[MUD-Dev] Net protocols for MUDing (was: Moore's Law sucks)

[Vadim Tkachenko]

Chris Gray wrote:
> 
> [Adam Wiggins:]
> 
> :I haven't thought this through real thoroughly, nor attempted any complex
> :or hairy scenarios.  I'm sure once I do some problems will pop up, but at the
> :moment it seems much more appealing than the usual unresponsive clients.
> 
> The tricky things are those that have effects on other players. What if
> the ship hitting the wall causes an explosion that effects other ships
> nearby? Or, if the upwards swerve causes it to hit a ship above it? Then,
> you have the problem of having to cause a player's ship to blow up because
> of something that, to them, happened a second ago, and they thought they
> were already safely past. You might get your players used to that happening,
> but then you might not.

Pretty realistic - today my wife was driving and had to brake real hard
not to hit the guy who changed the lane right before the red light. We
stopped, thought it was over. Two seconds later, the next car hit us
from behind.

What I would do in such a situation is not to give the user the 'it's
over' feeling, but just defer the complete decision about what is really
happening for some reasonable amount of time, depending on the network
delays.

Say, if it's a spaceship, I'd pretend to have some sort of a self-check,
which takes some time to complete and switches on in any dangerous
situation. And, if your fuel tank got hit, you don't explode
immediately, do you?

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

--
Still alive and smile stays on,
Vadim Tkachenko <VadimT at 4CS.Com>
--
UNIX _is_ user friendly, he's just very picky about who his friends are