[MUD-Dev] DEV: Peer-to-Peer MUD

[Adam Martin]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Justin Rogers" <justin at mlstoday.com>
> [Phillip]

>> I may have brought this up before, but has there ever been any
>> development of a peer-to-peer graphical MUD.  I theorized and
>> began some development of this some time ago, but ran out of
>> energy/time/whatever. The premis is that rather than having one
>> server holding a large map created by a single person, you have
>> many small maps being held in many small clients. As you walk
>> around the seemingly large, contigous, map, you are actually
>> crossing between servers(clients really).  I believe Ultima does
>> this with some success on a multi-server system.

> Well, maybe you're looking in the wrong places.  The concept of a
> MUD is fairly loose and doesn't just pertain to Medieval/Star
> Trek.  For one Sun Microsystems release a screen saver some time
> back where each peer is a fish tank or part of a fish tank rather.
> As fish hit the edge of the screen they are teleported and appear
> on someone else's machine.  This is similar to the concept you're
> talking about, and it is graphical in nature.

> I am currently working on the Terrarium for Microsoft.  The
> Terrarium is composed of peers that each host a given number of
> live organisms (plants, herbivores, and carnivores).  The amounts
> and size of one's map are chosen at run-time by some CPU clocks.
> Rather than have the animals run off the edge of the screen we
> have a teleporter, visible to the client, but invisible to the
> animals which runs around the map and transports organisms from
> one machine to another.  

Or even the complex artificial life simulation thats been around for
5 years + which does exactly the same thing. It creates creatures
out of coloured lines, with their genetic code being made explicit
in the rotational symmetry and length, colour, and branchiness of
their lines. The different bits (different colour line segments etc)
have pre-ordained functions - e.g.  green lines photosynthesise, red
ones eat anything they come into contact with, blue ones might
provide extra motive power etc.

With a few hundred of these moving around the screen, and eating
each other if their red bits ever join, or mating if the white bits
join, etc, you get some funky stuff to watch. AFAICR your screen
could be linke on all four edges to four different net-connected
clients running their own simulations, with automatic migration at
the edge.

Sorry I can't provide a link - can't for the life of me remember the
name of the program.

Adam M
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