[MUD-Dev] newbie

[Miroslav Silovic]

Marc Eyrignoux <Marc.Eyrignoux at efrei.fr> writes:

> We will concentrate our efforts on doing something interesting for the
> players, something that really gets them involved within the game. We
> would like to create situations which encourage role-playing. It'll be a
> player-killer mud. Each player will belong to a God (one of us), and
> Gods will be allied, neutral or opposed to others. Players won't be able
> to know the god of other players, or will know it through role-playing.
> XP will hardly increase through fighting, but a lot through
> accomplishing quests or being what you're supposed to be (a good, loyal
> fellow? a fucking rogue?...) 

Probably more than 2/3 of the flames (mild as they might be) on this
list are caused precisely by disagreements on how to properly
stimulate roleplaying (probably because there is /no/ right way,
except possibly by player cooperation - although I'd like to see
PhysMUD++ in action before I make final judgement on that :) ).

> As a part of the client, I'm really interested with String-parsing. I've
> watched at what you said, and I would like to know how to get the GNU
> sources that JC dealt with. 

Any GNU archive ought to help. Do an archie search. :) On another
thread, I decided I liked compiler-compiler idea enough to squish it
into some 50 lines of obfuscated ColdC. :) Now I'll have to
featurize/optimize, of course.

> I would still like to know if a transactionnal database like Oracle is
> really efficient and usefull for what we want to do (a lot of NPC,
> descriptions, ..., but simple requests). Why don't you prefer separate

Oracle is probably very bad idea because its goals are completely
different from MUD's. In particular, MUDs need performance over
reliability (while for Oracle, reliability is the topmost priority in
all situations). Also, if you've already opted for C++, take a look at
some of the object-oriented databases out there (YOODA, for example).

> files? Another question for JC: what is an account/softcode negociater?

Wasting inodes. Wasting diskspace. Also, there are plenty of
single-file database tools which perform much better than your average
filesystem.

> More generally, what is the distinction between softcode and hardcode? 

Cultural. ;)

Seriously, by 'hardcode' is usually meant 'compilable binary code', while
softcode is written inside the MUD. I don't like this division, since some
MUDs can actually compile their internal language.

So I'd propose this: softcode = part of the MUD code that is editable
and replacable at runtime, hardcode = the rest of the MUD code.

> As my mud isn't really begun yet, I don't have many answers to give to
> the mailing list, but I promise to get more involved when I will feel
> capable to give programmable and realistic answers. A little something:
> my mud will be in french. 

May the force be with you. ;) Seriously, I considered running a
non-English MUD, but... English grammar, at least nouns, is regular
enough that converting to any other language meant *tons* of problems.

> I'm really happy to be in this list. 

Send us some notes on your design. :)

> Thanks in advance for the anwser.
> 
> 

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