[MUD-Dev] Seamlessly Distributed Online Environments

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 11:28:54 +0100
Crosbie Fitch <crosbie at cyberspaceengineers.org> wrote:
> From: J C Lawrence

>> You cannot prevent two people creating identically named files with
>> identical meta data but different contents.

> Ah, so the key here is 'meta' data, e.g. 'author', 'version', 'date',
> or whatever?

> I did consider it likely that forgeries would occur (probably only
> when some artists become popular), and when this becomes a problem the
> author will use public key encryption to demonstrate the authenticity
> of the file.

Which takes us right back to my first post.

  If you don't include some for of PKI you have no way of explicitly
  retrieving a specific file on the first request.  Even worse, as you
  can't trust the data the remote node is sending, you have to recompute
  the signatures and re-request on failure, making requesting a specific
  file a potentially infinite operation (as you also have no valid
  promise that it even exists to be requested).

>> Further you cannot guarantee that two distinct players will retrieve
>> the same file for the same request, where a request is defined as a
>> filename and any degree of meta data other than signatures for the
>> object.

> Players request all files of the same name. The meta data determines
> which one will be presented to the player (and the ordering of
> alternatives when the player decides to review them). However, player
> selection/rating decisions can validate the files to some extent,
> e.g. "Yup, this one looks cool - can't prove it hasn't been corrupted
> in some small or subtle way, but I'll use it for the time being - it
> meets all my other selection policies".

Now add a shared world system with exploration mechanics and it breaks
as there are no guarantees of shared experience without making point to
point transfers instead of P2P or suffering potentially infinite
retrieval times.

> If players are involved in validating the files, the bad files will
> tend to get weeded out (including those with bad meta data).

I'll cut this short: You haven't thought this one through.  The math is
not hard.

Some tendencies head that way, not all, and there are no guarantees that
the population will be well normed.

>> And yet you have no way to distinguish among collisions, intentional
>> or otherwise.

> The meta data provides the distinguishing information (valid or not).

Also unverifiable prior to receipt.  You can add trust mechanics to
attempt to vet nodes which lie, but that's an asymptotic affair which
selects heavily against new/unknown content over entrenched favourites,
especially if you also can't trust nodes to perform their own veracity
calculations.

> If the player subsequently discovers that "I've seen this before, this
> ain't new!", or "No way is this Bill Smith's style", or "Who put
> bloody coke cans on all the ice floes?" then the player will do their
> dutiful bit of altruism and revert to the previous file (or a better
> one). It'll just be a keystroke or two.

How can they, reliably?

>> Remember: The client is in the hands of the enemy, and in a P2P
>> system, all the nodes are clients and all the nodes are in the hands
>> of the enemy.

> Hah. You know I've got a gripe with that nafphorism don't you? ;-)

> If more than a few percent of file sharers were the enemies they're
> made out to be then file sharing would have collapsed
> immediately. RIAA simply cannot afford enough stooges (computers or
> people) to pollute the MP3 file space faster than it's cleased by the
> users.

In an MP3 world that hardly matters, in a game world of direct
interactive participation vs store and forward timed delayed enjoyment
it does matter.  As a player when I walk my character three steps
forward from Castle Krak I not only want to end up at the same place
each time, but I want all my friends and their friends to also end up at
the same place (assuming no warped world game mechanic).

>> Right, but this thread is not talking about Solar Systeme but rather
>> the application of P2P object distribution to MUD systems.

> But, I do not attempt to suggest that my solutions represent all
> solutions or the only ones, just the solutions (I reckon I have) in my
> particular application.

This thread started with your advocating a P2P transports for a shared
world server.

>> The point is that this is a small corner of the problem of identity
>> mechanics, and you are assuming properties of identity algebra which
>> don't exist.

> Nope. This is social cybernetics. The identity aspects are not as
> important if identity failure can be repaired. Ask RIAA.

RIA is not dealing with both latent and simultaneous shared experience
mechanics.

--
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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