From: jacob@fy.chalmers.se (Jacob Hallen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.lp
Subject: Re: Gamedriver survey
Date: 3 Oct 92 23:58:22 GMT
Organization: Chalmers University of Technology, Physics Departement, Gothenburg

In article <1992Oct2.205121.2309@rhrk.uni-kl.de> behrends@dfki.uni-kl.de (Karl Reimer Behrends) writes:
>
>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.

I'm not the only one to think that Amylaars code is hard to read and
unneccesarily complex. Apart from yourself and Amylaar, everyone who has
made his opinions known to me has agreed with me on this subject.

>
>|> 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.

Good for you. I hope you will be as satisfied in the future. We have been
put off by the code elements that Amylaar contributed to 3.1.2 to such
an extent that we do our best to eliminate them.
>
>|> 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.

I'm not speculating. I'm posing questions that a prospective user should ask
himself. And there is a very big difference. TMI is without a site at the
moment, and from my experience the efforts that are put into a mud project
quickly drop if the project lacks a site where the efforts can be coordinated 
and tested. Also, your analogy with 2.4.5 -> 3.whatever doesn't hold.
It's no big deal to convert a 2.4.5 mud to use the CD gamedriver or 3.1.2
non compat, so noone is really left out in the cold. However, you may be
far from the mainstream with a very long way back if you utilise the
special features of a new gamedriver and find that support of it has
gone away.
>
>|> 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. 

I would be very interested in hearing about these bugs. Do you have code
that can be used to repeat them? Do you have fixes or bug descriptions?

>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.

You are insinuating that there are design flaws that were put in in the
transition from version 2 to version 3, without saying anything about
what the flaws are. also, you are insinuating that we would be stuck
with the flaws, if in fact there were some. I think you need to give
us some meat if this is to be considered a valid argument.
>
>|> 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.

And means to better extendability, and a source of information for people
who want to make performance improvements.


Jacob Hallen

PS. If Amylaar gets a job without net access, a girlfriend or some other
mudfree life, where does that leave you? Relying on a one man show isn't
the best of options. DS
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