May 1999
- Object server. Quzah [softhome]
- Censorship & Its Impact On World Immersion J C Lawrence
- OT: Ethics v Law Greg Munt
- Virtual v Artificial Worlds Greg Munt
- Virtual v Artificial Worlds Matthew Mihaly
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Custom Server Roll Call? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Custom Server Roll Call? Wes Connell
- Custom Server Roll Call? David Bennett
- Custom Server Roll Call? Koster, Raph
- Custom Server Roll Call? Greg Munt
- Custom Server Roll Call? The Arrow
- Custom Server Roll Call? Alex Stewart
- Custom Server Roll Call? Nathan F Yospe
- Custom Server Roll Call? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Custom Server Roll Call? Jon A. Lambert
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Custom Server Roll Call? Jon A. Lambert
- Custom Server Roll Call? Matthew Mihaly
- Custom Server Roll Call? Jon A. Lambert
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Custom Server Roll Call? Jon A. Lambert
- Custom Server Roll Call? Chris Gray
- Custom Server Roll Call? Marc Hernandez
- Custom Server Roll Call? Greg Munt
- Custom Server Roll Call? Jon A. Lambert
- Custom Server Roll Call? Matthew Mihaly
- Custom Server Roll Call? Jon A. Lambert
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Custom Server Roll Call? J C Lawrence
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ling
- Custom Server Roll Call? Jon A. Lambert
- Custom Server Roll Call? Emil Eifrem
- Custom Server Roll Call? Niklas Elmqvist
- Custom Server Roll Call? Chris Gray
- Custom Server Roll Call? Emil Eifrem
- Custom Server Roll Call? Chris Gray
- Custom Server Roll Call? Emil Eifrem
- Custom Server Roll Call? Chris Gray
- Custom Server Roll Call? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Custom Server Roll Call? J C Lawrence
- Custom Server Roll Call? Emil Eifrem
- Custom Server Roll Call? Marc Hernandez
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Custom Server Roll Call? Jo Dillon
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Custom Server Roll Call? Marc Hernandez
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Custom Server Roll Call? Marc Hernandez
- Custom Server Roll Call? Adam Wiggins
- Custom Server Roll Call? Matthew Mihaly
- Custom Server Roll Call? Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Custom Server Roll Call? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Custom Server Roll Call? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Custom Server Roll Call? claw@kanga.nu
- Custom Server Roll Call? Emil Eifrem
- Custom Server Roll Call? Chris Turner
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ling
- Custom Server Roll Call? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
On 05:29 PM 5/13/99 +0100, I personally witnessed Ling jumping up to say:
>
>Gosh, what am I doing listed amongst JC, Caliban and Yospe?!?!
AGH! What am I doing in the middle of that?! Those people are PHYSICISTS!
Run away! Run away! ;)
>The way I see it, I don't want to waste time working
>on the low-level tasks like multiplexing sockets. I wanna work on the
>game, not the application!
One of the things I'm thinking about doing at this point is taking the
baseline driver I've got so far, which is nothing too fancy but contains
all the very basic elements of a MUD -- monolithic server, handles a stack
of simultaneous sockets, and maintains I/O buffers and time-online for all
connected players -- and cleaning it up with a few more comments so I can
write up a basic "how to write a MUD" web site.
Basically, my thought process is that I've spent *months* putting
everything together for this... I had some very naive previous designs, and
some efforts which went nowhere, and really it was the major barrier in my
path. It wasn't so much that I couldn't find information on it as being
unable to pick through the voluminous documentation and toss all the excise
out; everything looked important.
Last night, I spent about six hours working out the "right" way to get the
dynamic IP address from a modem on the local machine. All the UNIX methods
were telling me my IP address was 127.0.0.1 and my hostname was
"localhost". The final method I used came out of the Winsock FAQ, but the
information in the Winsock FAQ was *wrong* and needed to be corrected. This
was a lot of time. (Plus the final solution is Winsock-2-specific and won't
work on UNIX, so I need to put some notes around that area and remind
myself to fix that when I do the UNIX port.)
And like Ling says, I don't want to write network code! I want to write a
GAME! ;)
So what I was figuring was, why not take all of this backwork I've "wasted"
a lot of good development time on, and put it out there so other people who
write games will be able to use it? That way, even though *I* had to spend
all that time figuring out what was important and what wasn't, a bunch of
other people won't have to. That will let them concentrate more on the game
part, and less on the network part. Keeping it ANSI C, in turn, makes it
much more flexible.
Remember in the DOS programming days, you could get all these
communications libraries? Greenleaf is the only one that I can actually
remember, but what ever happened to all of those? And remember FOSSIL
drivers? Why don't we have a nice simple interface like that, an API that
we can just use and not worry about how it works?
Berkeley sockets? Where's my "getlocaladdr()" function? How hard is that? ;)
>However, I've found myself losing interest in muds, mainly coz it is
>something I don't see myself playing in the future.
Having just mailed a stack of money to a game author for development
rights, I have a bit more incentive. ;)
>I'll be more likely to have a fiddle with a PBeM game.
One of my "major enhancements" to the game I'm porting is teaching it to
speak SMTP. Trivial -- I've written several mail clients -- but what a leap
in operational capacity. Most MUDs will delete your character if you don't
log on in several days. I'd like to be warned first; like three days prior
to deletion. I'd also like to be informed when the character *is* deleted.
And from a purely selfish like the idea of getting my character's in-game
mail right here at my machine. Maybe I wasn't planning on logging in
tonight, but then someone sends me mail which would get me interested in
showing up -- like "hey, party in sector 143!" -- and I don't see it until
three days later when I finally log in. If I'd gotten that mail when it was
sent, I'd be more likely to log in. There's a lot of potential here. I
think the only server which currently speaks SMTP is PennMUSH, and even
then it only does character registration... so this seems like a great concept.
But where it relates to the PBeM game is, if my MUD speaks SMTP, I could
also theoretically teach it to speak POP3. Then I could allow players to
email scripts to the server, and have the "results" mailed back. While this
would be dangerous (who knows what will happen unexpectedly while your
script is running), it would allow people who are out of the area for a
while to just email a simple script to the game and later retrieve a status
report from their mail account.
Has anyone else considered such a scheme? Did you pursue it? What were the
results?
-----
| Caliban Tiresias Darklock caliban@darklock.com
| Darklock Communications http://www.darklock.com/
| U L T I M A T E U N I V E R S E I S N O T D E A D
| 774577496C6C6E457645727355626D4974H -ÊBAL::3146=- - Custom Server Roll Call? Jay Carlson
- Custom Server Roll Call? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Custom Server Roll Call? Ling
- Custom Server Roll Call? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Interesting dilemma Peck, Matthew x96724c1
- Interesting dilemma Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Interesting dilemma Quzah [softhome]
- Interesting dilemma Brandon A Downey
- Interesting dilemma Shawn Halpenny
- Interesting dilemma Matthew Mihaly
- Interesting dilemma Benjamin D. Wiechel
- Interesting dilemma Koster, Raph
- Interesting dilemma Wes Connell
- Interesting dilemma Mattias Lönnqvist
- Interesting dilemma Mik Clarke
- Interesting dilemma Joel Kelso
- Interesting dilemma Ronan Farrell
- Harvey's Rules of Immship John Hopson
- Confiscating items (Interesting dilemma) Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- AW: Interesting dilemma Hofbauer Heinz
- Virtual Property J C Lawrence
- Virtual Property Koster, Raph
- Virtual Property Jon A. Lambert
- Autogenerating maps from muds using cardinal directions for exits? Ben Greear
- Discussion of large server IO handling desing J C Lawrence
- Planes of existance Quzah [softhome]
- Planes of existance Greg Munt
- Planes of existance Quzah [softhome]
- Planes of existance Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Planes of existance Ben Greear
- Planes of existance Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Planes of existance Greg Munt
- Planes of existance T. Alexander Popiel
- Planes of existance Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Planes of existance Matthew Mihaly
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Ronan Farrell
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Mik Clarke
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Ben Greear
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Koster, Raph
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Richard Bartle
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Matthew Mihaly
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Travis Casey
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Travis Casey
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Jon A. Lambert
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Eli Stevens {KiZurich/GreySylk}
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Jon A. Lambert
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Ling
- Dynamically changing room descriptions Christopher Allen
- old fight system I toyed with Koster, Raph
- APE 0.2.1 J C Lawrence
- OT: robots, agents and emotions Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- OT: robots, agents and emotions Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Time Discontinuous MUD Ling
- Semi-OT: International intellectual property right (was: Custom Server Roll Call?) Custom Server Roll Call?) Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Semi-OT: International intellectual property rights Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Marc Hernandez' Server Greg Munt
- Marc Hernandez' Server Jay Carlson
- Marc Hernandez' Server Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Marc Hernandez' Server Travis S. Casey
- Marc Hernandez' Server Adam Wiggins
- Marc Hernandez' Server Marc Hernandez
- Marc Hernandez' Server qitelremel@hotmail.com
- Scry 1.9.1 (Feature Freeze) released. Ben Greear
- The distinction between magic spells and magic abilities Greg Munt
- The distinction between magic spells and magic abilities Matthew Mihaly
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ross Nicoll
- Multi-threaded mud server. Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Multi-threaded mud server. Jon A. Lambert
- Multi-threaded mud server. Jo Dillon
- Multi-threaded mud server. Travis S. Casey
- Multi-threaded mud server. Jon A. Lambert
- Multi-threaded mud server. Chris Gray
- Multi-threaded mud server. Chris Gray
- Multi-threaded mud server. Jon A. Lambert
- Multi-threaded mud server. Mik Clarke
- Multi-threaded mud server. Chris Gray
- Multi-threaded mud server. Mik Clarke
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ross Nicoll
- Multi-threaded mud server. Jon A. Lambert
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ross Nicoll
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ross Nicoll
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ross Nicoll
- Multi-threaded mud server. Jon A. Lambert
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ross Nicoll
- Multi-threaded mud server. Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Multi-threaded mud server. Mark Gritter
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ross Nicoll
- Multi-threaded mud server. Travis S. Casey
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ross Nicoll
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Multi-threaded mud server. David Bennett
- Multi-threaded mud server. Ross Nicoll
- Multi-threaded mud server. Jon A. Lambert
- Multi-threaded mud server. Travis Casey
- Macro languages Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- LOTR and Mud [was: Marc Hernandez' Server] Marc Hernandez
- Noise: boys will be boys (was Multi-threaded mud server.) Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Kanga.Nu has finally moved... claw@kanga.nu
- Java & MUD servers Laurent Bossavit
- ScryMUD 1.9.3 released. Ben Greear
- ScryMUD 1.9.3 released. Chris Gray
- ScryMUD 1.9.3 released. Ben Greear
- ScryMUD 1.9.3 released. Jon A. Lambert
- [TECHNICAL] How to generate pre-processor output (template problem). Ben Greear
- Searching the archives claw@kanga.nu
- Text Parsing Albert
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing Kylotan
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Albert
- Text Parsing Mik Clarke
- Text Parsing Cynbe ru Taren
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Text Parsing Nathan F Yospe
- Text Parsing Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Text Parsing Mik Clarke
- Text Parsing Marc Hernandez
- Text Parsing Kylotan
- Text Parsing Ross Nicoll
- Text Parsing Kylotan
- Text Parsing Travis Casey
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Ross Nicoll
- Text Parsing Travis Casey
- Text Parsing Albert
- Text Parsing Travis Casey
- Text Parsing Mik Clarke
- Text Parsing Ross Nicoll
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Katrina McClelan
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Travis Casey
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing Albert
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Text Parsing Travis Casey
- Text Parsing Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Ben Greear
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing David Bennett
- Text Parsing Travis Casey
- Text Parsing Cynbe ru Taren
- Text Parsing Katrina McClelan
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Martin C Sweitzer
- Text Parsing Jp Calderone
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Ben Greear
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Ben Greear
- Text Parsing Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Text Parsing Adam Wiggins
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Kylotan
- Text Parsing Koster, Raph
- Text Parsing Ben Greear
- Text Parsing Jon A. Lambert
- Text Parsing Adam Wiggins
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Koster, Raph
- Text Parsing Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Text Parsing Koster, Raph
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing David Bennett
- Text Parsing Ross Nicoll
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Ross Nicoll
- Text Parsing Albert
- Text Parsing Travis S. Casey
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Adam Wiggins
- Text Parsing Katrina McClelan
- Text Parsing Adam Wiggins
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Adam Wiggins
- Text Parsing Katrina McClelan
- Text Parsing Jon A. Lambert
- Text Parsing J C Lawrence
- Text Parsing J C Lawrence
- Text Parsing Joey Hess
- Text Parsing J C Lawrence
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing J C Lawrence
- Text Parsing Koster, Raph
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Koster, Raph
- Text Parsing Chris Gray
- Text Parsing Albert
- Text Parsing Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing J C Lawrence
- Text Parsing Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Text Parsing Jon A. Lambert
- Text Parsing Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Text Parsing Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Text Parsing claw@kanga.nu
- Text Parsing Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Text Parsing Greg Miller
- Text Parsing Petri Virkkula
- Text Parsing Matthew Mihaly
- Text Parsing Petri Virkkula
- Text Parsing Adam Wiggins
- Text Parsing Katrina McClelan
- Text Parsing Petri Virkkula
- Dylan Programming Language Ling
- Dylan Programming Language Jon A. Lambert
- Ultimate Universe Documentation Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Oh yeah... Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- [TECHNICAL] [SOLVED] (template problem). Ben Greear
- [RELEASE] ScryMUD 1.9.4 available for download. Ben Greear