[MUD-Dev] Re: TECH: Distributed Muds

[Frank Crowell]

Jim Craig wrote:
>> From: Emil_Eifrém <emil.eifrem at windh.com>
>> On Friday, April 06, 2001 11:24 PM, Jim Craig wrote:

>>> I've been working on a distributed java based mud.

>> Why do you wish to distribute your mud? Do you anticipate such a
>> high (player- or other) load that one machine can't handle it?

> This may sound ludicrous but the ultimate vision is to bring realm
> building to a larger base of people.  To date building, managing,
> building a player base has typically been reserved for developers
> with a lot of time on their hands, $, a place to host the world,
> and... did I say time.  I think there are many people who would love
> to build, run and operate a virtual world but getting there is
> usually somewhat painful. Someone going from being a gamer to game
> operator is a significant investment.  

Doesn't sound ludicrous to me.  We already have the technology to put
a mud on every computer in the world.  So then someone may ask me "why
would anyone want to do that?".  And I will give the same intelligent
answer that I gave in the 1980's when people asked me what they would
do with a computer -- "I have no idea".

But by the late 90's people of all sorts were browsing and going to
computer stores and trying to learn more about computers. Computers
are common "express-yourself" and "information-hunter-gather"
machines.  When the technology gets better, people will be talking and
listening to their computer while they walk down the street and look
as goofy as the people with cells phones do now. See
http://www.mobilearia.com for an example of the use of speech in
mobile devices.

Certainly some of the proliferation will happen because of giant
virtual world companies.  But I think a lot more will happen because
there will be thousands, maybe millions of mud-type worlds out there.
Think how high your Exodus bill would be if you tried to host one
billion online people -- that's 400,000 computers assuming populations
of 2500 per server.

In my mind distributed muds means lots of cooperating devices. Think
wireless PDA, think mud client&server, think speech i/o.  And that is
your future machine.  Ok, sure -- why not: also think googles, I mean
goggles.


frank



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