[DGD] Re: Small note plus a draft FAQ

[harte at xs4all.nl]

Quoting Greg's message from 23 Dec:

<< Sending my comments to the list, so others can respond as well >>

[...]
| This document isn't an FAQ on LPMuds in general.  George Reese produces an
| LPMud FAQ which is posted to rec.games.mud.lp and rec.games.mud.announce on
| a regular basis.  Nor is it an FAQ about Muds in general.  Jennifer Smith
| posts a Mud FAQ to rec.games.mud.announce regularly.  If you are seeking
| information on Muds in general, or LPMuds in particular, I refer you to
| these documents.

Are these documents available using ftp or http?  If so, URLs would be
useful.  Similar for this document itself, giving an URL pointing to a
place where the most recent version is available.

[...]
| To be more specific, DGD is written with a minimalistic philosophy and
| provides no mud or game specific code such as other LPMud drivers provide by
| default.

Add something like this?

  "Instead you are given the opportunity to write your own 'basic look
   and feel' with the auto- and driver-object (whose purpose is
   explained further on), on top of which you can then build the rest 
   of your game or other application."

[...]
| For this task you will need a C compiler, the gunzip/gzip program, the tar
| program and the patch program (should you wish to install the patches --
| and you really do).  These are standard on most Unix-like systems.  You
| will also need to select the appropriate HOST Makefile -- see doc/Platforms
| for more information on selecting the appropriate HOST setting for your
| machine.

A reference to GNU patch here could be useful.

  ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu

Or something like that, the preferred hostname may be different, not
sure.

[...]
| net-10		Often known as the networking kfuns this package contains
| 		kfuns which allow DGD to open arbitrary numbers of telnet,
| 		tcp or udp ports.

How about something like this:

  "The network package extends the IP networking features, allowing you
   to open/close TCP ports, start outgoing TCP connections and receive
   and send UDP packets."

[...]
| The driver object is the interface between DGD and the mudlib.  It is loaded
| before any other object and is the only object not to inherit the auto object.
| Various "applies" (see the LPMud FAQ -- these are functions called by DGD) are
| called in the driver object by DGD in response to various events and are 
| expected to perform various tasks.

How about adding this:

  "This includes such things as dealing with compile/runtime errors,
   calling, compiling and inheriting objects, etc."

[...]
| Can I compile my LPC to C?
| --------------------------
| 
| Yes, you can.  This must be done at the time the driver is compiled though,
| one cannot do it on the fly.  Look in the src/lpc for more information
| concerning this.  The 2.4.5 mudlib simulation contains a good example of
| how to do this.

  "You can do it 'almost on the fly' though, using statedumps where  
   you dump state with the bytecompiled version of an object in use, 
   shutdown, and then boot back up with the precompiled version of that
   same object."

One last suggestion:  Number all questions, sub-sections, etc, so that
                      you can easily refer to them without wasting any
                      words. :)

Erwin.
-- 
  Erwin Harte - Programmer :   Unix is an operating system, OS/2 is
                           :  half an operating system, Windows is a
  Email: harte @ xs4all.nl : shell, and Dos is a boot partition virus




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