[MUD-Dev] Re: OT, kinda, but yay :)

[Jon Leonard]

On Fri, Oct 23, 1998 at 03:31:00PM -0500, Koster, Raph wrote:
> I am holding UO: The Second Age in my hands... :) The new retail
> edition. Always nice to make it to the end of a product cycle!

Congratulations!  That's really cool.

> ObOnTopicComment:
> 
> You guys thought about multiple language support for DevMUD? :) If
> you're gonna support Unicode, decide now...!

Unicode support is a very good idea, especially since it doesn't require
much more than changing which versions of library functions get called.
(strcmp, etc.)

That reminds me of another idea I've toyed with from time to time:  Machine
translation in a MUD.  If you force all player communications to be in a
form that the server can understand (that's the bad part), and have an on
the fly text generation system, then you can allow players who don't even
speak the same language to communicate, at least in character.

The big problem is the immense amount of work invoved in writing natural
language parsers (even restricted ones) and the output text generation.

It also imposes certain kinds of structures on the internal workings of
the mud.  It's no longer possible to create a room by just filling out
the text descriptions, for example.

Jon Leonard