[MUD-Dev] Custom Server Roll Call?

[Greg Munt]

> [Wes Connell]
>
> Well technically the server I'm working on is not custom since I had to
> use memory allocation stuff from Diku. Diku gets credit =]. Anyways, the
> mud is going to be AD&D based. It will be to the book exact. Following the
> book exact turned out to be more of a challenge than I thought.

This would be akin to a company having a website which is an unmodified copy
of their paper-based marketing brochure. Why have a computerised version of
a paper-based game? It is not using any of the advantages that the new
medium provides. (Perhaps I am misunderstanding, given your subsequent
comments on 'interesting things [you've] done to the server' - but "It will
be to the book exact" doesn't leave too much to misinterpret.)

> A couple
> of somewhat interesting things I've done to the server is combine the
> object/character/player structures into one structure and make the room
> descriptions dynamic depending on what objects/characters/exits are in the
> room.

I'm interested in your dynamic room descriptions. What steps have you made
to avoid 'boring' descriptions - arguably the most vexing problem with this
approach?

> I'm interested in seeing what others are working on. I remember some
> traffic about some graphical muds in the works, you guys still on em?

I was interested in some sort of client running from a web browser, at one
time. But my goals needed restricting, for the sake of my sanity. I even
began thinking about using the Doom/Quake engine to make a client with. (Now
THAT would be cool.)

My adventures into the area of mud development began around the time I
became banned from the mud that I managed. My original goal of revenge
(fortunately this is still not my intent!) produced more spaghetti than
Italy. The website was infinitely better than the server. Maybe this is
because I had nothing to do with its production. (See
http://www.uni-corn.demon.co.uk/frontiers/ if you are at all interested.)
Originally the website was used to attack the general administration of my
previous home. Sort of like an exiled prime minister bombing his own
country. It was fun, and a trilogy of parodies of the whole me/them
situation was produced. They are on the web, somewhere at *.man.ac.uk. As
time consumed my bitterness, I realised what a piece of crap Frontiers was.
I hastily pulled it down, never to (officially) return. The new Frontiers
actually had a bit of thought behind it
(http://www.uni-corn.demon.co.uk/ubiquity/), but nothing really came of
fruition, principally because of my distinct lack of experience. Nothing has
happened with it for a while.

Now I have a bit more experience - of C++, of design, of analysis - and feel
a bit better prepared. I want to use the UML for this. There is always
something that needs more research. There is always another book to buy,
another gap in your learning to fill. I'm a bit lost, to an extent -
wandering, wondering what I actually want to do. I know that I need to take
it slow - too much, too soon was one of Frontiers' fundamental flaws. At the
moment, I am not even sure if I still want to use C++ as my implementation
language. Maybe something more OO would be better - it would definitely fit
in more with my design philosophies. (I hear that the maintainers of the
first mud I ever used are writing a new one, in Smalltalk. So much I still
do not know, do not consider, fail to understand. Alas.)

For the moment, I am content with designing fundamentals - like network
interactions, telnet support, database analysis/design - and putting
everything I have found out on the web. There is such a huge barrier to
producing a mud of any decent quality, and that's something I'd like to see
change. Oh, I know that we have all of this 'great' source code around. But
having source code doesn't mean you understand it - all the stock muds out
there prove my point quite effectively. When people start to realise that a
mud needs to start with analysis - and not with CircleMUD running on a
server somewhere - maybe then I will be happy. (But don't keep your hopes
up.)

I don't create projects. They just seem to look for me, instead. I wouldn't
say that my true aim is to ever have a mud running, that I have written, and
that provides entertainment to people. I guess I'm just blundering along,
looking for interesting things to do. A by-product of this is the website
that will eventually slide out, so that other people don't have to do the
wandering, looking, searching, that I have. I will never release source
code. At the most, I will simply provide a pseudo-tutorial on various
analysis/design approaches to mud server fundamentals. Code snippets could
conceivably be used to help explain things, but nothing more than that.

Hopefully, I'll get beyond the nuts and bolts of sockets and databases. I'm
convinced that there would be benefit, if I could. But if I don't, at least
I'm having fun. It's funny, just writing this mail has helped solidify my
goals, just a little bit.

Maybe I prefer searching, to finding. That would be a shame.



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