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Post by nessalin on Sept 6, 2013 17:29:51 GMT -5
Hey guys. I've hired a coder to begin work on a clean-room, Chinese-walled reverse-engineered DIKU coding standard towards the goal of building an open-source, liberally licensed MUD engine for RPI folks to use.
Step two of this project would be to code an open-source RPI MUD codebase.
After that is finished, I will attempt to implement a new RPI MUD which I think will be to the liking of most people here.
Anyone interested in helping? First I will need coders, as well as code-reviewers and testers. Recruiters and organizers could be useful as well. Please share your thoughts below.
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Post by blasphemy on Sept 6, 2013 18:11:08 GMT -5
I'll throw myself in as a tentative maybe. I'm an experienced coder, but my life schedule is completely out of whack right now. PM me details and I'll see what I can do.
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Post by dessertman on Sept 6, 2013 21:23:20 GMT -5
yup
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vulcan
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Post by vulcan on Sept 7, 2013 0:39:43 GMT -5
Where did you hire this coder and how much are you paying?
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nyrdelpasotaco
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Anti-Semitic Administrator Impersonator
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Post by nyrdelpasotaco on Sept 8, 2013 16:41:42 GMT -5
Best of luck.
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Post by nessalin on Sept 9, 2013 0:02:38 GMT -5
Thank you. I'm interested in people's opinions. If you were to play (or admin on) a new DIKU replacement, would you rather keep the old DIKU syntax or implement a new one? I'm tempted to keep the old syntax for reasons of compatibility - I don't really imagine that players or admins want to learn all new commands, simply for the reason of having commands.
Should kill still be kill? Open still be open? etc.
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Post by blasphemy on Sept 9, 2013 1:38:02 GMT -5
Everytime you ask that question, you should also be asking, "What's the alternative, and what benefit does it provide?" Should kill still be kill? Open still be open? etc. As opposed to what, Hit? Interact? Use? That said, a 'strike' command or the equivalent that only 'kills' for one hit might be worthwhile. |
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Post by nessalin on Sept 10, 2013 21:23:00 GMT -5
Everytime you ask that question, you should also be asking, "What's the alternative, and what benefit does it provide?" As opposed to what, Hit? Interact? Use? That said, a 'strike' command or the equivalent that only 'kills' for one hit might be worthwhile. No. Thank you, yes. I was thinking along the same lines. I think a lot of designers try to introduce changes for the sake of introducing changes, but I'm definitely not one of those guys. You can understand that I feel better having bounced the idea off of someone else, though. Question for everyone though, is that I'm very likely to introduce into the codebase an API for determining MOB behavior, spells, and things like that. I know that on a lot of older codebase people tend to have hard-coded most things like this which creates problems when people want to add new functionality or makes it pretty much impossible for a builder to whip up a new widget for people to interact with. Can you guys think of any other traditional game features that would be better handled though an API than hard-coding? Thanks! -Nessalin |
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Post by blasphemy on Sept 10, 2013 21:49:08 GMT -5
My first response would be just about everything that wasn't static. Interfaces are one of your best friends when you want to ensure future support for any given feature.
I don't have time to type out a list, but I tend to do my coding through generics and go from there. Generic Entity could be a character or it could be an item or spell effect.
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Post by nyrsucks on Sept 14, 2013 15:01:09 GMT -5
What coding language?
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brah
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Post by brah on Sept 14, 2013 17:01:14 GMT -5
I wrote a very basic MUD engine in college as one of my final projects. Thing is - there's already several codebases out there that are easily extensible, depending on what language you program in. Most of them are written in C or C++, but newer ones are around that are Python, Perl, Java, and Ruby. There isn't really anything special about Diku or any other code base, actually there are several other 'cleaner' codebases that are easier to extend or implement new functionality in.
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delerak
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"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
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Post by delerak on Sept 14, 2013 18:49:39 GMT -5
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Post by nessalin on Sept 15, 2013 16:30:45 GMT -5
Mr Nyrsucks,
Thank you for your inquiry. The primary development language for the OpenRPI project will be C. This language was chosen on the basis of it's widespread familiarity amongst the sort or programmers that I hope to recruit. C seems to be the lingua franca of the RPI MUD development community.
Other and related tools will be developed using PHP for web applications as well as of course SQL for database interaction. Please consider contributing your abilities once the code is available.
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Post by nessalin on Sept 15, 2013 16:35:17 GMT -5
Mr. Brah,
Thank you for your input. I wish I had spoken to you a few weeks ago. Are you able to recommend any codebase in particular? When I glanced at various of the available open source code bases, they all seemed too diverse from the scope of my project for reasonable consideration, or else had licensing problems.
I'm still deciding on a license and would appreciate advice. My primary requirements for a license shall be that the code will be forever open-sourced, that people be free to use it for any purpose, with the only two requirements being that any user must publicly acknowledge the origin of their software, and must make available the source code for any modifications that they make, if any. I tend to rather dislike the various licensing drama and so wish to select one that will be as permissible as possible. If anything, an anti-license.
-Nessalin
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Post by nessalin on Sept 15, 2013 16:41:09 GMT -5
Mr. Delerak,
Thank you for your suggestion. Your codebase has been examined and discounted, for the reason that I have my suspicions that a certain controversy exists between some former member or members of the SOI staff and yourself. While part of me couldn't care less what one semi-anonymous nerd from the SOI staff thinks of your license, my actual intention is to make a game that might last for 40 years. I have received the advice that if you want something to last for 40 years, you must build it to last 40 years. Privately I am concerned that if I use your codebase, this or other persons may later surface and claim that you and I have pirated the code from SOI.
From a certain standpoint, I am following the path of least resistance.
Are you able to secure, in writing from the SOI staff, license for me to build an the OpenRPI project as I have described above? If so your codebase would come as a tremendous boon to my project, and would be appreciated. Please let me know if you believe that something could be worked out. License negotiation has never been my strong suit and any assistance would be appreciated.
-Nessalin
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