[DGD]DGD and Melville

[John West McKenna]

>> It's confusing.  I'm not really sure why Melville does things the way it
>> does.

>For Deeply Philosophical Reasons. :)

[snip deep philosophical reasons]

Ah!  It all makes sense now.  If I was to start writing a MUD now, that's
the way I'd go.

My system isn't a MUD - it's a play-clone of a chat thing, and it doesn't
distinguish between users and characters.  The information you use to build
your character (player.c in Melville terms) is in theory meant to reflect
who you are in the real world.  In practice, sometimes it does and
sometimes it doesn't, and nobody cares.

The distinction between connection and user (it's not a game, so I don't
call them players) was put there originally just to handle people going
net-dead.  It turned out to be quite useful later when I added the Java and
tunnel interfaces (there are three ways in - the normal telnet interface,
the dedicated Java client with it's own protocol, and the mostly
transparent portal between the original system and my clone.  The three use
different types of connection object, but the same user object).

Having just one object does work.  It's much easier and less confusing, but
in the long run I think the two are necessary.  It's best to have them
there from the start - retrofitting connection objects was some fun I could
have done without.

John

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