What clients exist for playing the Realms of Despair?

As MUDs run over telnet I realize that any telnet client can be used to log in to the Realms of Despair, however there are more feature rich ways to experience the game.

What clients are available for Windows 7/8 or the major Linux distributions?

What are the major highlights of each?

Solution 1:

• Mudlet is also a very nice open source client that is specifically designed for mudding, and has integrated Lua scripting.

• Lyntin is less a client, and more an agent framework, build on Python 2. It's no longer maintained, but some kind soul has converted the SVN repo from Sourceforge to a Github repo, so it can potentially be forked and updated to Python 3.

Both run on Linux and Windows.

Solution 2:

There are many clients which will work with modern operating systems. While any telnet client will work, they lack the features which have been integrated into mud clients over the last 10 years or so.

Web Based There are java and flash based clients on the Realms of Despair web site which are officially supported. They, of course, lack the features of a dedicated client but are the easiest way to get up and running.

Windows

• ZMud - no longer supported, Zmud was a very popular choice for many gamers. It is still available and has a large support base. Though not officially recommended for Vista or above, it runs fine for many by default, or in compatibility mode for many others. The biggest tweak needed is to set up a trigger to send a command about every 45 seconds so that windows will not close the connection.

• CMud - the updated version of Zmud, also no longer officially in development, it is at least still supported. Available from Zuggsoft it supports all the advanced features you could ask for such as mapping, triggers/scripts and so forth. I've experienced some instability with window resizing under windows 8 and it also requires the stay alive technique described for Zmud.

• MUSHclient - a freeware client that is still actively supported at the author's website, it is best known for its' ability to use a wide variety of rich plugins. These plugins range from semi-graphical interfaces to database connections. The main gripe against this client is that it does not seamlessly incorporate a method of playing multiple characters simultaneously. A fast, stable software it is excellent for running automated characters (bots).

Linux

• TinTin++ is an open source client available for both Windows and Linux. It supports mapping, scripting, triggering and so forth.

macOS/Windows/Linux

• Mudlet - good, modern option. Open source, very fast, powerful trigger and scripting engine with lots of documentation and examples, customisable mapper (with a 2D and 3D views), and a really big user community.

While many other clients exist, these seem to be the ones that get the most attention and support. With the advent of Lua being used as a scripting language more and more of the scripts are becoming portable between the clients, allowing for more personal preference, but the vast majority of the historically available scripts are written for a particular client. A list of other clients is maintained here.