Tom,
Again. your last point lost me there.
Search through a list of keywords is done a billion times in ROM codebase.
Every for loop is very much doing it. Memory is NOT spiked (at all), and
while it is relatively speaking slower to do string comparisons, it is still
fast enough that you can do ALL the stock default helps, * 10 (my estimate
of my helps system) and still be well under a second of actual lag time (the
lowest I check server runs.. in other words, I cannot register the impact).
Resources are already given to the help system upon starting the mud. Helps
are grabbed from your internal memory storage allocated space anyways. I
doubt if you have helps in the 8 meg file range. Mine is 303k and that is
over 5 years of constant catching words that the users cant figure out and
having 2 dedicated immortals doing helps.
In other words, I think that any resource issue here, is moot unless you are
running a 286 with 8 megs of memory. The you have other problems. :)
help.are is the right way to go in general overall. I think you agreed with
this, just I still dont understand the spiking of memory and resources you
talk about. :)
I would worry about the nested loop issue in ROM as a much higher priority.
That thing causes I dont know how many "once in a blue moon" crashes. Also,
replacing sprintf with your own anti-buffer overrun really improves the
amount of bugs you can find in the system.
Chris "Winston" Litchfield
Owner: The Mage's Lair Online Gaming Service.
www.mageslair.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Whiting" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Chris "Winston" Litchfield'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 3:34 PM
Subject: RE: Question about helpfiles
> >>
> it will impact the mud. would it be considered efficient to merge all
> the
> helpfile entries into one big helpfile, rather than having them all over
> the
> place?
> >>>
> This wasn't talking about putting all of the helpfiles into help.are,
> this was talking about putting ALL of the helpfiles into one helpfile
> itself, from what I understood the point to be. So, the mud itself would
> have to search through 1 large helpfile, not 1 area, for the correct
> help on xxx subject.
>
> Again, perhaps, I understood the point wrong, but as I said in my first
> mail, merging ALL of the helpfiles into help.are IS a good idea, it's
> quite that. Merging all of the helpfiles into ONE helpfile is a bad
> thing, because there's no distinguishing between the two.
>
> If all he was talking about was merging everything into help.are, then I
> was wrong, but as I understood his mail, it wasn't.
>
> And yeah, something could easily spike memory for a mud. For example,
> if, taken for instance, I was right, and the idea was to just throw
> everything into one entry. That single entry would have to be searched
> through whenever a user typed help "the" for instance. Every occurrence
> of the word "the" would have to be reported to the user, which, again,
> could seriously spike server resources, or cause the mud to dump a core
> and run like mad, depending on how good your programming skills are.
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
> TJW: Head tech, Dreamless Realms Mud
> Personal: http://twhiting.kyndig.com
> Mud: http://drealms.kyndig.com
> Snippets http://drealms.kyndig.com/snippets
> Telnet telnet://drealms.kyndig.com:9275
> The OLC2 Pages http://olc.kyndig.com
> -------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris
> "Winston" Litchfield
> Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 10:23 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Question about helpfiles
>
>
> Tom,
> Exactly HOW does using a help file spike its memory? I do have all
> the helps in a help.are, provide a nice keyword system (including
> ability to get a help by number), and do not spike memory. Memory is
> never "spiked" when you search something that is already in memory.
>
> I personally think that having all the helps in one file makes
> managing them a lot easier. It is very important to keep the helps
> up-to-date and consistent in how they are presented. If you dont do
> that, the mud/game looks sloppy and incomplete.
>
> If you are worried about memory, you have something else to consider
> :)
>
> Chris
>
>
>
>
