[MUD-Dev] Forks or Frameworks?

[Bryce Harrington]

Oops, I thought this had been sent to the WorldForge mailing list...
Since this is public I owe a little extra explanation.  ;-)

On Tue, 19 Dec 2000, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Dec 2000, Gavin Doughtie wrote:
> > A friend of mine, who runs the MUD at ishar.com, said that most MUDs
> > fork from one of the standard code bases and never look back. This
> > was due to typically tight coupling of content and code.
>  
> > Are there projects afoot to provide a generic framework that can be
> > revised independently of the content? I'm thinking specifically of a
> > "D-Free" shared engine. The Worldforge project is the only sizeable
> > one I've seen so far.

Worldforge presently has two ongoing server development efforts.  We
allow for more than this, since we accept that there's probably more
than one way to do it, and who are we to think we'll do it perfectly
the first time?

> Yes, STAGE will go even a step further, enforcing not only separation
> of content and code, but game rules and server core.

STAGE is our "next generation" server design.  Our intent is to make
it super generic, as described above.  Of course, easier said than
done.  But we're making good progress.  We're still open to anyone
novel design ideas, if anyone feels an itch to work on such a beast.
:-)

Relating this to business architecture terminology, STAGE would be the
'app server' portion of an n-tier network.  We prefer to think of it
as the platform on which all the real actors play.  ;-)

> Cyphesis also strives to maintain separation between content and code,
> and has to pay a little bit for this in terms of performance.

Cyphesis is our current server, and is runnable now.  It was
originally written in Python, and is presently undergoing
C++-ification to gain better performance.  It's design is geared more
strongly towards Artificial Intelligence simulation (e.g., for games),
so it's about to diverge into the land of neural nets and genetic
algorithms.  We intend to partner Cyphesis to STAGE, letting Cyphesis
(perhaps multiple copies on multiple machines, if necessary) handle
all of the NPC and monster logic.  Factoring out AI code also keeps
the main server code simpler.  If AI toots your horn and you'd like to
have a looksee at this, drop me a line and I'll hook you up with its
lead developer.

> > Is it even advisable to attempt architecting MUDs around the
> > traditional IT separation of data store/app logic?
> 
> Only if you want it to be maintainable and reusable.

Sorry for the flip answer.  WorldForge believes this to be true.
YMMV.

--
Bryce Harrington
bryce @ neptune.net

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