[MUD-Dev] Persistent worlds in NWN (was: Retention without Addiction?)

[Sean Kelly]

Matthew Dobervich wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
 
>> There's been mention of some sort of DB support planned.  I've
>> been pushing for just giving users the ability to add new
>> functionality via dynamic libraries.  In the long run, BioWare is
>> better off let users solve as many of their own problems as
>> possible, and just giving them the facilities to do so.  But it
>> remains to be seen what will be decided.

> In essence the server's save game is it's database.  We don't need
> Bioware to do this for us.  There is a large project underway to
> create tools for direct database/savegame manipulation.

As Valerio Santinelli said, the best way to get data out of NWN at
this point is a logfile dump.  And the only way to get data in
requires taking down the server, patching something into the module
file, and reloading the server.  This is a far cry from dynamic
save/load capability.  If someone has hacked the engine to the point
where they have addressed this problem, I'm all ears.  But I
personally won't be satisfied until I can transport live data in and
out of a module without taking the module offline.

This has other benifits as well.  Assuming we also are given an
option to change descriptive text on items within the scripting
language (another thing I'm pushing for), things like books could be
created and altered while the game is in progress also.  Heck,
custom items could be generated entirely in process.

>> This is what attracted me to NWN in the first place.  It's
>> basically a graphical MUD toolkit, provided you want your MUD to
>> exist in the D&D world :)
 
> These is nothing restricting NWN to a D&D world except the fan
> development resources to create models, textures, animations and
> tilesets for other settings.  You are tied to the d20 system
> though.  There is a large d20 Modern project underway.

Are they replacing the character classes?  I had thought that this
was all hardcoded into the engine.  Prestige classes are even a
pretty big hack at this point.

> For those that don't know a "hak pak" is a patch.  The problem
> he's talking about is that if you want to send your players a
> patch that contains a 1kb change, but you've already sent them
> 80,000,000kbs worth of patches, you have to send them an
> 80,000,001kb update.
 
> There is already a powerful fan-based solution for this problem,
> one that Bioware is showcasing themselves.

Yup.  It's quite nice.  However life would be even easier if a
player could just have a directory full of these patches and a
module could specify which ones it used, rather than forcing the
designer/player to combine them into a single unit per module.  I
figure since BW is so attentive, there's no reason not to be
idealistic :)

Sean


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