[MUD-Dev] Re: PDMud (was Re: Bruce Sterling on Virtual Community goals)

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Niklas Elmqvist wrote:

> Maybe this is a good time to survey how many people on this list are ready
> to pitch in on a project like this and contribute? Oh, and the list will
> be the perfect forum to tell our war stories as well as bounce some ideas
> and design issues before implementing them.
>
> Btw, I've been with the list for a while and am surprised nothing like
> this has happened before(?). It seems like an almost logical step.

Well, I've been toying with the idea of suggesting some collaboration for a while,
but as I don't have any spare time until mid 1999... Anyway,  I'd like to
contribute with some coding if needed, but not in a fixed server framework. I'm not
really thinking in the general MUD server paths and it would thus be a waste of
energy. We need many DIFFERENT MUDs!

I'm not interested in user-programming, so the syntax of the internal language is
no big deal for me.  The object-model is!  And I don't really think I could get
into any kind of general agreement on this, as the most fitting object-model (and
execution) depends on the world you envision! :-/

What I'm looking for is a set of efficient and independent modules which
constitutes a very reusable build-your-own-mud library.   (stuff like spatial data
structures, efficient client-server messaging...)  (interfaces in C++ for the
server and java for client?)

If one could get into some agreement on a minimal basic class hierarchy (client,
user, avatar, item, world map??) then maybe...  Yes, I know LP does... blah blah
blah :-), but I want something efficient. I want data structures optimized for what
is likely to be useful. With 2D/3D, you really have to be careful about what you
are doing.  If it's going to be slow then I can just roll my own mess! :)

Although I like the PD approach... What are you going to do if some company
(Microsoft or someone owned by them) rip you off and even kills your startups with
competing projects using YOUR code :-)? Maybe one could do something like this: PD
if noncommercial. If commercial you have to make a significant contribution (as
determined by the initial workgroup, relative to  the size of the company). Thus,
if some big company want to use it, then they have to improve the VM or whatever...
There is no point in doing free work for companies that can afford to pay, but
collaborating small startups is a good idea?

Another approach would be to make it more of a research project trying out new
approaches. One approach would be to make some sort of MUD-optimized
query-language-engine or event-trigger-collision-engine.  That is, perform
calculations in batch, cache prior queries/calculations etc.

*shrug*

Ola.