[MUD-Dev] Scripting languages

[Lars Duening]

On Tuesday, July 1, 2003, at 06:59 PM, Kwon J. Ekstrom wrote:
> Lars Duening wrote:
>> On Monday, June 30, 2003, at 11:07 PM, Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes wrote:

>>> All of the LPMuds I've played on only allowed wizards to edit
>>> anything.

>> Considering that most wizards are recruited from the playerbase,
>> they are untrusted admins at best.

> Considering that they were raised to the position of wizard, it
> shows at least some trust.

In the original LPMud, becoming wizard was almost automatic once you
hit a certain level. Later LPs then added additional conditions
(like that a new wizard had to find an existing wizard as sponsor);
but even so these people had to be made wizards in order to find out
if they're trustworthy or not.

>>> If you don't trust someone, my first instinct is to not give
>>> them scripting access.  If you do give them scripting access,
>>> they can break your system if they so choose.  Making a custom
>>> language won't stop that.  Only social solutions will work.

>> *nod* But a custom language implementation can help enforcing the
>> social solutions by raising the bar for wannabe crackers and
>> limiting the possible damage.

> I personally don't see how writing a custom language helps much
> against malicious code.

Sandboxing. Execution times can be limited (no endless loops),
access to system resources can be restricted, language resources can
be controlled (no oversized arrays), etc.

It all depends of course on the type of your MUD. If most of the
MUD's logic is hardcoded in the driver, and the scripts are just
used to add customizations, the extensive sandboxing of a custom
language is probably not needed. On the other hand for a LP-style
MUD where the MUD logic itself is all scripted, sandboxing becomes
rather important (especially if the MUD follows the traditional
wizarding system).

--
Lars Duening; lars at bearnip.com
GPG Key: http://www.bearnip.com/lars/lars-duening.gpgkey
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