[MUD-Dev] Re: [IDEAS] Starting from scratch

[T. Alexander Popiel]

In message:  <813EBA1AF80CD111B44F00805F15B46501566952 at itntl-msg02.itntl.bhp.com.au>
             "Leach, Brad BA" <Leach.Brad.BA at bhp.com.au> writes:
>Franklyn Colebrooke, Jr. wrote:
>> What I will be using is MSVC++ 5.0 (will get six when it's released)
>> Win98.
>> 
>I would go for NT if its an option for you. Win9x seems plagued with
>instability problems.

And even NT needs to be rebooted about once a week (or more, if
you're running anything more than the OS).

>Just on the topic of maintainability, has anyone implemented the
>platform-independant server code using a design pattern of the "Bridge"?
>(Design Patterns, Gof) I prefer to work on a Unix platform, but my
>co-imp likes Win32. The "Bridge" seemes like a nice pattern to solve
>this problem, but at what cost of performance?

'Fraid not.  All the server bases that I've worked with are not OO,
due to legacy, and unlikely to change.  (Plus, I have some severe
philosophical differences with OO.  Little things like not being
able to add methods to canonical classes... and subclassing is not
sufficient because the library routines return String, not my subclass
of String.  At least in non-OO I can make strfoozle() and have it
used like any of the canonical routines...)

Having said that, I'd expect the bridge to add only insignificant
delays compared to the network connection speed, if implemented
at something like the whole line/whole command level, and you're
doing something with the moderate bandwidth requirements of a text
MUD.  Streaming graphics or anything like that will probably be
enough to make you regret a bridge, though.

- Alex