not free software' now. Well, that's true about being respectful, but for someone who really has no money to spend on games or anything on the internet, I have no choice but to freeload off them.

zMUD is certainly easier to learn, but I've found MUSHclient much easier to use in the long run. If you've done any scripting at all, you can apply that knowledge to MUSHclient, and if you haven't, it's simple, straightforward logic that's easy to pick up. I find zMUD's logic perverse for anything more complicated, and wouldn't dream of doing in zMUD some of the things I do very easily in MUSHclient. The speed difference is really noticeable for me, too. I've never managed to bog down MUSHclient, no matter how many efficiency no-no's I've committed, whereas I really notice slowdowns with zMUD. As for support, I give loads of it and so do others.

In brief, I love MUSHclient and I'd advise you to give it a try at least, since evaluation is free. Download Ethelon's free system, try bashing or sparring with it a little, then take a look at how it's put together. It may be out of date, but it'll still give you a good idea of what working with MUSHclient's like.

My major problems with MUSHclient when I was using it were the settings editor dialog being difficult to use (as compared with zMUD's settings editor with a more "natural" Explorer-like layout) and the plugins needing to be reloaded to pull in changes, which often screwed things up for me. The XML exports and plugins had some nice features, but it still just wasn't as simple and straightforward for me as zScript is.

If you want a free client, there are plenty of freeware or open source clients available for a variety of platforms with a variety of features. Nick only made MUSHclient nagware without disabling it because he didn't want to bog it down with copy protection and then have to deal with issues. I hope that one day he makes it trialware, at least. He deserves to be paid for his continued work on the client, and instead there are probably 10 unpaid users for every 1 paid user.