[MUD-Dev] RP=MUSH/PG=MUD

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <33c08c90.129757984 at relay.mnsinc.com>, on 07/05/97 
   at 02:14 PM, caliban at darklock.com (Caliban Tiresias Darklock) said:

>On Tue, 1 Jul 1997 19:59:09 PST8PDT, clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

>It seems that the actual development of
>servers isn't being addressed here; just the implementation of them.

Nope.  You just missed that traffic -- a lot of it happened back last
year and a little at the beginning of this year.  Unfortunately none
of the new crowd, such as yourself, have started such threads (excl
this one).  QUite a bit of base discussion on the methods of apporach
of a MUD server went on.

>Development implies a progression which I just don't see happening.

Lets have a look at this:

>>I don't see that the field is in a state where it can support this 
>>sort of effort.  

>That's been bothering me, too, which is one of the reasons I haven't
>offered up anything of any particular value. The ideal appears to be
>unacceptable; therefore, the actual implementation of something
>approaching that ideal (which will certainly not be a perfect
>reflection of the ideal's concept) would also be unacceptable. 

Nahh.  I view it more as if you'd jumped up on a bandwagon in 1980 and
proclaimed that we needed a unified, standardised definition of Unix,
and Unix compartability (cf Posix and Xopen).  It is a great idea.  It
would have been entirely unworkable back then, not due to any inherent
technical difficulties, but due to the field itself not being mature
enough to support such an effort.  Xopen back then would have been an
answer looking for a problem (which is what its doing now in some
ways).  Before you can launch such a project or answer you must have a
problem to address which is agreed upon as a problem by enough people
to support it as a valid answer or attempt.  Otherwise its all hot air
and aborted half-dones.

<<I'd love to be shown that the MUD field is more mature than this
BTW>>

>I had
>been hoping to at the very least locate a few people who found the
>idea interesting and were willing to discuss it in greater detail,
>gradually refining it from a generality into specifics. 

The list still has under 50 members (AFAIR) with the majority of the
members lurking with less than one post per month (some have never
posted).  Its a pretty small public, and a very artificially selected
public.  You're likely to get odd responses here.

>The specifics
>I have in mind are definitely flawed, in that they result from one
>person's experience and not several. A quorum of one is not
>statistically relevant or representative. 

One tactic that I've found successful is to go out there and actually
do something, or propose a model, basic design or concept.  It tends
to get better response ("Yaahh!  That sux!"  "Hey, how about diddling
it like XXX?"  "YYY did something like that, but different as so...")
than sticking a toe in the water and asking, "Anybody interested?"  

A possible recent model of this sort of process to look at is the
mini-thread evolved from my basic idea of how to model Rank Points. 
Its gotten moderate interest and significant extension for an
off-the-top-of-the-cranium idea I threw on the wall.  Another good
example might be the neighborhood thread which Brandon started tho
that one has degenerated due to lack of proposal or commitment on how
to model the neighborhood grouping (R*-Tree, Nathan's barrier'ed areas
etc).

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...