[MUD-Dev] MMORPG/MMOG P2P design

[lynx at lynx.purrsia.com]

On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Crosbie Fitch wrote:

> I do not envision 'winnable' games, or games that are
> reset. Perhaps games may become boring and players leave them, but
> this is termination through attrition rather than
> deliberation. This is mainly because such a global change as a
> reset seems very tricky to implement (think of millions of PCs and
> the achilles heel of being able to perform a reset at all).

Close the game, mark it as closed by someone with the authority to
do so, and start a new game.  Easy.

I think the issue is more what we're envisioning when we say 'P2P
MMOG'.  You're envisioning something far more like the Metaverse
described in Snow Crash, I'm thinking of 'neighborhood shared
worlds' where a bunch of people get together and say 'Let's put on a
show!'

The Metaverse never ends.  Small shared worlds have beginnings and
ends, though the latter need not always be required or specified.

> Yes, but I'd call these different universes (one copied and
> tweaked from the other). I'm just saying you shouldn't be forced
> to divide a universe up into shards simply because of scalability
> problems.

Not simply because of scalability, no.

> It may not start off as a game. It could start off as a
> collaborative content creation system. I am trying to get funding
> for such a thing, but it's not looking promising.

Good luck, then.

>> In a purely P2P system, content has to be distributed to all
>> nodes in order to be used.  Per your suggestion above, all nodes
>> running the same copy of the software, this suggests you are
>> leaning toward such a distribution mechanism.
 
> I think so. Though no node needs every bit of content at any given
> time.

Certainly not, but you have to operate on a probabilistic system,
given the odds of someone being on-line at any given time, and the
demand for so and so piece of content, the content must be
distributed to so many nodes times some safety margin to ensure its
availability.

-- Conrad


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