[DGD]Ponderings, by jack handy

[James Bearden]

This may be a bit off subject as far as the driver goes, but I'm using dgd 
for my driver and I *think* most people use it for muds. I got to thinking 
about the way most people define their objects as living or non living. Most 
do it with a heartbeat tick type thing which as I understand it (I may be 
wrong) the objects just starts ticking at a defined rate when it exists. 
People use this for health regneration, decay, and various other mechanics.

I have created a skillbased system that relies on balance or roundtime, and 
I use the heart beat function to base it on. This brings up a question of 
resource and design. If I had npc's and pc's both inherit the 
heartbeat/skill array and create massive amounts npc's and pc's with their 
own ticks running because they are defined as 'living' objects in the mud, 
wouldnt that create some sort of effect on resources?

So then I thought, why not have one central time, and when something queries 
to go off balance it looks at the current time, and then ticks for the 
amount I want it to instead of constantly ticking.

Or would that be even more complicated for what its worth, if its even worth 
anything.

Ponderings
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