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

[Travis S. Casey]

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Derek Snider wrote:

> > Hmm... nothing in the rules specifically prohibits creating your own
> > GP language... :-)
> 
> Yeah, but your GP language and the MUD code and data all combined
> would have to fit in 16K ... that's getting pretty tight.

Why would it have to?  They don't restrict the list of languages that you
can use, other than to say you must use a GP language.  I'm thinking in
terms of someone implementing a high-level language that includes
functionality that's useful in muds *and* in general -- e.g., something
like the networking in TCL-DP.

(In it, you can make a program into a server simply by adding a couple of
lines -- the language handles the details of creating a socket, accepting
connections to it, and "selecting" a socket when its ready for input for
you.  It then calls whatever function you've specified for handling
input and passes the input string to it.  This would save a lot of code
for someone writing a mud, but is also useful for people making *any* sort
of IP server program.)

I'm not thinking in terms of someone taking a C compiler and adding a
"domud" statement to it which creates their mud.  That would obviously be
cheating.

As a practical matter, it's not likely to happen -- who's going to write
and debug a compiler, then use it to build a mud, in under a month?  But I
don't see any theoretical bars to it in the rules.

> What's the smallest size that anyone's been able to get MUD networking
> code down to? (Written in C or C++)  Does it include buffered input/output?
> Full error checking?   ...just curious...  I feel that the networking code
> is going to take up around 4K of valuable space... unless I'm way off.

I haven't done IP networking in C in a while, but I don't think it should
take nearly that much code if you're willing to do without error checking.  
Although I suppose that depends on just what all you consider to be
included under "networking code".

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
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