[DGD] New to List - Some questions

[Stephen Schmidt]

On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Deathdog The Assassin wrote:
> 3) I mentioned doing development, but I'm stuck with figuring out how to
> actually use this thing.... where do I start?

First decision you need to make is whether you want to build a
mudlib completely from scratch, or build on top of the kernel.
There is a great deal to be said for building over the kernel,
but speaking as someone who's trying to do it himself, it's
quite difficult. Docs do not exist in any great quantity. If
you build over the kernel, asking a lot of questions on this
list is probably the best move. It is on my task list to write
some docs on how to do it, but I have to learn how first :)

If you are not building over the kernel, best bet is to study
the existing libs, including Phantasmal (which I'm not familiar
with) and Melville (which I am), the latter having at least
some documentation and internal comments which may help.

> Will  DGD allow me to code, from the ground up, a complete multi-user system,
> tailored exactly how I want

Pretty much yes.

> Should I maybe just do something with a custom app?

I'd avoid that. I play a couple games like that and the problem
of ensuring that your custom app compiles and runs under lots of
Windows systems and configurations, not to mention non-PC
environments, is a real drag.

> I want to know if DGD
> can do exactly what I want, which is to make a real-time multi-user game
> for which portions of said game can be accessed and interacted with using
> a web browser as well as a telnet client. Does that make any sense?

I've looked fairly seriously at this. The short answer is yes, except
that the web browser interface has some serious limits. Standard
html will not allow push technology, and MUD type games need it
to implement "tell" and "say" commands, and to display the results
of one user's actions to the other users. You're probably looking
at writing some Java code to handle messages incoming to the player
(or supporting a telnet client within your web frame, or something
that allows the game server to push a message back to the user).
The advantage to using Java, though, is that you don't have to worry
about getting it running on each user's system. If they've got their
browser running, Java works too, at least until Microsoft can destroy
Java (don't get me started on that ;)

If I was doing this, I would unquestionably go with the web and
Java approach.

I will suggest, optimistically perhaps, that the best thing to do
would be to create a very minimal web interface mudlib for DGD,
put that into public circulation for people to play with and help
you debug, and then go to the big project.

Steve Schmidt



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