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

[Chris Gray]

[Vadim Tkachenko:]

: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.

I'm not convinced the two are equivalent. In the MUD case, full evaluation
of the situation by the "ahead" client indicated that the incident was
over, but then action by the "behind" player has an effect which undoes
that conclusion. My instinct says that you are going to run into some
very difficult to solve problems. I don't have a more extensive example,
however.

: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?

No, but once your fuel tank is hit, the physics of the situation proceeds
apace and it explodes. Look at it the other way around - the action by
the "behind" player prevents a quicker explosion, that the "ahead" player
has already seen. So, the "ahead" player sees his ship start to explode,
and then a second or two later, the explosion is mysteriously cancelled,
with no record of it every actually happening. As a player, I'm not sure
I'd like that.

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