[MUD-Dev] Re: Alternate UOL's

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 6 Aug 1998 10:55:41 -0500  
Koster, Raph<rkoster at origin.ea.com> wrote:

>> From: D. B. Brown [mailto:dbrown1 at stny.lrun.com] 

> In Meridian 59 I regularly saw 8-10 people on screen at one time
> in social gatherings... In UO we regularly see 30-40, with peaks
> at over 100. In text muds I also see regularly 8-10 with peaks of
> 30-40 in a single room... you're going to need to handle more. :(

Prior discussions on this list (I think between Dr Cat and I) have
raised mentioned the spectre of flash crowds.  IIRC It was Arthur C
Clarke who first coined (or at least brought it to popular
conciousness) the term in one of his pieces dealing with the
implications of readily available matter transmitters and high speed
inter-personal communications.

The base features of his flash crowd scenario were simple:

  1) People tend to react to sensationalism.

  2) The more easily people can communicate, the faster rumours
travel.

  3) High (near instant) mobility.

MUD's (can) satisfy all those requirements.  Let's take a simple
scenario

  > who
  ...list of 2,500 players ellided (UOL's max per shard AFAIK)...
  > l
  Tiamat is here!
  You sword severs Tiamat's jugular!
  Tiamat is dead!  (Nobody has ever killed Tiamat before)
  > shout "I killed Tiamat!  Yippee!"

Now 2,500 other players see:

  >
  Bubba shouts, "I killed Tiamat!  Yippee!"

A fairly large proportion of them are going to do:

  > teleport to Bubba

Resulting in:

  > l
  ...list of 1,800 player characters ellided...

Controlling teleport abilities, as well as any other fast travel
capabilities will do a lot to handle this.  They won't prevent it
however.  Consider the demonstrations that took place on UOL not too 
long ago with several hundred players in attendance at Lord British' 
Castle.  

MUD's provide a perfect venue for ad hoc social organisations.  If
those organisations attept to do something en masse ("Ok, everybody
log on tomorrow evening at 5, and we'll all march on the castle and
kill the PK'ers!  We'll scare the crap out of them!") you are in
line for flash crowds.

> Some sort of LOD (level of detail based on total poly count) or
> something like what Shiny's Messiah engine is doing is really a
> must, but that adds significantly to your development time.

<nod>

It also doesn't scale worth beans.  What are you doing to end up
with?  4 poly shapes for each object when the working set gets too
large?

>> Not that a 3D system will be easy, but it's a better alternative
>> than trying to put together a 2D system and rely on a steady art
>> income.

> Tiles are easy, really (comparatively speaking); your figures to
> run around on them are the hard part. ;) Buildings fall somewhere
> in between.

As I've recently discovered, the man types sooth.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...