[MUD-Dev] Re: In game bulletin boards vs. Web based.

[J C Lawrence]

On Sun, 14 Jun 1998 13:29:34 +0000 (GMT) 
Matt Chatterley<matt at mpc.dyn.ml.org> wrote:

> It's interesting.. as is the notion of 'totally distributed' muds,
> where most of the work and thinking is done by the client, with the
> server providing a communicative medium.

Distributed servers seems to be a popular idea of late.

Within the last fortnight I've cauight mention and hint of four
distributed server attempts out there (outside of the still bubbling
attempt to make ICGnu distributed).  None seemed to be much beyond
the, "Umm, I got this great idea but don't know C very well, does
anybody wanna help?" stage.

One model, if I read the translated-into-english-by-a-poodle prose
correctly is looking at having no centralised server at all, but
instead having the clients dynamically find each other and dynamically
build a concensual state from all the world fragments from all the
server-style clients that are currently connected.  

He'd obviously put a fair amount of thought into the idea (wish I
could remember where I'd seen it), but didn't seem to adress the
traffic overhead concerns this model raises. 

As a new user connected, his "client" would search out others in his
network based on who was in the network the last time he connected
(and possibly using a DDNS or ICQ-like mapper) to attempt to
re-instate.  As soon as he connected he'd update everyone else in the
"net" with his world specs, and they'd reply with theirs.  The result
would be some sort of amorphous blob type thing constructed
dynamically at runtime representing the current client connection
state at that instant.

  "Whoops!  Castle Krak just disappeared!  I guess Bubba lost
carrier!"

Which could be interesting for the characters located in Castle Krak
at that time, albeit that he was looking more for a super-talker IRC
service.  

Another chap was looking at the central server with client-side
plug-ins, something like what Dr Cat has mentioned briefly ("special
characters" can create private worlds in the main world), but with the 
difference that the master copy of the private would would be located
on the player's client and would auto-update and resolve against the
copy on the central server upon connection, thus allowing the world to 
be developed in-abstentia of the server.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...