Hello again everyone - It has been a trully busy day at the office (coders club if you will). We took a day off to re-evaluate our work, come up with some new strategies etc. I though I would give a small update on the current situation.
Everything is running smoothly and I now have 4 more dev's helping along(dont think it will make things confusing, we all know our roles, and what our strengths and differences are - we stick to those roles) I have been asked quite a few questions, and have had quite a few comments. So I will clear a coupl of things up. The estimated proc, and memory seems to be a key thing. We are fully aware of server's be trully famous for NOT needing lots of juice to speed wlak their way inot the hearts of the gaming community (In this case the mudding community only). As much as I would love to say it wont be much of a resource hog, I am afroad there will be some upgrades (perhaps not) for people actualyl wanting to use this system. We have tried to lay it down on paper as best we could, to do the math. So far this is what we have come up with. We are shooting for == Anyone running "fairly" stock rom, with a few of the much sought after and needed utilities like OLC Color etc == (this is for genral purpose - divy it up however you want to fit your own mudding habits and nature) We took a mental picture of a big mud sporting 200+ active players (425 peak) on their own server with a dedicated dsl or cable modem. now genrally you can get away with a nice compact server that is stand alone dedicated to the mud with a proc of maybe 500mhz (give or take) and 64 - 128M of ram (pending os), this in all reaility SHOULD be just fine for running this new engine, it will drop into the code (not like a snippet though)It will be in it's own file set and you will have to put some calls in to other files, but other than that it will just drop and and take of on it's own with it's own backgroup process. Now this may sound like alot, but for those of you who are not allowed to run more than one background process, it can be keyed in with another process to run smooth as one. I am confusing myself, so please dont ask me to explain - I may be leading this escapade, but it's not my side of the candy dish. I will try to explain it better after I myself get some insight (just goin by what I have been told) The code, will be in C++ (no flames here), to better allocate memory and code efficiency, we want to keep it small and tight, and all the programmer will have to do is add in a few calls to other files and will be set. Now, as far as mob actions go. Mobs will be no longer be controlled by the mprogs (ya know the one, and you may disagree - but mprogs are sadly out dated) Mobs will have a full database, that can easily be scripted with new formats of speech and actions, and a full set of keywords to "describe" the mob. For instance - "Ogre" (set in the intelligence category) would give the mob a "nice" dumb accent so "dey wuud probidy tak yike dish" again it will be easily customizeable. Quest/adventuring AI is a must of course, so there may no longer be a need for a seperate questing engine, these short calls will allow quests to be assigned to characters quite randomly. Also, there will of course be just casual AI, Mobs remembering your name after you have introduced yourself. Mobs forgetting who you are even though they just saw you 10 minutes ago because they are dumb, Mobs who will shake your hand, Merchants who will try to swaggle you outta more money than the piece is worht, and argue with you when you tell they are wrong! Mobs who will follow you around just because you look kind enough to allow them do do so, mobs who will lead you off into the sewers and then backstab you to try to steal your pack (and may succesfully so so!). Possibilities will be "hopefully" endless for the creative. As for people who are new/unexperienced with coding, well.. you will be delightfully surprised at the scriptablilty of this engine we are working on, most of it will be able to be done on the fly from within game with a few short commands. The rest inside the code itself, will be fairly easy to keep up with. Those of you who know c but not c++ have no fear we are keeping it plain and simple so you will be able to catch on quite quickly to what each func or call does. Sorry abot the longevity of it all.. This will be the last plugin on here for quite sometime, (saev for when we get our mailing list started) i will hand out the mailing list address as soon as I get it. Thanks fer the support, and sorry if I didnt get a chance to answer all questions.. there is still alot to be done. Some questions just are not answerable yet. Necro __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Find the one for you at Yahoo! Personals http://personals.yahoo.com
