[DGD] Letting the players code stuff

[Felix A. Croes]

Noah Gibbs <noah_gibbs at yahoo.com> wrote:

>   This is something I thought about long and hard.  The short answer is that if
> you don't want players to be able to crash your MUD in some way, you're going
> to need to create an interpreted language within DGD.

Let's not forget that LPmud originated in exactly this way -- a type
of mud where players can become wizards (programmers).  You can choose
to install reasonable safeguards using rlimits and perhaps something
like the resource management of the kernel library, and just live with
the occasional crashes produced by code that is bad or malicious.

In the latter case, the mud was protected by the not insignificant
investment of game time needed to play your way up to wizard (though
unfortunately, the standard mudlibs tended to have gaping security
holes which allowed you to gain wizard level in a matter of minutes).
Exercising restraint in whom you grant programming privileges to may
well have the same result.

Regards,
Dworkin