[DGD] Persistance

[Noah Gibbs]

--- Robert Forshaw <iouswuoibev at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm wondering how useful having a persistant
> MUD is.  I think of it as a 
> luxury, since most MUDS don't have 100%
> persistance.

  Very true.  It's a very *useful* luxury, but a
luxury.  Kind of like a washing machine and dryer :-)

> I also think of it as a 
> luxury to be able to clone and inherit from an
> object.

  I assume you mean from the same object.  That is, I
assume you're referring to that thing that you can't
do in the Kernel Library.

> One situation might 
> be to have a collection of standardized objects
> which you can clone or 
> inherit. [... orc example ...]
> Isn't that also a luxury?

  Yes it is.  That one you can do with or without the
Kernel Library.  Phantasmal allows something like it,
though it's not standard.

> It can't hurt to reboot once every few 
> weeks, can it? Anyone have advice?

  Nope, doesn't hurt to reboot every few weeks. 
*Does* hurt to reboot every time you need to make a
bug fix or minor code change.  That's the big deal --
if you do the full-persistence thing, you can change
the code in place.  And that makes releasing the code
far less painful since you don't need to be 100% sure
that it will work for weeks before you deploy.

  It's actually really useful to have a bunch of
friends log into your MUD and debug *as they do
things*.  In a normal MUD you rarely do this because
every time you fix a bug, they need to all log out
while you restart the server.  In a DGD MUD you can
recompile the server from the command line (Phantasmal
has a "%full_rebuild" command which lets you do this),
incorporating (and testing!) the bug fix instantly.

  It's a fine debugging technique, especially if
you're doing things that require several people to
test.  Saves you typing and headache, and keeps your
testers from getting mad at you after the third
reboot.

  Not that that's the *only* use of full persistence,
but it's one of my favorites.


=====
------
noah_gibbs at yahoo.com

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