Whoa, slow down, thats a mouthful of questions! I'll start with perhaps the least interesting answer first, who. Me! As you may have gathered, my name is Matt, and I'm a mudder. Oh, and a student in the United Kingdom, too. I may or may not add a more detailed bio at a later date. You can contact me at: neddy@itl.net

'What' is perhaps easier to answer, as you may have already guessed the answer. Spod! is to be a mud client which will hopefully put a new twist on an old theme, so to speak.

Why? Why not? No, seriously, Spod! began its life when I was thinking about creating a custom client for my own mud, but I rapidly saw ways to expand it outwards into something that would be more useful for the whole mudding community. Also, I have yet to find a GUI client that I like (on any platform, but particularly Linux/X11 which I use most of the time), and certainly think there is room for growth in this area.

I hope to have an initial alpha-release of Spod! out in March, in time for the alpha-test opening of my own mud. This version is unlikely to have any special features (and will probably be lacking in many basic ones). I don't predict a 'stable' release in 1998 at all.

Spod! is to be implemented in Java, for three main reasons. Firstly, I've been wanting a real programming project in Java for some time. Secondly, the multi-platform implications are fantastic for an application like this, and thirdly, I really like some of the elements of Java and some of its other implications (this ties into the first, I suppose).