[MUD-Dev] Is database access a bottleneck?

bradley newton haug brad at faithanddisease.com
Thu Dec 12 20:36:11 CET 2002


Raph Wrote:

> Everything you so amusingly described here is definitely true in
> the game industry. There's a distaste for academia that is
> incredibly short-sighted in my opinion, and a reluctance to make
> use of tools or techniques developed elsewhere. It's all stupid.

There is a distaste for *anything* written outside game company
walls, while admirable (some systems are just d*mned fun to
implement), it's a really bad habit that breeds more isolationist
engineers.

> On the other hand, it didn't arise out of thin air. Quite aside
> from the not-invented-here symdrome characteristic of largely
> self-taught hackers, there's the fact that many of the solutions
> arrived at by academic AI researchers and military simulation
> developers are simply not practical in games development. Kind of
> like how most of the demos that the video card engineers provide
> to the game developers aren't practical.

Cowboy coders seam neat until you have to fix something they did.
Then you throw books at them when you see em.  I went right from
mudlib/driver coding to Microsoft.  I spent a year adjusting to a
giant.  I don't like either method personally.

> I frequently see military projects using game-like technology that
> took years to make and cost millions of dollars and probably could
> have been done in a few weeks by any competent FPS team in the
> industry.

Goes both ways, I agree.  Navy Flight Sims are a good example here.

> It cuts both ways; people on both sides of the fence need to gain
> more respect for what the other does and does well. It's the
> insularity and automatic assumption that "we know better" that is
> the problem across the board.

I think the best thing to do, in any field is to never assume you
have the best solution, try for it, get to a good place, but never
stop looking around.

-brad


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