[MUD-Dev] Re: TECH: Distributed Muds

[J C Lawrence]

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001 12:02:32 -0500 (CDT) 
shren  <shren at io.com> wrote:

> That's complicated.  It sounds like hard work.  

Designing and building large systems that actually scale is Hard
Work.  There's not much escaping that.

> What you really need is reverse teleport storms that activate when
> people get too far apart.  These would zap players in regions
> alone and teleport them into some group of players somewhere.

Heh.  I've done something like this, where the world was purposively
left undefined and essentially void.  As players traipsed into areas
it would realise about them, but unless that area was visited
regularly, the new instantiation would be recycled and that section
of the would return to the raw ylem.  

  Head east for a couple days.

  Build a castle of 600 rooms.

  Dig a moat and raze a forest.

  Leave.

  Return two weeks later.  

  Not only is there no castle, but there is sign of the previous
  reality, instead a new random world pop into existance about
  you, quite different from the last (maybe mountainous this
  time).

  Repeat.

  Come back sooner this time, perhaps after a week.

  The mountains are still there, but there is no sign at all of the
  mine you dug. The trees you cut down have dissappeared and there
  are no gaps in the forest. The river is still there, exactly as
  it was when you first came there, but the bridge you built is
  done.

Worked rather nicely really once you got used to the idea that
persistance, of any form, was entirely dependant on the persisted
item being regularly viewed.  In essence, its a more gross form of
ur-objects, where the concept is applied to the world definition in
addition to discrete objects.

> **grin** Fun for the whole family.

Very.  Time it right and dig the same mine every week.

--
J C Lawrence                                       claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
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