[DGD] Where did all the players go?

[bart at wotf.org]

On Tue, 12 Dec 2017 08:15:38 -0800, Raymond Jennings wrote
> I was informed by a public post from ChrisA that one of the side
> effects of a persistent world was a load of junk left behind in
> Marrach, including but not limited to heaps of scrolls, and piles of
> food items that should long since have decayed.

Yes, this was why I mentioned how a persistent world more or less requires
enforced decay of things. I made some pretty extensive design for truely huge
game world with 'managed persistence' where things left alone may decay or
otherwise get returned to the 'resource pool'. Managed in that some items
might take pretty much forever, others will take a short time.

As the core for this game world would be generated from a map (either
generated or a 'real' map provided as a file), all the persistence is based on
layers on top of the generated world, where each layer has a different rate of
decay.

<snip>

> One of the features they could have used DGD for was a persistnet
> world...and they wound up implementing it with a hierarchial
> save_object/load_object structure, plus a few daemons to pick up on
> changed .c files.  Was actually pretty amazing to see how they'd
> worked around missing what DGD has.

Been there, done that, including the replacing of outdated objects and clones,
transfering internal state (and while at it, saving and reloading internal
state over reboots). It can be done, but quickly becomes a mess.

Yet, when all a game needs is player inventories persisting between sessions
and over reboots, its often what lpmuds do. And while I really like the idea
of a persistent world, many classic muds don't seem to need one, and for
example due to your first comment, it might not even be desirable (WOTF still
needs work on dealing with random junk lying around)

> 
> ...and as a wizard I had not succeeded in avoiding what seems to have
> become an in-joke on their mud.  That of accidentally nuking every
> tree in the world.  Seems to have turned into a rite of passage for
> wizards.

Been there, done that... :-)
Its a risk inherent to most recomile and replace setups. I did at some point
manage to protect my own implementation from this, but.. that was after it
having gone wrong more than a few times.

Bart.

> 
> On Tue, Dec 12, 2017 at 7:24 AM,  <bart at wotf.org> wrote:
> > For me, it has taken quite some time to wrap my head around the concept and
> > implications of persistence. The first thing to realize is there being 2
> > different kinds of persistence involved.
> >
> > - persistent server
> > - persistent world
> >
> > You need the first to build the second, but the fir5st does not imply the
> > second, there is value in having a persistent server without a persistent
> > world in that you can do updates to the mud without needing 'reboots'.
> >
> > With regards to persistent worlds, from a classic lpmud point of view, this is
> > typically about 'preserving inventories 'between sessions, and possibly across
> > reboots.
> >
> > While those can be useful if not desirable features, this is really not what a
> > persistent world is about. On a mud implementing a persistent world, you could
> > drop something on some out of the way location, and given nobody walks by and
> > picks it up, it will still be there 10 years from now. Not needed for every
> > game, actuall not even desirable for some games. But for roleplaying games,
> > this can be quite valuable. For games which let players build their own world,
> > this is highly desirable. AT any rate, a persistent world also more or less
> > requires dealing with 'enforced' decay of things, ie, the house a player built
> > should, unless maintained, over time become a ruin, and in due time, 'nature'
> > should take it back and return the location to its original shape.
> >
> > This requires being able to maintain the state of every object potentially for
> > many years.
> >
> > Bart
> >
> > On Tue, 12 Dec 2017 03:33:08 -0800, Raymond Jennings wrote
> >> I probably don't have to remind everyone of Castle Marrach and
> >> company taking advantage of persistence and runtime upgrading.
> >>
> >> I still have high praise for Skotos Tech for those...and I wasn't
> >> kidding when I've often said in the past that they've inspired others.
> >>
> >> Second Contract for one
> >>
> >> And for antoher, Noah Gibb's very own Phantasmal which I only
> >> inherited when he was overwhelmed by real life.
> >>
> >> Kotaka's inspiration goes without saying.
> >>
> >> On Tue, Dec 12, 2017 at 3:29 AM, Felix A. Croes <felix at dworkin.nl> wrote:
> >> > bart at wotf.org wrote:
> >> >
> >> >>[...]
> >> >> In all fairness, unless you have been running a persistent mud for quite a
> >> >> while, or done live database conversions on a running system or such, its
> > very
> >> >> difficult to realize what really needs to happen.
> >> >
> >> > Sometimes new ideas are simply not accepted.  DGD has had persistance and
> >> > runtime upgrading for more than 20 years now.  This doesn't fit into the
> >> > LPmud view, and probably never will.
> >> >
> >> > Regards,
> >> > Felix Croes
> >> > ____________________________________________
> >> > https://mail.dworkin.nl/mailman/listinfo/dgd
> >> ____________________________________________
> >> https://mail.dworkin.nl/mailman/listinfo/dgd
> >
> >
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