Documentation, guides, examples of conversions from other clients for common functions.
I haven't played with the client recently, but I do know that when I recommended it to friends as an easy way to jump into the game from wherever they wanted, the lack of real documentation made it extremely difficult.
A quick glance at http://client.imperian.com/help/ tells me that there's been some strides made there, but it really needs to be expanded beyond that. Each section is only a quick overview, when in reality, someone who is completely new to scripting (the kind of person generally using the Nexus client) needs much more information than that. Maybe some detailed videos or step-by-step guides to building the kinds of tools players generally use?
The other clients benefit from having experienced players who have spent years learning the fine details and constructing guides - in the absence of these, the only way you're going to make the nexus client as workable is to begin constructing that library. I see that 'reflexes libraries' are now supported, but none are provided beyond movement keys. Replicating a lot of the often used game functions and making it much easier to find these files would probably go a long way.
http://nexus.ironrealms.com/Main_Page is the new help that the Help button will be linking to soonish - very much a work in progress, but it has some things already.
Python support is rather unlikely - remember that the client is entirely browser-based. There are some browser versions of python, but providing hooks for these would be either impossible, or more trouble than it's worth.
Your documentation is insufficient for newbies. Look over your help section on aliases. Now ask yourself the following question: "If my mother tried to make an alias to DSL+Flare her target with strychnine+strychnine with no prior experience and ONLY this section for help, could she do it?"
Keep reworking the documentation until that answer is "Yes".
That aside, the biggest problem you have is inertia. Most of the existing players use Mudlet or CMud and so most all the support available is for those clients and so most of the newbies who stick around will be directed down the Mudlet path because it's free. This is a problem you cannot realistically overcome, because it's unlikely that you'll make your client offer enough to justify people abandoning their current setups to switch to the Nexus client.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I don't really know what the underlying problem is, but the one time I rolled my fledging system into group combat, the client just didn't handle the spam all that well... after that I stopped.
I need to be able to eliminate and replace the windows. I have zero need for an achievement or quest window, but it would be fairly useful to have a visible text editor window or a message inbox window (like we can do on the website, click to delete/move to new folder). I'd also like to be able to resize elements like the box frames. I have a huge screen and decorative elements take up a ton of space. Being able to have more of the main window and less giant health/mana bars would be pretty dang useful in combat. Being able to reorder how things show up in the room inventory section. Sometimes, knowing who is in the room is more important, other times, seeing the items or mobs will be more important. Alternately, get rid of the dividers and make the headers smaller.
Better documentation for scripting. More examples. A sample system would be useful for people to learn from.
That aside, the biggest problem you have is inertia. Most of the existing players use Mudlet or CMud and so most all the support available is for those clients and so most of the newbies who stick around will be directed down the Mudlet path because it's free. This is a problem you cannot realistically overcome, because it's unlikely that you'll make your client offer enough to justify people abandoning their current setups to switch to the Nexus client.
Yeah. We are not trying to convert anyone from their favorite systems. Just trying to have a client that a newbie can use and not feel like they have to switch to another one in order to compete. We will keep working on that documenation though.
@Zaveesi Custom windows aren't supported in the client (yet) but because the client is written in HTML5 if you're good with javascript it's possible to add one yourself. It's something on my wishlist and if it doesn't get supported officially, I'm planning on putting together some unofficial add ons.
A good thing to look at is the "client" object in your browser's console. It has a number of useful functions that are not documented, but that you can find if you play around with the source js file. Here are a few examples:
client.scrollback_msg_limit = 2000; //Ups the scroll back dramatically
client.start_log(); // Start the log
client.volume = 0; // Never play sounds
I put these in my onLoad function to have them automatically apply. Obviously remember that when you're going outside the normal spec, you could have unintended consequences, but there is a lot to play around with if you know where to look.
I've attached two simple packages that can be used to see how some more advanced features may be added to the client.
Notifications -- If you allow notifications on your computer when prompted it will pop up a 5 second notification for each communication and flashes the title bar when you're on a different tab. This has a number of customizations, such as to ignore certain people or channels, or set the pop ups to all the time or only when not on the tab. (Customizations reload every time you log in)
Windows -- Allows you to create custom tabs that you can send arbitrary text to. One example is included that takes any line starting with "Debug:" and moving it to the debug tag.
Garryn may add similar functionality to the client in future versions, these are more just to give people an idea of some of the things that are possible in the client as is. (If similar functionality is added, be sure to disable these so as to not duplicate the functionality)
Comments
I haven't played with the client recently, but I do know that when I recommended it to friends as an easy way to jump into the game from wherever they wanted, the lack of real documentation made it extremely difficult.
A quick glance at http://client.imperian.com/help/ tells me that there's been some strides made there, but it really needs to be expanded beyond that. Each section is only a quick overview, when in reality, someone who is completely new to scripting (the kind of person generally using the Nexus client) needs much more information than that. Maybe some detailed videos or step-by-step guides to building the kinds of tools players generally use?
The other clients benefit from having experienced players who have spent years learning the fine details and constructing guides - in the absence of these, the only way you're going to make the nexus client as workable is to begin constructing that library. I see that 'reflexes libraries' are now supported, but none are provided beyond movement keys. Replicating a lot of the often used game functions and making it much easier to find these files would probably go a long way.
Python support is rather unlikely - remember that the client is entirely browser-based. There are some browser versions of python, but providing hooks for these would be either impossible, or more trouble than it's worth.
Your documentation is insufficient for newbies. Look over your help section on aliases. Now ask yourself the following question: "If my mother tried to make an alias to DSL+Flare her target with strychnine+strychnine with no prior experience and ONLY this section for help, could she do it?"
Keep reworking the documentation until that answer is "Yes".
That aside, the biggest problem you have is inertia. Most of the existing players use Mudlet or CMud and so most all the support available is for those clients and so most of the newbies who stick around will be directed down the Mudlet path because it's free. This is a problem you cannot realistically overcome, because it's unlikely that you'll make your client offer enough to justify people abandoning their current setups to switch to the Nexus client.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I need to be able to eliminate and replace the windows. I have zero need for an achievement or quest window, but it would be fairly useful to have a visible text editor window or a message inbox window (like we can do on the website, click to delete/move to new folder). I'd also like to be able to resize elements like the box frames. I have a huge screen and decorative elements take up a ton of space. Being able to have more of the main window and less giant health/mana bars would be pretty dang useful in combat. Being able to reorder how things show up in the room inventory section. Sometimes, knowing who is in the room is more important, other times, seeing the items or mobs will be more important. Alternately, get rid of the dividers and make the headers smaller.
Better documentation for scripting. More examples. A sample system would be useful for people to learn from.
I mostly just want to have a way to set what appears in those boxes. What's in there now is less useful to me than other things might be.