Re: bpl12 Suggestions

From: Jeremy Elson (jelson@CIRCLEMUD.ORG)
Date: 08/17/97


George writes:
>Binary Pro:
>One file.

This isn't even a "pro", because you already need both a space in the
playerfile *and* a rent/crash file.  Plus, if you want to save
aliases, you need to create yet a *third* file for that.  Neither
aliases nor rent/crash files can be rolled into the binary playerfile
without both wasting huge amounts of space and setting limits that on
those values that can't easily be raised without a pfile conversion.

The only pro of binary files, as far as I'm concerned, is that they're
faster and take up much less space (esp. since ASCII savefiles
allocate at least the filesystem blocksize).  Computers are generally
fast enough now that this isn't so much of a pro.

The only reason I'm not putting them in now is that I want to finally
come out with a solid 3.0 before starting a slew of major changes
again.

What I've been mulling over lately, actually, is an all-C++ mud using
POSIX threads, one thread per player, with a compiled worldfile format
more or less resembling C ... but that is such a major change that the
MUD would probably no longer be "CircleMUD".  The worldfile format
I've been thinking of is something like:

DELCARE ROOM 1000-1100;

/* Defaults for rooms 1000 through 1040 */
DEFINE ROOM 1000-1040 {
  sector-type = indoors;
  zone = 30;
  flags = peaceful;
};

DEFINE ROOM 1001 {
  flags += quiet;  /* Room 1001 is peaceful and quiet */
  name = "The Big Room";
  desc =
"This room is so big you just can't believe it.  What's up with that?
The room is just so huge that you can't even see the top of the walls.
Wow.";
};


-Jeremy


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