April 2005
- [DESIGN] : Where to find information about mud design ? Lethal Thanatos
- [DESIGN] : Where to find information about mud design ? Jaycen Rigger
- DESIGN: Mini-VW contenst (Was DESIGN: The game with a thousand faces) Mike Rozak
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Michael Barton
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Hiddukel
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. David Wilson
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Hiddukel
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Chad Ziccardi
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Hiddukel
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Richard Lindsey
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Daniel O'Neal
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Brian
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Chad Ziccardi
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Chad Simmons
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Michael Barton
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Chad Ziccardi
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Michael Barton
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Hiddukel
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Hiddukel
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Chad Simmons
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Chad Ziccardi
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Davion Kalhen
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Bobby Bailey
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Davion Kalhen
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. David Wilson
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. mrpotatohead@urbanfallout.net
I've been sitting back and reading this thread for the last few days to
see how it played out, and honestly, I'm disappointed it degenerated into
bitching rather than some good discussion. So, let's try to get back on
track.
I read the thread linked on the pitfalls of backing areas and rooms by a
SQL store and honestly, while some of the points are valid, there is no
reason you can't do it. Data is a data, be it a pfile or an area file.
The real point in those threads is not that you can't run your mud off a
SQL store, but rather that there are various challenges unique to running
your area files in this manner. Amazingly enough, most things we code
have challenges. Strong programmers recognize challenges in systems they
are writing and make design decisions that mitigate them. Remember, there
is no "right" answer, though there may be many "wrong" ones.
In particular, the load associated with keeping your rooms only in the DB,
querying everytime someone wants to move to a new room, and not caching
them in some fashion (RAM being the obvious place to do so) can completely
negate any of the potential gains from using a SQL store in the first
place.
However, as an extreme, you could use your SQL store just during loading
of the mud (let's leave OLC out of this for now) and then there is
functionally no difference between having used a SQL store instead of a
file store. The entire area structure has been loaded into memory at that
point, and the mud doesn't know the difference.
Now, I do not advocate using a SQL store in so limited a fashion, but as a
migration path, it's an important, early milestone. But if you are to
move forward, then you can recognize more significant capabilities that a
SQL store can provide. However, this is where some of those other
challenges kick in.
The next most obvious challenge comes with OLC, and making sure that two
people trying to access the same room doesn't result in a damaged or
inconsistent state of the area. Locking is one way to protect yourself
from this, but opens up the possibility of real time reads of that data
returning stale data, or worse yet, timing out. This can all be dealt
with by careful planning of your OLC module, as well as choosing
appropriate levels of locking and integrating transactions.
At any rate, there can be very substantial gains from using a SQL store,
and those gains, like any, come with advantages and disadvantages. But
there is no reason whatsoever that a proper design couldn't account for
all these considerations, and result in a very seemless transition to
using SQL rather than flat files.
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- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. mrpotatohead@urbanfallout.net
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Chad Simmons
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Christopher Bunting
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Chad Simmons
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Hiddukel
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Chad Simmons
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Hiddukel
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Chad Simmons
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Richard Lindsey
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Richard Lindsey
- Advanced Topic - Doing it differently. Daniel O'Neal
- DESIGN: Mini-VW contenst Mike Rozak
- DESIGN: More thoughts on the player pyramid Mike Rozak
- Procedural content Mike Rozak
- DESIGN: MMO Survey for College Class Bret Lederle
- Imagery from text J C Lawrence
- Imagery from text J C Lawrence
- Skotos Seeks Guest Voices Shannon Appelcline
- Twisted.reality Paul Miller
- Twisted.reality Peter Harkins
- Twisted.reality Jp Calderone
- Twisted.reality Eli Stevens (WG.c)
- Marketing Resources? Michael Hartman
- Marketing Resources? Elia Morling
- Marketing Resources? Pandora
- Marketing Resources? Christopher Allen
- Marketing Resources? Greg B
- Marketing Resources? Ren Reynolds
- Marketing Resources? Tom Hunter
- Marketing Resources? Michael Hartman
- Marketing Resources? Mike Rozak
- Marketing Resources? Jason Smith
- Marketing Resources? Mike Rozak
- Marketing Resources? Tom Hunter
- Marketing Resources? Mike Rozak
- Marketing Resources? Michael Hartman
- Marketing Resources? Michael Sellers
- Marketing Resources? Mike Rozak
- Marketing Resources? Michael Sellers
- Marketing Resources? Tom Hunter
- Marketing Resources? Tom Hunter
- Marketing Resources? Koster, Raph
- Marketing Resources? Mike Rozak
- Marketing Resources? Koster, Raph
- Marketing Resources? Tom Hunter
- Marketing Resources? Tom Hunter
- Marketing Resources? Johan J Ingles-le Nobel
- NEWS: And so it begins. (officially sanctioned in-game sales) David Wright
- DESIGN: The game with a thousand faces Mike Rozak
- DESIGN: The game with a thousand faces Jaycen Rigger
- DESIGN: The game with a thousand faces Mike Rozak
- DESIGN: The game with a thousand faces ceo
- Sony is getting into the virtual goods auctions Morris Cox
- SOC: Characters as Avatars Jaycen Rigger
- SOC: Characters as Avatars eric@enkanica.com
- DGN : Atomistic Creation Jaycen Rigger
- DGN : Atomistic Creation Thomas Tomiczek
- DGN : Atomistic Creation Jaycen Rigger
- DGN : Atomistic Creation cruise
- DGN : Atomistic Creation Ghilardi Filippo
- DGN : Atomistic Creation Kirinyaga
- DGN : Atomistic Creation Julian Leyh
- DESIGN: MMO Interviews for College Class Game Researcher
- Atomistic Creation cruise
- Concerning "Groups" Jeff Gaskill
- Concerning "Groups" Sean Kelly
- Concerning "Groups" Jeff Gaskill
- Guild Wars ? Louis d'Ambra
- Guild Wars ? cruise
- Guild Wars ? Colin Fuller
- Guild Wars ? Max Battcher
- Guild Wars ? Don McGlumphy III
- Guild Wars ? Sean Howard
- Guild Wars ? Mordengaard
- Guild Wars ? Mike Oxford
- Guild Wars ? Max Battcher
- Guild Wars ? Corey Crawford
- Guild Wars ? Jason Downs