Yet Another Introduction

[Nathan Yospe]

On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Reed D. Copsey, Jr. wrote:

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

Yea, as can be seen, I am introducing a goodly number from my conceptual
camp, the native/advanced internal hybrid types. I've got one more,
possibly, on the way, one of the people who have started Java based muds.

: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=A0was 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=A0didn't like how much of that was written, I finally gave in and
:decided it was time to write something from scratch.

Well, that seems to be catching these days. There are a lot more "from
scratchers" out there than I remember being around when I started to do
the same, and more popping up every day. Lets hope this is indicative of
an oncoming end to the tyrany of the big three... oh, and yes, Mud++ is
nasty. Like a Diku in C++, with a lot of loose threads.

: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)=A0work 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.

Heh. I started doing Fortran work for a defense company because they ran
out of physics related work for the intern... turned out to have a knack
for coordinate transforms. Never heard of V... nice to hear that some
development packages are OO (I have to work with 4D's internal, which is
all global, and nasty as hell) Incidentally, it turns out I wrote OO style
even with Fortran... yes, it is possible, with discipline.

:Currently I am working on a small ROM based mud while I=A0develop 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.

Trust me, you won't hold on to the diku preferences long around here.

:What I=A0have 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=A0am sick of not having the flexibility in building
:of ColdC or LPC or some of the other mud drivers out there.

Very, very similar to my own design, from what I've caught... at least in
goals. Once they are both done (and the rest of the likewise models) I
would like to compare implementation. The archives should offer some
interesting ideas on internal languages and implementations, although many
of the people here are universal programming types.

: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.

Looking forward to hearing your ideas. We're building up mass again, as
reflected by the burst of messages on Monday. Ideas tend to flow pretty
freely.

   __    _   __  _   _   ,  ,  , , =20
  /_  / / ) /_  /_) / ) /| /| / /\            First Light of a Nova Dawn
 /   / / \ /_  /_) / \ /-|/ |/ /_/            Final Night of a World Gone
Nathan F. Yospe - University of Hawaii Dept of Physics - yospe at hawaii.edu