Distribution schemes (was Re: [MUD-Dev] Languages for MUD drivers)

[Ian Macintosh]

    > Bruce Mitchener, Jr. wrote:
    > Sent: Friday, 19 November 1999 14:20
    >
    > That just gives AI an advantage over players and
    > requires them to be in the
    > same process space as the rest of the system.  As for
    > your efficiency point,
    > I don't plan on sending text messages to any of them.
    > World events will
    > travel to any interested and connected server and to
    > the clients.
    > Presentation of the world events or processing of the
    > world events is a
    > client issue.  With proper authorization, clients will
    > be able to produce
    > various world events as well.  This would allow even
    > stuff like a weather
    > system to be separated out into a rather specialized
    > 'client'.  AI wouldn't
    > suffer any disadvantages that I can tell by doing it
    > this way over having it
    > in the same process space.

I simplified vastly in talking about how I solve some of the traffic
and computational problems.  One of the biggest things I try to focus
on is the somewhat millitary minded 'need-to-know' principle.  I have
a '.watchers' property which tells me which connection objects are
interested in receiving notification messages when some other object
does something.  That way I don't simply broadcast every thing out to
every server and client.  If you haven't registered an interest in a
location, mob, event, etc, you don't get told about it.

The 'rather specialized "client"' you mention above is what I call
another server. Never, never, ever, let something be decided on a
client under the control of your player that will affect anything
except perhaps visual or sound output.  You'll just get cracked and
hacked a la Diablo flavour.  I find it so incredible that a program
with such technical excellence can fall into such a simple trap.  But
then, they probably never saw any value to a server based product, and
without that, there's no way around it.

What you say above though, I agree with whole-heartedly.  Good design
will give you all the advantages, and none of the disadvantages.

Regards,

Ian.




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