From: behrends@arctecws-16.dfki.uni-kl.de (Karl Reimer Behrends)
Subject: Re: Gamedriver survey
Reply-To: behrends@dfki.uni-kl.de (Karl Reimer Behrends)
Organization: University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 20:51:21 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.231811.4460@fy.chalmers.se>, jacob@fy.chalmers.se (Jacob Hallen) writes:
|> In article <1992Sep29.040838.26999@rhrk.uni-kl.de> behrends@dfki.uni-kl.de (Karl Reimer Behrends) writes:
|> >Would you care to explain why people using 3.1.2 are heading down a dead end
|> >and where the future of LPmud gamedrivers lies?
|> 
|> Of course I will care to explain.

First of all, thanks for your response.

|> Lars has dropped the development of 3.1.2 and it isn't a flawless gamedriver.
|> Since noone has picked up where he left off, and the people who use 3.1.2
|> in its various forms lack the spirit of sharing that Lars had, they are
|> on their own when it comes to fixing bugs and implementing improvements.

Yes and no. Though Lars has stopped to work on the gamedriver (and vanilla 3.1.2
_is_ buggy to a great extent), Amylaar's version is compatible and he has always
been eager to fix reported bugs. Moreoever, it is fast and stable (TUBMUD's usual
uptimes are only limited by the available memory - and since there weren't any
memory leaks to be found the last few weeks we have to shut the driver down by
hand every now and then).

|> At the moment there are 3 sites that share the fruits of their labours
|> with others; CD, Amylaar and the MudOS people (formerly TMI). There may be
|> others, but they are in that case unknown to me.
|> I don't think that Amylaars efforts are the best way to the future. He has
|> done a lot to improve gamedriver speed and I'm sure he has fixed a lot of
|> bugs, but this has been done at the cost of readability. The day that Amylaar

I beg to differ. Amylaar's code may not be a model of readability but the only
noticable difference to the CD driver I've seen is that the CD driver has
comments in front of every function but nobody who doesn't know about the
overall concept of how the gamedriver works or who is an experienced programmer
is going to understand EITHER of both (nor MudOS, btw). The point is that
you need more documentation on the way the various parts work together. Even
then I doubt that the occasional programmer is going to be able of making
changes affecting the more complicated parts presented with a program this
size. Complex algorithms can't be made easy to understand.

|> stops supporting his gamedriver, or the day you decide that you want to
|> implement an idea of your own, you are in trouble.

Funny, I've done so already and wasn't in any particular trouble.

|> The TMI people have put out enough plugs for MudOS, so I won't have to
|> say very much about it. I haven't seen their code lately, so I don't know
|> anything about the quality of it. I will study their 0.9 as soon as it's out.
|> The demise if TMI puts a shadow over MudOS though. Will there be upgrades
|> next year, will there be continued development, will it face the same fate
|> as 3.1.2?

This is _your_ opinion. The TMI people might take the same stand towards the CD
driver with about the same rights. They could even argue you might someday take
a step towards an incompatible 4.0 driver like you did when going from 2.4.5 to
your 3.1.2 version without COMPAT_MODE and then what about all the people who
are using yours? Anyway, this is idle speculation and should not actually be
used as an argument.

|> The CD gamedriver is of course the one I want to make a plug for. It is a
|> stable gamedriver, even if it doesn't have all the nifties that some other

Now this point is debatable. IMHO the CD driver isn't stable at all (at least
version 1.57) but prone to unpredictable crashs as well as MudOS 0.8.14 and the
vanilla 3.1.2 driver. I tried four wellknown (hmmm, not that wellknown at all,
it appears) ways to crash vanilla 3.1.2 on the CD and MudOS driver. All four
of them 'worked'. All four are likely to be stumbled upon by an unsuspecting
user sooner or later. None of said drivers have the lvalue lifetime bug fixed
which tends to make the game crash without an apparent feature. Second, you're
forced to live with all the basic design flaws of native mode.

|> drivers have and we have no plans on stopping the development of it. We
|> do think that readability and maintainability is just as important as
|> performance, and some of the work going on at the moment is devoted to
|> improvement in this area.

Agreed. But they can only be means on the way to a more stable and
reliable gamedriver.

|> Jacob Hallen
|> 
|> No silly .sig


					Reimer Behrends

--
yass (yet another silly .sig)