[MUD-Dev] Unique items vs. item references

[Brian Hook]

I've been dabbling with our little space adventure RPG in my spare
time, and I'm now beginning to address the issue of inventory.  I've
got MySQL installed, but I'm torn as to whether it's overkill or
not.  Part of me knows that having a database system that is indexed
and allows for fast queries is important, but another part of me
knows that it's a royal pain in the ass to have a machine with
mysqld running, not to mention database table construction and
editing.  Free text doesn't scale, but damn, it's handy.

Anyway, one of the fundamental decisions we're going to face is
whether to store item references to templates, along with some minor
ancillary information (damage, charges, flags for "stolen", etc.),
or whether to have fully unique items.  Obviously the latter
requires a crap load more storage, but it's also more flexible in
the long run.

But since I don't have direct experience in this arena, I'd like to
hear how others have addressed this.  I believe that this was
apparently one of the defining differences between EQ and UO?

-Hook


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