[MUD-Dev] Re: META: What are you looking for in this list?

["Adam J. Thornton" <adam#phoenix,Princeton.EDU>]

On Tue, Sep 22, 1998 at 02:31:19PM -0700, J C Lawrence wrote:
>   What is *YOUR* purpose and interest in this list?  What would you
> really like to get out of the list?  What would you like to do with
> the list?  Some I know are here purely for the technical aspects of
> server development (an area that has received little coverage on the
> list of late): how to write performant networking code, how to tune
> and design their data model, what the concerns and techniques are in
> writing a MUD programming language ala LP/MOO/MUF/ColdC/etc.  Others
> I know are interested in hack'n'slash game design, RP, real virtual
> world creation, etc. etc, etc, etc.

I'm sending this to the whole list in the fond hope that someone might be
interested.  Me, I've been a long-tiome pen-and-paper RPGer.  I've got
playtesting credits from Steve Jackson Games and a single writing credit
from Chaosium.  I've been a programmer for, oh, a decade or so; very little
of that has been spent writing games.  And, I'm a little ashamed to say,
I've never been a hardcore MUDder.

I'm working on a design for a game, probably eventually (I hope) commercial
(subscription-based, open-source client), which is like a MUD in a lot of
ways but not at all in others.  It's a very physics-light and RP-heavy sort
of game where I hope to work out some of my theories about what kinds of
social interaction make a game fun.  In this crowd it's extremely unusual
in that it is a great deal less simulationist than the norm.  I'm building
it from scratch, because nothing out there seems to do what I want to do;
I'm using my own multiprocess/multithread design for the networking code, a
tokenized parser based at least conceptually on Graham Nelson's Inform for
in-game object manipulation, and something that looks suspiciously like
NNTP for client resource acquisition.  I haven't made up my mind on whether
to use an XML DTD for my protocol or just roll my own.

This list has been great--I've gotten some good technical suggestions on
how to implement my networking model and some good arguments for using XML
rather than a handrolled protocol.  I haven't said much recently because
the topics have been things that I haven't known anything about, and I've
been working on my own stuff in areas I haven't felt like I needed to ask
for help in.

Adam
-- 
adam#princeton,edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman