[MUD-Dev] Re: META: What are you looking for in this list?

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

J C Lawrence wrote:
> I'm actively considering posting the next monthly MUD-Dev advert
> (suitably reworded) to rec.games.programming, rec.games.design, and
> possibly an IF group as well as rgm.announce/admin.

What about the artificial life groups? (carefully reworded?)
 
> > I think it would be beneficial if the list focused more on the
> > issues which aren't discussed on other lists.
> 
> I (and others) have discouraged this as we see one of the major
> benefits of a more open topic definition as the cross-pollination
> between fields.

But what is the main focus of the list?  Is it to promote new designs, to
evolve existing designs (polishing the surface) or to aid new
implementations of existing designs?  I sortof hoped that the main focus was
to promote new designs, hopefully RADICALLY new (Including Caliban's
roll-your-own-windows-mud-with-little-pain vision).

If not, then basically my whole curriculum and the extension of it would be
on topic? I personally fail to see how discussing "Is the fixed dimensional
array evil?" under the topic "let's call it a spellcraft" can possibly be on
topic on a mud development list? Let me be somewhat more specific. Here are
some issues which I have run into and struggled with on my own in the MUD
design process:

- how to represent a portable pixel for maximum efficiency
- how to make an abstract API for object local protocols with maximum
efficiency
- how to efficiently cache and update client objects
- how to handle exceptions (errors) within the engine
- how to write a flexible 2D renderer with antialiasing
- how to render thousands of spheres
- how to generate parameterized images
- how to make a simple real time 2D layout algorithm with constantly
changing
  constraints
- how to organize and write clean c++ code (still working on that one)

Are these issues on topic?  And what about minimal spanning trees, traveling
salesman problem, bucket/grid algorithms etc?  There is a sillion issues
which can be related to MUDs...  I just hope that those with the radically
new visions don't stop posting to this list if/when it is flooded with such
issues, because I haven't seen them anywhere else.

(note: I don't imply "radically complex" when I say "radically new
visions".)
--
Ola