Re: New CircleMUD License FAQ

From: George Greer (greerga@circlemud.org)
Date: 08/22/01


On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, halitus wrote:

>That's it then, rewrite from the ground up! :)

Some people may be wishing we did in December when I land over 500 kB of
changes. I'm currently at 467 kB (patch size) but object packing should
take up the difference.  It hurts me just as much as it hurts you, except
there are more of you than me. It'll hurt doubly so since I'm making two
versions of it. Ugh.  Hope you're happy. (normal vs. send_to_charf)

>Actually though, has the group thoughy about splitting a "circlemud2" and
>just starting from the bottom and doing things "right" (in hindsight and
>with new hardware in mind) from the ground up?

Daniel and I have kicked around some ideas but we (or at least I) haven't
started anything so we can keep what little is left of our sanity focused
on just one CircleMUD.

Rough ideas:
- Either C++ or Java. I'm really tired of char[] at the moment after going
  through all of CircleMUD doing nothing but string functions and buffer
  checking. Maybe C. Not really at the point to pick a language though.
- Real physics model.  I took 12 weeks of it in the summer for my major and
  I'm going to use it for something if I have to make a game out of it.
  It'd also make the spatial world believable.
- Weather and seasons influenced by orbit distance, orbit shape, orbit
  speed, axial tilt, rotational speed, sun's power, etc. etc. not some
  arbitrary constants for the barometer.  Daniel was talking about
  modelling galaxies but I'll settle for a quaint solar system in a good
  neighborhood with a large backyard.
- Graphics and text. Or at least I want text so the engine gets worked on
  before I inflict my awful stick figure drawings on the world.  It's more
  likely that we'd write an engine compatible with the WorldForge clients
  though, depending on the state they are in.  I know OpenGL but have
  little desire to write my own client as well as two or three different
  server processes. (hub, database, engine)
- No "rooms", true spatial world.  This does mean people would actually
  have to _plan_ out areas instead of just slapping rooms down and linking
  gratuitously.  Be your own city planner; name a street after yourself.
  One interesting problem this brings up is that you'd have to specify the
  radius of your planet in advance so it can do horizon calculations. Don't
  make your planet too small or you'll have to move mountains and forge
  oceans later. Let's just say people might not take kindly to cataclysmic
  events as a daily even.

You can probably guess why we haven't done anything as of yet.  License
would likely either be GPL (with the "web-app loophole" intact) or BSD (no
advertising).  Since we don't have anything written, speaking of a license
doesn't accomplish much.

We're more inclined to discuss general desires for the engine than specific
implementations at the moment.  Feel free to throw out ideas if you want
to.  You should know the Developer's list address by now since there isn't
a point to inflict that discussion upon the Circle list.

--
George Greer
greerga@circlemud.org

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