Welcome!

[ShannonA]

Welcome to our newest columnist, Noah Gibbs, who's freshman effort may be found here:
http://www.skotos.net/articles/neo1.phtml

Shannon

[Steve S]

Welcome, Noah. This looks like it will be the type of column I've wanted to see here at Skotos for a long, long while, now. :)

[angelbob]

Heya, Steve. I'm happy to hear that my topic looks promising so far. I've already written the next couple of articles... But if you could elaborate more on what you're looking for I might be able to address it even better in the future.

Which is a coded way of saying: "I'm suddenly a columnist, so I'm now constantly on the prowl for topics for articles. That sounds like there's a topic hidden in there" ;-)

[maxhrk]

Hello Angelbob. I am also new user on this forum too. :)

Anyway, I hope if BELOW is related to that article that you just wrote afterall. Before I am saying anything, i want to say I am looking forward to create mud on the top of DGD(lp-mud like program). And it is first time for me to create my own mud. I am much reading all the articles wrote by most mud expert(sort of) from MUD-dev mailing list and considering very carefully what I am about to design what MUD world will be. Naturally I already see in my mind and the imagination manifest before me to know what my mud world would be(in text. heh. :p) However when i try to design and planning on notebook before actual programming the mud world is pretty hard thing to do at first though.

Athough I do have C programming experience and i am still at novice level but still know the concept how to design. Now if you going to create a new codebase which is hard thing to do.

I must confess i did look around different codebase like Dikumud, godwar II, and other codebase and it is not my interest in doing but yet DGD grab my interest to invest my coding to create MUD world on the top of DGD. That is because Lp-mud/DGD allow you to create your own mud world with no resriction. (At least i think). So far i hear Skoto do create one of the game on the top of DGD(AFAIK true).

There can be reason for wanting to make new codebase because they has idea of their mud world and desires to create their own new codebase than use the existing codebase themselves.

Just my two cents,
Richard

P.S. (I hope i am not trolling at all.)

[angelbob]

I'll have to agree with you that DGD is quite nice. You'll find that I've written quite a lot of the DGD documentation on the web (http://phantasmal.sf.net/DGD), so I'm biased :-)

The thing to remember is that 95% of most MUDs is the invisible infrastructure that makes them work. While the quality of the infrastructure is important, you can implement almost any appearance on top of almost any kind of MUD, and it's less work than building it all yourself. Yes, you have to modify some of what's there, but is that really worse than building from nothing?

DGD offers a compromise -- at least the LPC interpreter is there, and the network infrastructure. And if you build on its Kernel Library (I use it in my own work, and so does Skotos) then there's even more that's already done for you. As you've noticed, DGD also offers some features that no other MUD codebase can, which is nice.

Still, building from nothing seems to derail more fledgeling MUD efforts than all other causes combined. It has claimed at least five or six DGD-based MUDLibs to my knowledge, and probably far more -- most of them never talk to me and many probably never announce to the mailing list. That's more DGD MUDLibs than ever actually released code.

Skotos uses DGD for Castle Marrach. However, Grendel's Revenge and Eternal City both use the Cold core rather than DGD. It's similar in capabilities (or so Dworkin says), but very different in interface.

[maxhrk]

ooooh! you are the author of this mublib that i read and heard about? indeed, nice to meet you AGAIN! heh. you might noticed me submitted a bug on your bug system. the problem lies with window, but on linux i tries did fine so far with no problem. :)

I forgot to mention it above. *hop madly*

[angelbob]

I'm the author of Phantasmal, yes. I didn't see your bug report until you mentioned it. Guess SourceForge only mails me when *I* add a new bug... :-/

Your problem (as you noticed) is that the bundled release is linux-only. The scripts, the DGD binary, they're designed to be used with linux. It would be possible to do a Windows bundled release, but somebody would have to make one. The bundled release is designed to have all the versions in sync -- it exists because DGD changes quickly, Phantasmal changes quickly, and it's all hard to install. So you can't just use specific pieces of it, it probably won't work. You tried to use Phantasmal 0.015 with DGD 1.2p3, which isn't allowed. That's why the bundled release has a Linux binary of DGD 1.2.67, which *does* work with Phantasmal 0.015.

If you find the version number stuff confusing, I'd have to agree -- that's why Phantasmal has bundled releases :-) But as you noticed, they don't work on Windows. They would work on Windows if you used DGD 1.2.66 or DGD 1.2.67, which is what the current bundled release uses.

[maxhrk]

I am using window and linux, but I rather to use linux and also i am new to it. I purhased mandrake 8.2 about last summer and i know it is a old product because i brought it at half-price shop anyway :p. I am going to try out Gentoo later in near future date.

Now back to subject, currently I have very small experience and know about C and probably is confused about DGD and all that. I know i will get hang of it.

;)

Cheer,
Richard.

[Steve S]

Originally posted by angelbob
Heya, Steve. I'm happy to hear that my topic looks promising so far. I've already written the next couple of articles... But if you could elaborate more on what you're looking for I might be able to address it even better in the future.

Which is a coded way of saying: "I'm suddenly a columnist, so I'm now constantly on the prowl for topics for articles. That sounds like there's a topic hidden in there" ;-)
Hmm, well I like the first topic, being someone remotely interested in the development of MU*'s and the foundations behind them. I'm curious what advice you'd have for a brash, young programmer, but save that for your next few articles. I know I don't know enough to be hopping into things too deeply, but I've put my toe in the water to test the temperature, so to speak (I've looked up some DGD documentation you and Erwin have put up, for one). But I don't see myself even bothering with DGD or anything of the sort for a few years. And that is if I even bother to get into the deeper things at all.

I'll try to think of other topics, but most of the topics I like right now come from the view of a player. I'll get back to you on topic ideas when I have time. :)

-Steve

[angelbob]

Being someone remotely interested in the development of MUD's and the foundations behind them, I'm curious what advice you'd have for a brash, young programmer. I know I don't know enough to be hopping into things too deeply, but I've put my toe in the water to test the temperature, so to speak.

You could say that my entire column is that advice :-)

In addition to broad surveys of MUDs and features, which are very valuable for a new implementor or administrator, I'll be covering estimates of how much labor certain tasks require (that's the articles two weeks and six weeks from now) and how to estimate it accurately. Not for software -- scheduling that is still a black art. Rather, for building areas, which is the most important thing you'll do on your MUD.

You'll also find a lot of my advice for new programmers and adminstrators in the subtext. For instance when I say they keep starting over, failing, and contributing nothing. That's secret code for "use somebody else's codebase, even if you're gonna rewrite it all" :cool:

You'll see a bit more about the OpenSource folks, and why they haven't made more of a dent in the MUD world. That can be taken in two ways, depending... If you're in favor of OpenSource development, it'll show you some mistakes to avoid and problems you'll need to address. Otherwise, it'll tell you not to bother writing an OpenSource MUD server :-)

If there's anything else specific for a new coder or admin you'd like to see, lemme know. That's what I'm here for.

[Steve S]

Ahhh, very cool. Well, let me see what the next couple of articles are like and I'll speak up if I see anything you could mention that would be of interest. It'll likely be from a coding standpoint for me.

-Steve