[MUD-Dev] Re: Pfile Wiping, etc.

[rayzam]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sanvean" <sanvean at ginka.armageddon.org>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Friday, August 04, 2000 11:37 AM
Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Re: Pfile Wiping, etc.


> On Fri, 4 Aug 2000, rayzam wrote:
> >
> >     There is a difference between these sort of purges, and player
wipes.
> > Just to free up namespace, you need to run purges on old/unused/low
level
> > characters. That's a different level than clearing the entire player
base.

[SNIP - lots of comments about how pwipes for an RP player is taken harsher,
that I agree with]

> >     What we do is every 3-6 months or so, we purge any character not on
in 6
> > months, who also: is worth less than X exp [where that means newbie],
has
> > less than X gold, and does not own a castle. This often clears around
3-6k
> > names/playerfiles. But the conditions ensure that any player who has
> > invested time into the game won't be purged.
>
> Question, out of curiosity.  Are those all logical ands, in the
> above?  I.e. if they have a castle but not enough gold, they get wiped?

    Nope, if they have any of those conditions, then they are not purged.
These are generally different things that denote an investment in a
character.

> We've got an account system, where multiple players can have characters
> with the same name, so this isn't a consideration, and just moved to a new
> machine, where memory consumption isn't a problem right now (which several
> of my builders have taken as license to build...entire continents, I
> fear).  While relishing this, I'm still curious.  Do pfiles take up -that-
> much space?  In the old machine days, I usually found trimming other
> unused stuff (like ancient email, or abandoned zones) freed up a lot more
> space.

    The account system with the same names available for multiple players
sounds very useful. It'd be a bear to implement on Retro, too much is tied
into the player name, which is used as a unique [and frankly the only
unique] identifier for the playerobject.

    It wouldn't be a memory consideration. And it's not a disk-space issue.
It's a namespace issue.  Here's a cut'n'paste of some player tags [not the
actual playerfiles, but still lists unique playernames]:


   1 taboo.o           1 terix.o           1 togashi.o
   1 tack.o            1 teriyaki.o        1 tokkan.o
   1 taepha.o          1 terloch.o         1 tolbeth.o
   1 taerom.o          1 terovian.o        1 toli.o
   1 tafano.o          1 terra.o           1 tolly.o
   1 taffel.o          1 terradeath.o      1 tolo.o
   1 tagalog.o         1 terralot.o        1 toltec.o
   1 tagith.o          1 terrance.o        1 tommen.o
   1 tahma.o           1 terrant.o         1 tommyboy.o
   1 tailia.o          1 terrassi.o        1 tomoe.o
   1 tailkinker.o      1 terrigan.o        1 tontyt.o


    If we never did these namespace purges, then new characters would have
to come up with stranger and more exotic names for their characters just to
play the game. Also, what happens at times is someone wants a known fantasy
name that's already taken, say 'Gandalf'. But Gandalf is a level 8 elf mage,
and hasn't been on in 20 weeks. Gandalf may only have played for a few days,
and isn't coming back. These namespace purges also free up those names.

    Perhaps we're not normal in that we get a lot of character turnover. I
mean taking the smallest case, 3k names in 6 months is an awful lot of
namespace, and new characters that weren't followed up. Granted, we don't
have a suicide system, so you cannot retire your own character name, and say
recreate it again for a new character. However, we do have a reincarnation
system, so players can recreate and not start over completely from scratch.

    We've never had to remove files for diskspace, except when some wizards
had personal copies of entire worlds in their directories, and that was just
to save time on the daily backups ;)

    Rayzam
    www.retromud.org






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