[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants)

[Morris Cox]

On 3/5/07, Sean Howard <squidi at squidi.net> wrote:
> To make a long story short (too late), it's not the graphics engine which
> is the problem. It is the WHOLE engine. With a certain homogenized MMORPG
> engine (something like a graphical lpMUD with not just a world mudlib, but
> also a graphical mudlib, upon which players can build rather than create
> from scratch), you'll start seeing the variety, depth, and virtues that
> old text MUDs exhibit that you believe lack in more modern
> interpretations. It's not just the graphics. It's the networking, front
> end, back end, database, customer service, testing, yada, yada, and yada.
>
> Sean Howard

That is what I'm really interested in. I suspect that a company could
make a lot of $$$ by building something like that and then selling
licenses to it. Releasing it as open source and for free would greatly
increase adoption; however, I doubt most companies (if any) would be
willing to take that risk given the immense cost of developing such a
system (hoping to be wrong here). It certainly would help with the
"reinventing the wheel" issue. My concern is about what one poster
(wish I could remember who) posted who postulated that the easier the
SDK, the more bland the content (paraphrased). I certainly would like
to test it, though I lack the skills to help build one.

One thing I've noticed looking at systems like WorldForge or Darkstar,
etc., is that they require that you use a particular language such as
C++ or Java. That is understandable, however it locks out those who
don't know that one language. What would be better is a system that
would allow use of multiple languages so long as there was an
interface between them. One developer could use C++ while another
developer could use Java (or C# or PHP or XML, etc.) and still
interoperate. Properly implemented, that should lower the barrier to
entry. That just reminded me of Microsoft's Common Language Runtime. I
guess that can be used for inspiration. However, I don't know how
flexible it is.
-- 
Morris Cox