[MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds

[Michael Hohensee]

Chris Gray wrote:

> 
> On the technical issues, yes the couple of Meg for graphics and sound verus
> the 1K or so for text does sound like a big difference. What I had always
> envisioned is a MUD which requires a CD on the client machine. The big
> stuff (models of the objects, monsters, etc.; textures, sounds, music
> scores) would be on that CD, and the client engine would generate the
> multimedia show from that and from much smaller dynamic stuff sent from
> the server (possibly in the form of some kind of script). Think of the
> scripts for a play, that say in very general terms what actions are to
> happen, what lines actors say, what the music score is, etc. That's the
> kind of information I see the server dynamically creating and shipping
> to the client.
 
Alternatively, graphics could be sent in the form of ascii code which
describes how a ray-tracer or other rendering engine on the client side
is to draw the scene.  See my webpage (perpetually unfinished) for an
example of what could be done.

It only takes a few seconds for the ray-tracer to draw a good little
scene from any viewpoint within the world.  It wouldn't be a purely
graphical mud, but it'd give you the consistency you're looking for. 
Incidentally, such a system would quite neatly solve the problem of
which objects should be shown to a player in a co-ordinate based world
(just don't reflect light rays which travel more than X units away from
you).

Heh, maybe we should work on optimizing a ray-tracer. :)


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