[DGD] DGD/MP 1.0

[Felix A. Croes]

Matt Holmes <matthew at wildfiregames.com> wrote:

>[...]
> I guess what I am saying is: DGD MP is an awsome achievment. In my mind 
> it's a HUGE step forward for MUD development. But to compare it to a 
> multi-million dollar software development effort like the WoW server 
> core is like comparing apples to oranges. They aren't meant to do the 
> same thing or even remotely the same thing. Sure, you can water it down 
> to "They are both online platforms", but I think you and I both know 
> that is misleading. A Porsche 911 and a Ford Mustang are both cars too, 
> but they barely compare beyond that level.

No, you don't understand.  The only difference between MUDs and MMOs,
from the point of view of the server, is one of size.  "Millions of
3D calculations per game session" mean nothing; it's been years since
floating point calculations strained a modern CPU, and in any event
most of them happen only on the client.  The server just receives,
processes and sends out data, and it doesn't matter if that data is
text or something else.

DGD/MP is aimed squarely at large commercial MUDs, MMOs if you will.
It will compete with other "multi-million dollar" middleware in that
market.  I intend that DGD/MP shall be used for MUDs/MMOs with a
number of players per server well beyond what a WoW shard supports.
If it cannot, I will consider it a failure.

Let's take a look at how large a "large" server could be.  In 1997,
Ultima Online handled 1000-2000 players per shard, with (if I recall
correctly) a 20 machine cluster for each shard.  Let's say that 1000
players per cluster is a reasonable number for 1997, and scale it up
along with the increased speed of hardware following Moore's law; the
number we get is more than 40000 players per shard in 2005.  Even
allowing for the fact that the number of players won't scale linearly
with the improvement of hardware due to increased interaction between
a larger number of players, I would expect that the number of players
per shard could be well above 7000.  Moreover, assuming the
capabilities of DGD/MP on 1997 hardware, I do not consider 1000 players
per shard as all that impressive.

Regards,
Dworkin