byte-code anyone?

[Chris Gray]

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I'm now playing around (slowly!)
with some world-generation stuff. I've now got some code that mostly
manages to build a fractal world of arbitrary size, without using any
storage, and using only one seed value. There is still a *lot* of work
to be done on it, however (it's pretty cantakerous about settings). I've
been doing it within my MUD server, mostly because that's convenient - if
I mess up, nothing crashes, and the access to graphics is trivial (I need
Java, I know!).

My problem with the way I do it is that it is waaaay too slow. So, having
just finished reading the Java Virtual Machine book, I decided it would
be fun to add a byte-code system to my server. So, I've started out on
that. I've done sort-of similar things before, but never one quite like
this one (designed to do certain things as fast as possible).

Any general comments or discussions out there on this sort of thing? Have
any of you done true byte-code systems before? How did they work out?
I'm not looking for source code or anything like that - that would take
the fun out of it! That may sound a bit wierd, but keep in mind that I'm
in the MUD area simply because its can be a fun area to program in.


[On the subject of DB caches, I think I posted a summary of how mine works
a while ago, but could do so again if desired.]

--
Chris Gray   cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA