[MUD-Dev] Re: Current Projects

[T. Alexander Popiel]

In message:  <199810090651.AA24151 at crl5.crl.com>
             Alex Stewart <riche at crl.com> writes:
>
> * What kind of software are you working on? (MUD driver, MUD client, etc?)

I'm hacking on PennMUSH, one of the three popular MUSH servers.

> * Why?

Sometimes I wonder.  I think that it's pretty much for reasons of
reputation these days, combined with a helping of perceived duty
and egotistical pigheadedness.

> * What are its features?

Large user base.  Persistent data store.  Low-barrier scripting
language (it's easy to learn incrementally).  Multiple "competing"
implementations.

> * What does it do (will it do) differently than other things do?

The scripting language actively encourages resource sharing through
event rescheduling... although nobody thinks of it in those terms.

The scripting language is largely unreadable once written.  For
instance, line breaks are actively discouraged, and whitespace is
treated in peculiar fashion.

There is nearly no distinction between the scripting language and
the end-user's command language; they are one and the same, with
the exceptions of socket-oriented commands like LOGOUT.  (The
end-user command language is a strict superset of the scripting
language.)

It is as easy to make declarative scripts as procedural ones.
(I've never seen anybody do it, though.  Perhaps I ought to
as a demonstration.)

> * Any neat concepts involved?

Not any more.  Some were neat when first introduced.

> * Any boring concepts being used in neat ways?

There's a fair number of interesting algorithms used internally,
but those aren't visible to anyone who doesn't read the source.

- Alex