<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design --> <!--X-From-R13: ptNnzv-pt.UenlEntr.Sqzbagba.OP.QO (Quevf Uenl) --> <!--X-Date: from scipio.globecomm.net [207.51.48.12] by in5.ibm.net id 867391462.27182-1 Fri Jun 27 06:04:22 1997 CUT --> <!--X-Message-Id: 9706270459.86pd@ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg01548.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01550.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg01541.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01564.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#01549">Author</A> | <A HREF="#01549">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#01549">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#null,net">mud-dev#null,net</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: <A HREF="mailto:cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA">cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA</A> (Chris Gray)</LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Thu, 26 Jun 97 21:59:51 MST</LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> [Arrrghhh. On my second try to reply, 'sendmail' froze - but I was smart enough to grab a copy of my reply from ramdisk before rebooting.] This second attempt to reply to this message is likely going to be shorter (everyone sighs with relief) than the first one. The first one got eaten when a lightning bolt struck just across the river and made a power bump. Whine, whine, whine... :So who do you design your command syntax for, if not the users? And what :in God's name are you thinking? Mostly I design what seems reasonable to me. My goal has been to accept a reasonable fascimile of natural English for standard commands, while still having the expected shortcuts. In short, I aim for what I consider to be a "good" parser. Please try it (see later post) and tell me what you think. Be as specific as possible. :What the server is like internally should not be reflected in the :commands. What the people playing the game are expected to be like :should be reflected in the commands. I'd be less positive about it and say: what the server is like internally should be reflected as little as is reasonable in the commands. :Deliberate development implies a large amount of research and thought. :Another word for this process is 'deliberation'. The parallel is :evident. Let me rephrase. I think the kind of stuff a lot of us seem to be doing here is more related to "academic research" than to "commerical research". The difference is that academic research is often more interested in the exploration of "what if..." than in reaching any given goal. :I see a lot of people going 'I use something unlike any other server!', :and people that can't even spell are expecting me to believe that fifty :years of computer programming theory has never produced anything as good :as what they've written. I'm sorry, I just don't see it. Great men stand :taller because they stand on the shoulders of those who came before :them. To ignore the past, the history of the field, is to doom yourself :to the same mistakes. That's why we have lists like this: to sanity :check ideas. Evidently this one's totally whacked, nobody likes it. Hmm. I had some nice reply here before... I don't want you to abandon your MUD desires, or even this list. However, before any of us can say much that is substantive, I think you have to give us something substantive to work with. Give us some explicit suggestions to play around with. Don't worry about many of us not agreeing with you - this set of folks seems to be very positive-looking and agreeable, asside from the occasional wars about certain topics... :If it doesn't benefit (and look cool to) the user, why are you working :on it? Because I want to. "Cool" has never been one of my driving forces. Certainly not "cool" as other people may define it. I much prefer "fun" and "useful", and the much harder to agree on "nicely done". :> Don't use page <who> '=' '"' message :> Instead, use page <who> <message> :> where <message> is the rest of the input line : :I made this exact same observation earlier in the discussion, along with :the associated mention that this precludes the use of spaces in names. :No response was ever made on the matter. Sorry, I must have missed it. The volume on this list is getting pretty large, so I have to skim a lot of it, else I wouldn't get any work done on my MUD system! [It was about here that lightning struck...] Do people find it important to allow spaces in user names? I thought about that a fair amount, and internally my server doesn't care, but because of practical reasons, it (and the scenario) don't allow spaces or punctuation in names. I couldn't think of any reasonable (by my views) way of handling them, and still have easy-to-use and English-like commands. For example, how is a machine ('bot) supposed to parse spoken output and find the part that is the user name and the part that is what was spoken? Do you allow spaces in names but not allow certain words to be used in names (such as "says")? Since this kind of scanning can be used a lot in the system, I weighed the expense of some kind of general matching and name-lookup against what I perceived as the benefit, and decided to ignore the issue of such names. If enough real users complain, I might rethink the issue. :>This isn't super user friendly, but after a bit of practice isn't bad - : :It's the user friendliness that I think we need to QUIT IGNORING. We've :done it far too long. OK, what is your suggestion for a replacement form? :What happens if you mix up the parameters? The more parms you have, the :greater the chance that someone can inadvertantly do something they :didn't want to do. It's unlikely you will do something wrong, and if you manage to do so, it isn't hard to undo. If you mix up the parameters, you will most likely get a complaint, since there are a fixed (by the scenario) set of "room types" and a fixed set of "directions", and a determinable set of tables that you can define symbols in. :> @r new type indoors dir n :> :>or, if you like typing punctuation: :> :> @r new type=indoors dir=n : :I see some problems here. What about when a direction isn't appropriate? :What if a room type just isn't appropriate to the game system? Something :I'd prefer to see is a series of atomic commands rather than batches; :batches can generally be done using the programming language, after all. :While it may seem tedious, building is something that is prone to the :worst kind of creeping complexity; I would love to offer some examples, :but I am incredibly tired. I'll post something more specific tomorrow, :most likely. Within my scenario, directions are the only think that *is* appropriate. Out of curiosity, what other things would you want to use? Remember, this set of building commands is part of the scenario, not part of the server, so for some other scenario, the command would be changed if there were no room types (or some other concept). You want to do the simple room creation with a series of commands instead of just one? If you really want to, you can get programmer status from the administrator and do things the hard way - the point of the added build commands is to make it easier to do the common stuff. [Since my system has a full graphic client with sort-of GUI stuff, the actual way I would build a room would involve a short series of mouse clicks, plus some typing for the room's symbol and name. These text commands were done before I realized I could use the mouse stuff, and I've kept them for players who don't have Amiga's and so cannot use the current client.] I look forward to what you have to say on this tomorrow. -- Chris Gray cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01548.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP=MUSH/PG=MUD</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01550.html">try it out!</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01541.html">[NOISE] common server design</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01564.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#01549"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#01549"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="01542" HREF="msg01542.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</A></strong>, Jeff Kesselman <a href="mailto:jeffk#tenetwork,com">jeffk#tenetwork,com</a>, Fri 27 Jun 1997, 03:07 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01584" HREF="msg01584.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</A></strong>, Alex Oren <a href="mailto:alexo#bigfoot,com">alexo#bigfoot,com</a>, Sun 29 Jun 1997, 20:07 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01586" HREF="msg01586.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</A></strong>, Jeff Kesselman <a href="mailto:jeffk#tenetwork,com">jeffk#tenetwork,com</a>, Mon 30 Jun 1997, 03:24 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="01541" HREF="msg01541.html">[NOISE] common server design</A></strong>, Martin Keegan <a href="mailto:martin#cam,sri.com">martin#cam,sri.com</a>, Fri 27 Jun 1997, 00:43 GMT </LI> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="01549" HREF="msg01549.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</A></strong>, Chris Gray <a href="mailto:cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA">cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA</a>, Fri 27 Jun 1997, 13:04 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01564" HREF="msg01564.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Sat 28 Jun 1997, 10:30 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01576" HREF="msg01576.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] common server design</A></strong>, Chris Gray <a href="mailto:cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA">cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA</a>, Sat 28 Jun 1997, 23:27 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01585" HREF="msg01585.html">[MUD-Dev] common server design</A></strong>, Cynbe ru Taren <a href="mailto:cynbe#laurel,actlab.utexas.edu">cynbe#laurel,actlab.utexas.edu</a>, Mon 30 Jun 1997, 01:44 GMT </LI> </ul> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01414" HREF="msg01414.html">Supporting RP+PG</A></strong>, Huibai <a href="mailto:ashen#pixi,com">ashen#pixi,com</a>, Sun 22 Jun 1997, 10:51 GMT </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>