[MUD-Dev] World Persistence, flat files v/s DB v/s ??

[Ben Greear]

On Tue, 31 Mar 1998, Nathan F Yospe wrote:

> If all you're using is F=MA, there's no reason to compute motion when it is
> not being observed. Even with the partial gravity computation. I assume you
> use a third order two body equation of motion, for most cases, and a second
> order expansion of the Hamiltonian (using precalculated constants) for more
> complex systems. I would hate to think what the effect of doing a mass-mass
> force calculation and extrapolating would be. (And have I really been using
> sixth order equoms in my software for over four years? That's what this old
> software development file says.) I've been doing a much more complex status
> check (thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, friction depreciated mechanics, most
> of the complex elements of complex bodies, but only when they are observed)
> without having to keep anything but a bare minimum instantiated, po6 forbid
> actually computing it all. The nice thing about physics is, it all works if
> you watch it, but there's ways to get from point A to point B without going
> straight down the line. And they often amount to folding the map... without
> walking down the fold. In other words, calculate what you need to, estimate
> what you can, and fudge what you have to. If you do it well enough, noone's
> gonna ever find out. Or maybe someone will... "Hey, guess what! I think the
> server doesn't actually make a tree fall in the forest if noone is there to
> hear it! It just becomes fallen!"

I was speaking somewhat figuratively.  What I should have said was that I
hope to model a living, evolving, interesting universe (or subset of a
universe as the case may be.)  It would be a neat experiment in AI to
program something that achieved more than my pre-supositions about how
things should work, and yet still be sane.  First pass will probably
be pretty deterministic, just doing what I want it to do though...

> Java for the host? I'm using it for my clients now (got to see how well the
> Metrowerks java-to-native compilers for MacOS and Win32 work... they may be
> just what I need.)
> -- 

I'm banking on HotSpot, and barring that, dual Pentium Pro's or Alphas :)

I know Java's a dog on Linux, but if I can stand it here, the mainstream
OS's should do quite well.  I hate to think of developing on win95, but
maybe if I configured xemacs correctly I could stand it :P


I musta snipped it, but doing the AI on client machines is a great idea!
I'll have to think this one over....  That would go a long way towards
forcing you to be more realistic, but at the same time, I think your AI
would have to be much stronger because you couldn't use all the
(otherwise inaccessable) state info on the server....  You couldn't cheat
either, at least not so easily....

Still, worthy of some more thought....

Ben

> 
> Nathan F. Yospe - Aimed High, Crashed Hard, In the Hanger, Back Flying Soon


Ben Greear (greear at cyberhighway.net)  http://www.primenet.com/~greear 
Author of ScryMUD:  mud.primenet.com 4444
http://www.primenet.com/~greear/ScryMUD/scry.html