[MUD-Dev] PDMud (was Re: Bruce Sterling on Virtual Community goals)

[ApplePiMan#aol,com]

At 10/21/98 2:14 AM Niklas Elmqvist (d97elm#dtek,chalmers.se) altered the 
fabric of reality by uttering:

>Hmm... Yes, the module handler knows the names, filenames and pointers to
>the dynamically loaded code modules, but do the individual modules know
>this? Can you figure out what a module does just by looking at its name?
>Maybe there could be several different implementations of the same kind of
>module? What if someone creates a replacement for the "standard" 
>MagicModule and wants it to work seamlessly by capturing all magic-related
>requests and just not handling all of them (or handling *more* of them)? 
>Having the modules know nothing about other modules is IMHO the most clean
>solution. 

Making assumptions about the existence of any particular module is a big 
mistake, IMO. One of my personal pet projects (not necessarily something 
my company will be doing) is a Wild West world, where there would be *no* 
MagicModule, standard or otherwise. While I realize you were merely using 
that as an example, I'm sure I could, given time, envision a world where 
just about any "standard" module you care to mention would not be 
applicable.

IOW, I think modules would have to register themselves at runtime, with 
the assumption being that are *none* until that registration takes place.

>Admittedly, you need *some* kind of coordination between modules. The
>ParserModule must know the acceptable commands supported by the
>other modules (or does it? Maybe this could be polled by a message from
>the ParserModule: "Okay, send me your command grammars along with a way of
>packaging this into a request you can capture.").

Exactly. The module itself should tell the ParserModule (or better yet 
some lower-level traffic director) when and how it wants to be called. 
Anything less will limit the imagination of world designers. Perhaps I'm 
atypical here, but I think limiting generated worlds to high fantasy, 
with passing thought given to sci-fi, is far too constrictive. I want to 
be able to model any world I can imagine.

-Rick.


---------------------------------------------------------
Rick Buck, President and CEO  <mailto:rlb#big-i,com>
Beyond Infinity Games, Inc.
See you in The Metaverse! <http://www.big-i.com>