Yet Another Introduction

["Reed D. Copsey, Jr." <rdc#spiritone,com>]

Hello folks.  I was recently invited to join this list courtesy of
Nathan Yospe, and figured it was about time to introduce myself.

I'm fairly new to the mudding community, having only been around for
about a year and a half now, but I've spent a large portion of that year
and a half online and either building or coding on a couple of muds.  A
few months ago I pretty much realized that I was unimpressed with most
mud bases out there, and really started looking into alternatives.  Lp
never impressed me, as it always seemed slow and cumbersome for the
results, and diku derivitives have some (very obvious) faults.  After
tinkering with a copy of Smith's mud++ code for a bit, and deciding that
I didn't like how much of that was written, I finally gave in and
decided it was time to write something from scratch.

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As to my experience, I came into programming in a very unusual way.  I
happened to land a job in high school doing book work for a small
company which dabbled in software development, and, due to the small
size, eventually started doing some pretty much menial (almost
resembling data entry) work on their software.  After a short while, I
actually began to get more and more involved in the development itself.
About 4 years ago, the company decided to port over it's software (which
was a visualization package geared towards environmental and geologic
data) to use the AVS/Express development package, which, if any of you
have used, is very interesting.  I, for the most part, was responsible
for the GUI of this large visualization package.  In hindsight, this was
a good job for me personally, as the AVS internal language (V - though
not related to the freeware version of V) is very object oriented and
made my later transition from C to C++ as language of choice much
smoother.

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Currently I am working on a small ROM based mud while I develop my own
server.  I haven't done all that much for it as of yet (as I just
started working there a month ago or therebouts) except put in a custom
OLC and change some interface stuff.  In my own server, which I have
started using C++, I am aiming at something with a somewhat simalar feel
to diku based muds with a decent  OLC, especially from the builder's
perspective.  My time as a builder has twisted my thinking to try to
develop simple to learn, and quick means of development for the basic
types of objs/mobs/etc...  However, I am somewhat torn, as I have spent
much of my time in the past moving diku based muds away from the look
and feel of diku, doing things such as simple event handlers to allow
somewhat complex scripts on mobs, and the like.

What I have been tossing around lately is the possibility of a complex
internal language (possibly something simalar to ColdC) with an "OLC"
which scripts and automates much of the process of writing basic objects
and mobiles in order to accelerate and simplify building and ease the
learning curve a little.  I want something that any idiot can look at
and make a mob, but I am sick of not having the flexibility in building
of ColdC or LPC or some of the other mud drivers out there.

Anyways, I'm sure I'll prolly ramble on about this more at a later date
(as I'm nearly falling asleep right now).  Thanks for the invite Nathan,
and I am looking forward to bouncing ideas around with all of you.

-- Reed Copsey, Jr.