[MUD-Dev] [ScryMUD] Splitting development, code re-organization.

[Ben Greear]

I started to do some fairly minor tweaks to make the code
more robust, and before you know it, I'm thinking of doing
a fairly massive architecture change, at least with respect
to the object, room, door, and critter classes..  We'll see
where it leads from there!!

I'm going to try to pull basic functionality into base classes
and use (multiple) inheritance to make it all fit together.  This
should have been done long ago, but I was ignorant of the beauty
of OO :)

I'm also leaning towards storing the world in a real DB, probably
MiniSQL.  I don't have much experience with DB's, but this is a
great chance to learn :)  This would be a good project for
someone new.  We may want to tweak the 'stable' code
to allow it to read in the DB in the current form and then chunk
it into a database.  Or, we may want a 3rd format that can be
more easily handled by other ppl's tools, and write a translator
to move from one format to another with ease.

The current code base will be stabilized and patched as needed.  I'll
soon send out a pre-2.0.0, and if that holds ok, I'll bump
it to the 2.X.X releases, which will be considered the 'stable' release.

The new branch will be 3.X.X.  I will probably run the new server right
off of my own computer (cable modem and all that), so I don't take a chance
with bringing down the production servers :)  Other developers can of
course run off of their own machines.

This new code probably won't even compile for a while, and will be in
heavy churn till I get some things sorted out.  (I have a bad habit of
writing my design documents in C++ if you know what I mean! :))
If you like to code in this kind of environment, it might be a good
time for you to join the project.  I'm going to look into how I can give
RW CVS access to the new code to some folks, and keep you out of the
stable stuff :)


In sumary, here are some functional areas that need to be worked on:

	Re-architecture (code):  I'll be doing most of this.
	DB backend            :  Volunteers?
	Translation Code      :  Volunteers? (Some have started already I think.)
	Scripting upgrades    :  I'll tackle this one after the re-architecture is done.
	Misc new features & bug fixing:  ??
	Testing tools & scripts:  Another good project for someone w/out much knowledge of the code.

Thanks,
Ben

--
Ben Greear (greear at cyberhighway.net)  http://scry.wanfear.com/~greear 
Author of ScryMUD:  scry.wanfear.com 4444        (Released under GPL)
http://scry.wanfear.com


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