[MUD-Dev] Re: Wild idea.. :)

[Damion Schubert]

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Greear <greear at cyberhighway.net>
>So, who here is considering writing a server that talks (only)
>with a graphical client.  And not just a web browser.  I'm talking
>fully 3-d rendering with all the assembly (or whatever) that goes
>with it.


Heh.  Been there, done that (or at least I watched while some
very savvy coders been there done that =)  The server isn't 
complicated.  Meridian's server is so generic that the game 
was originally an overhead view Ultima IV style game before
it was converted to the Doomlike engine it now has.  The only
real unique problem that we had was that your server must 
handle a much higher amount of traffic, since instead of 
handling room-to-room position, you're handling minute (x,y)
position changes  - and a very high number of them.  

>I personally, don't know diddly about high end graphics, or even
>non-java GUI programming, so doing such a client would be out
>of my real.
>
>Does anyone know of any (GNU or similarly licensed) thing that
>might function as such a client, if one could supply the back
>end?


Depends more on what you want, I suppose.  The genesis3D 
engine is the best freeware engine that I've ever seen 
(http://www.genesis3d.com/)  However, it's probably not suited
to having hundreds of players in the room at a time - that's a 
relatively unique problem to have to face at this point.  Doom 
can handle dozens of sprites at a time, and that source is
freely available (http://www.idsoftware.com/), as is the source
for Descent (I think).  http://www.pxsoftware.com/  Some people
have taken the Descent engine and given it directX support
(http://www.descent2.com/patches/d1_3dfx/) Dunno if that
code is available, though.  Naturally, using these engines has
their own host of drawbacks, the least of which is that they are
somewhat dated. =)  Also, if you aren't doing a game that's 
indoors (or at least, on the surface), these engines will be pretty
useless.

If you want more information about 3d programming, I 
heartily recommend this site > http://www.angelic-coders.com/.
They're pretty DirectX centric, though.

>I'm picturing a large number of servers (100+) connected
>either over either 100bt lans, or possible over a much slower
>internet link, with each server being a part of the whole, though
>it is transparent to the end user (at least as much as possible).


This is your bigger problem =)

--d