[MUD-Dev2] [TECH DESIGN] Next Generation Infrastructure

[Phillip Lenhardt]

On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 03:14:31PM -0500, Amanda Walker wrote:
> The graphics engines aren't the problem, I don't think.

I agree.  There are plenty of very nice graphics engines with
well-understood and standardized APIs.

> The problem I see for doing an indie MMO is infrastructure.

I'm not so sure about this one.  If the main problem was
infrastructure, I think we would see many more mini-worlds of
dozens, maybe hundreds of players that just can't get any
bigger and languish.  Much like the hundreds of boutique
MUDs that are still out there and servicing their small
player bases (though they stay small mostly because their
appeal is not very broad, not because of technical
limitations).

> The main barrier to doing this for a consumer game is the "untrusted  
> client" problem.  Once there's a distributed MMO engine that is  
> robust in the face of hacked clients, life could get very interesting  
> very fast.

I dream of the days of a distributed engine, too.  Unfortunately,
hardly anyone (anyone at all?) is working on it.  The only one I
can remember from the old MUD-Dev days is the one Crosbie Fitch
proposed and championed, and that seems pretty dead in the water.
The only live project that I know of is http://opencroquet.org,
which shows a lot of promise.  Of course, it is built on top of
a non-standard platform (Squeak) and it comes from academia; which,
historically, means that it will never gain enough traction to be
viable.