On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 05:43:04PM +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: > I've been looking at Second Life recently, which does most > things server-side (in fact, running a distributed world > with game physics) unlike games like WoW, where the intelligence
Why? Is there some compelling underlying reason they can't make use of all those desktop cycles like other massively multiplayer games do? > What I didn't like is that most of the game is purportedly > based on a byte-compiled language, with some long-term plans What language? Some ad-hoc thing of their own? > to switch to .Net (Mono, actually), which should result in > much improved performance. Current performance is > rather ridiculous, even high-priority simulations like > private islands only tolerate few 10 avatars before severe > performance degradation, and even crashes. > Can things be compiled in realtime by passing code snippets > in conventional compiled languages, or is this always limited Well, sure, I think that's been done, although I don't know if anyone's using it for real in a production setting. Here are a few links to related subjects - tcc, CriTcl, and LuaJIT: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/tcc/ http://wiki.tcl.tk/2523 http://luajit.luaforge.net/luajit.html But why would you think that just-in-time compilation of C or the like would be central in fixing Second Life's performance problems, rather than just doing a better job of software engineering in general? I know nothing about Second Life, but from your description, if they're looking to change programming languages, Erlang (or something like it) might be the best fit. -- Andrew Piskorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.piskorski.com/ _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
