Hi all!

Thanks for filling out a long, 6 page survey on Mudlet. We’ve had a whole 162 responses – a tremendous amount of feedback that we appreciate. Let’s dig into it. First, some context:

We have a long standing, dedicated player community that uses Mudlet often. This is great!

Why players choose Mudlet

Next, why is Mudlet a choice for our players?

An interesting leader emerges – more than 2/3rds of all players like Mudlet for its scripting capabilities!

Close followers are the fact that Mudlet works where you play (be it Linux, macOS, or Windows) and the fact that – as we’re happy to hear – it is easy to use.

This was an question where you could fill in your own answers too – and we’re happy to see recognition of the accessibility work we’ve done in the past making an impact.

Scripting: a core feature

Since scripting capabilities are the reason why most people chose Mudlet, how are they coming along with it?

Most folks are making use them as expected! About 12% just use the script editor’s visual interface to create aliases/triggers without writing scripts, and 7% don’t do any scripting. The rest have found it too challenging to work with – something we could improve upon. In the meantime, check out the introduction to Mudlet scripting which is is a beginner-friendly way to get started!

Onboarding and new user experience

Moving onto the next question, which is quite important for Mudlet as MUDs are a niche –

The result is very respectable! But I believe we can do better, and need to aim higher. If we were to thrust Mudlet in front of a complete beginner, as we have done before, we know that the results are not that stellar.

One way we’re tackling this is by working on including a tutorial profile. If you are a professional UI designer with experiencing in building onboarding approaches, reach out to us!

Favorite and least favorite features

Next, on the question of the top favourite feature in Mudlet, the following were a hit:

• Scripting (Lua) – powerful, flexible, and easy-to-learn scripting language that enables deep customization.
• Mapper – highly praised automapper that simplifies navigation and enhances gameplay.
• Geyser / customizable UI – tools for building and personalizing interfaces, gauges, and layouts.
• Packages / package management – easy sharing, importing, and reusing of scripts, triggers, and profiles.
• Community & documentation – helpful guides, examples, and active support that make learning accessible.

What about the ones that weren’t popular? What are some features players tried but stopped using? The mapper takes the hit here, unfortunately. While it is very popular with some, others found it difficult to configure it for their game. Otherwise, multi-line or chain triggers were tough to setup, and the fast-scrolling debug console / sounds on Linux need improvement (will be improved).

Features not yet present in Mudlet but desired? These were ChatGPT/AI support, easier mapping and easier scripting, and a copy/paste that does not include newlines added for wrapping, setting the buffer/scrollback size via UI (will be added), more tutorials of chain/filter triggers (will be added), more tutorials of multiline triggers (will be added), and support for languages other than Lua were common answers.

Features present but not desired and should be removed? The large toolbar (which will not show by default in the the next update for next profiles,

Discord has clearly taken over our forums as a place to seek help, and our wiki remains a close second. And, something new for 2025, AI services are making a big impact on assisting players with Mudlet!

Does Mudlet itself need help?

Thankfully, no. The vast majority of our players believe Mudlet rarely crashes and works just fine.

Mudlet interface

Is the Mudlet interface working out fine?

A lot less people think so, just about half. A third would like to see a refresh. This sounds like we should keep things the way they are but put in place modern icons (the originals are from 15 years ago!) and do other small UI improvements to keep things modern.

Now an interface could look modern, but is it simple and intuitive to use? Those are two different things.

This is the first question where we really didn’t do so well. Half of the players think the interface is good – which is an okay result. A third believe that it would be simplified, and 5% don’t believe that it is up to par.

We’ll take these learnings going into the future – what we design needs to be simpler, not more complex. We also need to have a look back at the current design to see where we can simplify things – which we have started on, for example the introductory text in the script editor will be smaller in the next update.

That said, we’re not professionals in UI design, so we’re doing our best. Echoing the call from earlier – if you are one, reach out to us.

The toolbar for searching and quickly accessible options – which can be toggled with Alt+L – is controversial as well, and likely doesn’t fit into the modern aesthetic of clean, uncluttered interfaces.

Mudlet mapper

Moving onto the Mudlet mapper now:

Quite a few players use the game’s built-in maps or no maps at all as opposed to the Mudlet mapper. In part this is due to the Mudlet mapper not integrating very well with some of the more unique games out there, and in part this is player preference. The former is something we can improve upon.

The 3D mapper, which has far less features than the 2D mapper and is far clunkier to use, unsurprisingly has very little uptake. That said, there is recent interest in modernizing it and improving it, so stay tuned.

How about the UI controls to the mapper itself?

Unfortunately, they didn’t get a passing grade. Zooming is a persistent problem, and otherwise a lot of the controls need to be made more intuitive and simpler.

Having the mapper work out of the box for a new game is not many the majority of players have been able to do either. The mapper needs to be better here. This is also one of the reasons why we require that any new games in Mudlet’s default list have a working mapper.

Scripting experience

What about scripting, the feature that most Mudlet players use Mudlet for?

The most popular way used by 3/4ths of the players is by looking at the errors – be it in the errors view, or in the main window (an option you can enable). Print debugging comes a close next, and small percentage of people – 15% use external editors to develop their scripts. A few pray to the LLM of choice to debug it for them.

The statistics button is not that popular at all, and probably should be a Mudlet function you can call rather than taking up UI space.

How about the errors view button?

This one gets a lot more use, and few people choose to echo the errors directly on the main console – confirming the fact that it’s a good idea to keep this off by default.

What about the Debug window?

This one gets a lot less use. A common point of feedback is that there is no way to filter output there at all, making it incredibly spammy. This is something we will improve upon.

On the subject of scripting:

Quite a few people know about packages.mudlet.org and make use of both the package and module managers.

Now, while earlier we asked about the Mudlet interface, and got a clear answer that it could be simpler, what about the amount of features the client has overall?

The answer is clear – we have a pretty good balance right now, and there is room to add more.

That said, along with the 3D mapper, there is another feature that is hardly used:

This is IRC, an old messaging format that is supported by Mudlet. We’ll remove options to launch it from the main window to save screen real estate (and simplify the interface), and instead add an API function to launch it for the small minority who do make use of it.

Overall player satisfaction

In the question of Any other comments, suggestions or feedback?, these 5 themes emerged:
1) high demand for a mobile version: an iOS app for iPhones and iPads, same for Android.

2) accessibility and newcomer-friendliness: while Mudlet is seen as friendly for initial setup, players find it becomes difficult once they move beyond basic customizations. Feedback calls for more beginner-friendly guides, wizards for creating UI elements (like gauges and bars), a less complex mapping experience, and more features that don’t require knowledge of Lua scripting.

3) improved scripting and development environment: power users desire a more robust and modern development experience. Suggestions include better tools for organizing scripts into modules, support for other scripting languages like Python or web languages (HTML/CSS), improved documentation on the scripting engine, and easier ways to manage, sync, or port profiles and scripts between different computers.

4) core functionality bugs and stability: several players pointed out long-standing issues with core client functions. The most frequently mentioned problems include incorrect handling of line breaks when logging or copying text from the output window, client crashes (especially when the system lags), and a desire for a quicker release cadence for stable bug fixes to address these persistent annoyances.

and finally, 5) user interface modernization: there are requests for a visual refresh (e.g., new icons – will be added), more powerful and intuitive features like an advanced search panel, and making complex features like the mapper and UI creation more user-friendly. Some compare it to features in older clients (like ZMUD’s 2D mapping) or suggest entirely new paradigms (like a terminal-based UI).

We will take this feedback into account – thank you! Make sure you are using the latest Mudlet to get all of the improvements and fixes! if you can’t use the latest one for some reason on a modern computer, let us know.

And finally… how happy are players overall with Mudlet?

The results are great! 8+ is a great score to have and we are very happy at this excellent result :)

In fact, the players who answered this survey love Mudlet so much, that 99% would recommend it to others:

Thanks so much, everyone!