[DGD] DGD Commercial Licensing?

[Jas]

Stephen Schmidt wrote:

>Graphical MUDs are going to need a whole lot of bandwidth, or a
>design that really, really minimizes the number of images that
>have to be downloaded, and probably both.
>

Why not pre-install most of the image files on the player's PC, much the 
same as Everquest and other games like that are doing?

Essentially, the Everquest "program" is little more than a GUI telnet 
client with the image libraries pre-downloaded to the player's PC, used 
to connect to Sony's servers where the universe rules are managed on the 
server side (to reduce the use of memory offsets to cheat).

When Sony has a significant change to the image libraries, they sell or 
otherwise distribute the hundreds of megabytes worth of changes on CD as 
an expansion.  Then, smaller patches are downloaded to the player's PC 
as image libraries change incrementally.

I've played more than my share of Everquest (one of the big reasons I 
dropped back out of the MUD scene again for several years), and the 
several gigabytes of space the game consumes on my hard drive are likely 
the reason why I manage to maintain a decent FPS rate without killing my 
bandwidth.

>I think the hardware
>to handle that will be beyond the casual user (ie, me). This
>is something that will probably have to be done in the
>commercial realm.
>  
>

Still using Everquest as an example, a number of fairly-decent Everquest 
emulators are out there, allowing just about anyone to host their own EQ 
server on desktop-grade equipment.

The biggest "drawback" to running an emulated server (other than 
possible legal complications from locking horns with Sony) is that 
you're still playing with the "world" (zones) that the Everquest 
designers built.  And there's not currently an easy way for the game's 
"owner" to change other aspects of the game (such as adding new spells, 
creating new items, and so on).

But, it's only a matter of time before someone puts out a decent SDK for 
modifying existing zones and/or building new ones.  At that point, the 
emulated Everquest server will be about the closest thing to a graphical 
MUD that most of us would be able to afford the hardware to host.

>Steve
>  
>

Cheers,
Jason

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