From: garnett@gestalt.austin.tx.us (John Garnett)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.lp
Subject: MudOS 0.9 Press Release
Keywords: LPmud MudOS 0.9 :)
Date: 14 Nov 92 03:53:41 GMT


(Press release forwarded by the PR firm, Tongue in Cheek)

Camridge, Mass. (November 6, 1992) (NASDAQ:MUDOS) -- The MudOS
Development Group today announce the immediate availability of the
long awaited MudOS version 0.9, the most technically advanced LPmud
driver available today.  MudOS, although based on the LPmud driver
version 3.1.2, written by Lars Pensj|, contains many new features, and
has had many of its original LPmud components completely rewritten,
fixing bugs, eliminating memory leaks, giving hefty performance
increases, and making once common crashes a thing of the past.

The changes in MudOS since its last publically available release
(version 0.8.14) are extensive and are available in a separate fact
sheet (MudOS 0.9 Fact Sheet) which is to follow this posting.  In addition,
the fact sheet also details the changes from LPmud 3.1.2 to MudOS 0.8.14.

Because of the size and complexity of the driver and the sheer number of
changes and additions to it, the MudOS Development Group has put MudOS
through an extensive beta testing period.  The beta testers included
production muds Genocide and Overdrive which generally have 40 or more
players.  Both of these muds and our other beta testers have been very excited
about the new driver.

While most new products are characterized by the bugs in them, the latest
version of MudOS has been amazingly robust and stable. "This is a large and
important move in the future of MUDS", said Blackthorn, God at Genocide.
"For example, we haven't crashed in over two weeks, and we usually have
from 50 to 70 players on at a time.  For most other LPmuds (except Amylaar's
of course), that would be unheard of."

Many however, were much more excited about the plethora of new
features available only in MudOS. "There are many new advanced
features that now I don't know how I could live without", said
Talyessin, the god of the popular LPmud Overdrive. "The children()
command for example, is a huge timesaver.  And that's only one of the
dozens of new features they've added.  It's incredible.  And don't
even get me started on mappings.  They're the best associative array
implementation I've seen in a MUD.  And they're blazingly fast too!"

"Before, my code was pretty readable.  I found that really difficult as
an admin, because other wizards would be modifying my code.  Now with
mappings, I simply make a three level deep nested mapping, and these
novice wizzes don't know up from down!  It's great!" expounded Buddha,
the former admin of the acclaimed TMI :)

However, not all of the testers had good things to say about MudOS.
"ARG!  I hate the new MudOS!  I usually log on to a mud and play it
until it crashes, and my GPA has kept up because that would be pretty
often.  But now I don't know!  I hate you guys!" said Shadowhawk, a
player of many muds.

One exciting new feature of MudOS is a generic network interface that
allows any coder to make objects that can communicate to other MUDs,
or other network services.  As Michael, the God-emeritus of Vincent's
Hollow said, "I like MudOS because I can play mud _and_ do my homework
now that socket-based objects like dictionaries are available."  Such
objects might even make Shadowhawk hate MudOS less.

MudOS also has many speed improvements.  Blackthorn of Genocide was
so surprised by the speed improvement that MudOS gave him, he's
noticed that he now has a new problem. "Genocide is very dependant on
reaction speed for players.  The better the reaction speed, the better
you do on Genocide.  As a result, the people who have severe net-lag
do poorly, because their reaction speed is slower than their
competitors.  In addition, we have some players that log in to
Genocide from the local machine.  Under the old driver, the lag of the
driver under 50-70 players was almost as great as the net-lag, so
nobody had an advantage.  Under the new system however, the local
users have a huge speed advantage.  They have almost no local lag.  We
are trying to come up with a method to slow down the driver for people
coming from local sites."

The MudOS team is very excited about the release of MudOS 0.9.  "This
is the culmination of a lot of hard work and effort.  We're very
pleased to finally release this software.", said Wayfarer, one of the
principle developers of MudOS 0.9.

However, other members of the team were more guarded about what the
public reaction to the release of MudOS 0.9 would be.  When asked what
impact this announcement would have on the MUD world... MudOS team
member Truilkan was slightly reserved about the matter, anticipating
irrational flamage from the humor impaired.  On a less reserved note,
the rest of the team replied, "Oh...well, it will revolutionalize it,
naturally."

Jacques, the original architect of the new communication code for
MudOS, and the new network interface functions proclaimed "Today is a
day that will change MUD history forever.  For the first time you have
a stable, publically available MUD with complete intermud communication
capabilities built in, generic mud/client communication, and many other
powerful features. We're very excited to release MudOS 0.9".

Huthar, the author of much of the example intermud socket code
provided with MudOS 0.9 was unavailable for comment about his
groundbreaking new mudlib code.  Blackthorn of Genocide, who took over
the work on Huthar's intermud code, stated that he thought Huthar would
be proud that his code will finally be available to all.

The announcement of MudOS's release generated comments from some of
MudOS's competition in the LP world, as well as from other notable
LPmud developers.**

"I don't think that this is such a big deal", said Amylaar, a
developer of a competing lpmud driver. "I mean, it doesn't solve the
general lvalue lifetime bug, *or* even the circular data reference bug
in saved objects.  In addition it doesn't even support compat mode.
I'm just not impressed by this at all."

Truilkan, one of the MudOS developers, was questioned about the
relative merits of MudOS when compared to Amylaar's driver considering
that Amylaar's driver solves circular reference problem by saving the
reference in a recoverable fashion.  Truilkan admitted that the MudOS
solution merely prevents the driver from hanging when saving a
circular data structure; however, he cheerfully pointed out that
the MudOS solution uses about twenty times less code than Amylaar's.

"The MudOS solution is totally inappropriate", responded Amylaar.

When the lack of a MudOS solution to the general lvalue lifetime
problem was pointed out in a survey of LPmud admins, a majority
responded with:
"Huh?"

When asked about the MudOS driver, Pinkfish, a noted mud luminary
simply said "Bing". When pushed for a more verbose comment, he replied
"One thing I can say for these ModUS guys... they sure can spell a lot
better than I can."  Pinkfish was too busy wombling to make additional
comments on this historic announcement.

Whiplash, a MUD well-known MUD visionary commented, "Hey!  I started
the damn thing! How about some credit?" (Ed - Whiplash does receive
                                            credit as one of the
                                            principle originators of
                                            the MudOS project in the
                                            Credits file in the
                                            release)

Jacob Hallen, one of the CD developers had this to say, "Well, these
guys don't work out of a computer club like we do.  Where will it be
in a couple of years when these guys get a life.  You can count on
that not happening to us."

When asked about the implications of the new MudOS release, Mike
McGaughey of Shattered Worlds said "Pah! Already done it.  We did all of
that stuff that they're bragging about now, 5 years ago at least!  We just
chose not to release it because we assumed it was so trivial, that anyone
out of diapers could have written something similar themselves."

Other LPmuds, such as CD have developed some less complete implementations
of a network interface, but MudOS surpasses these implementations,
allowing generic connections using either TCP or UDP sockets, in
addition to providing security around the new functions for the
security conscious administrator.

Many people have wondered why it has taken so long for MudOS 0.9 to be
ready.  Cynosure, the creator of the UDP socket mode, and the
developer of the mudlib MUDWHO implementation in MudOS said, "When I
ran into these guys, they were just about to release the driver.  I
sure put a damper on that!"

When asked for comment about the release of 0.9, Dainia of DreamShadow said,
"It's about %^&*@ time!"

Cynosure also ported MudOS to the Sequent Symmetry machine, one of the
many new architectures that MudOS 0.9 compiles on without modification.
MudOS runs and has been tested on the following systems: NeXT,
IBM RS/6000, SUN SPARCstation (1, 1+, IPC, 2), HP 9000, DECstation,
VAX (Ultrix), Sequent Symmetry, and others.

When asked if the effort of porting to so many different architectures
was a pain in the ass, MudOS developers stated that to the contrary,
given that the contributors didn't all have access to the same type of
machine, porting to all of the architectures was the only way that all
team members could reasonably contribute.

MudOS developers were hoping for an endorsement from Lars but were
disappointed when Lars said: "Sorry boys... shouldn't have changed the
name" before disappearing with a deathlike grin.

With all of the recent discussion of unreadable code, when asked about
the possibility of being blamed for having unreadable code themselves,
the MudOS developers were quick to point out that they knowing they
wouldn't be disbelieved, they had commented all of those unreadable
sections with "/* Amylaar wrote this part */"

Many of the MudOS developers have said that 0.9 is the last major
version of MudOS that they will be helping with.  Unless someone else
plans to take up the reins of MudOS, the MudOS team will most likely
only release bug fix releases in the future.

When asked what he plans to do next, Wayfarer stated: LPmuds and even
sad to say LPmud derivatives like MudOS are ultimately a deadend.  My
next project will be to write a next generation driver done right.  Of
course, it will only run under NeXTSTEP given the clear inferiority of
other available platforms.

When asked what he would be doing next, Truilkan said "Well, I've been
fascinated by database MUDs for years, unfortunately, most Tiny's and
MUSH's are so full of engrossed role players that I haven't had the
opportunity to truly explore the technical possibilities in these small MUDs.
Now with MudOS's mappings and socket efuns, I can implement a database MUD
inside a MudOS object (MIM (tm)) and stay with LP's where all of the cool
people are :)

"When asked about his future plans, Buddha stated, "Well, I'd like to
see something along the lines of a TMI revival, should we find a 
suitable site for it.  I really could use a more active mud to idle on
while others struggle with the details." 

credits:
Truilkan smirkles just like Truilkan!
Wayfarer drools all over you! Gross!
Jacques snickers.
Huthar grovels shamelessly before you
Cynosure forces Wayfarer to drool.
Whiplash tunnels into the ground!
Blackthorn goes: 'zoomer'
Buddha gasps in astonishment!
Shadowhawk grins evilly.

**(for the humor impaired, please note that these quotes were all
fabricated (from various sources) for humor value.  You can assume that
about a trillion smiley faces appeared throughout this "press release")

***(for the easily offended... we all grovel shamelessly before you,
and beg forgiveness for offending your sensibilities).

--
John Garnett                   garnett@gestalt.austin.tx.us (NeXT Mail ok)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.lp,rec.games.mud,alt.mud.lp