[MUD-Dev2] [BIZ] Project Darkstar - my take on it

[Bristle]

Jeffrey Kesselman <jeffpk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/31/07, Bristle wrote:
>
> > ok someone is going to ask - why do I want to run a game platform on
> > more than one machine when today's cpu is fast enough to handle more
> > than 100 zone servers? Major reason is fault tolerance.
>
> Again you are quite confused.
>
> That is a *single* machine. And you can run as many as you want, but
> the single node stack is a *development* stack.
>
> We are finishing the multi-node stack now. It allows you to run one
> world, one "shard"across an entire back end machine room. You don't
> have "zone servers" merely zone objects (if you want zones) . They
> are dynamicly shuffled between systems as necessitated by run-time
> user access patterns.

i think we are just on the edge of what future computing will be like -
not only for game servers, but for systems in general.  if you imagine a
very small motherboard with cpu and network, a small drive like a memory
stick, and a bit of ram all scrunched down to a small package and all on
wi fi or the future equivalent then its possible to see an appliance
that is a world server that can be anything you want or several things
at the same time.
 
for several years now i have seen in my mind a thing i call a "mud chip"
- all in one, self contained thing connected to other mud chips.
 
my model has a small tower of these chips - all wireless and powered by
a base. and each tower able to talk to other towers. so natually
darkstar fits nicely with this model, assuming the tower is a "machine"
and each chip is capable of handling more than one node.
 
the mud chip and tower is absolutely as much my hobby horse as the
concept of tranferrable, mobile characters and objects.
 
fortunately i will also stop yapping.