[MUD-Dev] Fw: 16K mud server competition !

[Powell]

Chris Gray wrote:
> >
> >Wow, that's not much space! I took a quick look at ToyMUD, 
> to see if there
> >was any chance of doing simple changes to shrink it down. However, it
> >is 80K of code and 26K in the data file. I doubt I could shrink it to
> >16K without losing some major feature or two. The first step would be
> >one of those code obfuscators that removes whitespace and makes all
> >identifiers one or two characters.
> 
Jon A. Lambert replied:
> 
> Well spaces, tabs and comments don't count towards the limit.
> Yes, you could also get some mileage out of obfuscating keywords and 
> system functions with macros.  You could move all your locals 
> into global 
> space, drop all static references, and share them very carefully. 
> 

One problem that I see in using these methods is that the rules state that
the judging takes into account such things as readability, extensibility and
that the code must be bug free. Putting all of your locals into a global
space would (IMHO) seriously hamper any future extensions without huge
rewrites and open the door for some huge bug finding sessions.

That being said, it does appear that the competition may be aimed more at
the high level languages where you dont have to declare data types for local
use and operations like file i/o and memory management are already taken
care of in external libraries and shorthand coding is encouraged. I would
rather see the comp give a slightly larger file size for lower level
languages or let us create an external library that has no bearing on the
mud code size but handles more of the system specific code rather than mud
stuff, and allow 1 decent sized header file for struct defs and readabilitys
sake (or double the size of low level lang code to 32k).

.02 cents deducted from main account....


Tavolir
Dragons Domain 3
dopey.satlan.com:8888 OR dopey.metrolan.co.nz:8888



_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev