[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.

[Petri Virkkula]

>>>>> "Raph" == Koster, Raph<rkoster at origin.ea.com> writes:

Raph> [And yes, right here someone is going to say they implemented
Raph> remembering every room visited, or every room remembering who
Raph> visited it, and don't have that problem, and once again I'll
Raph> shudder at the data storage their mud entails. 

	I couldn't left this one unanswered ;-)

	Our system contains multiple LPMud save files, one per "area"
	(in the practice per wizard). They take 1.3MB disk space, and
	not all of them are in the RAM at the same time (that depends
	how players are travelling around the mud). The save files
	contain object-path -> room number mapping. Room numbers are
	reserved dynamically, ie. when a room is first time ever
	entered it gets its unique room number. Currently there are
	over 13000 room numbers reserved (not all rooms give explore
	points).

	Every player object contains a bit string (6 bits
	stored in a byte). Thus a player who has explored all those
	13000 rooms takes around 2kB RAM. In the practice nobody has
	explored all of those rooms, see
	<URL:http://www.bat.org/Batmud/mudinfo/plaques/top_explorers.html>
	for real (though a bit old) percentages.

	The nice thing in the dynamic allocation of the room numbers
	is that the explore percentage rise steepens as players find
	unvisited rooms. For example, if player A has found 4 rooms
	out of 5 visited rooms and then finds a new unexplored room
	his/her explore percentage goes from (4/5) 80% to (5/6) 83%,
	not to 100%.

	Assuming an average 50% explore coverage, the mud takes around
	300*1kb=300kB RAM with 300 peak player count (plus the
	object-path -> room number mappings) to maintain the explore
	system. With 24000 player base disk space required by per
	player data is around 24000*1kB=24MB.

	Additionally we have a tracking system: all rooms keep
	player/monster movements for 5 minutes in the RAM. That data
	is not used by the explore system. Our tracking system is
	something like quzah was visioning, though we do not take
	account terrain type, only tracking skill percentage is used
	when a player (usually a ranger) tries to read tracks left by
	a fleeing player/monster.

	Is the system worth of the used RAM and disk space? I think
	so. Our machine has 1.25GB RAM and 17GB (mirrored) disk
	space. Long before RAM and disk space are exhausted we have
	run out of CPU power (and it is easier to buy more RAM
	and disk than CPU power). 


	Petri