New concept on Mud design

[Arureal]

Here is another thought I had about how Muds are designed, which has not seemed to change much over time. Why do we have to stick with the old way of doing things? If you use a custom client for your mud it opens a whole range of options. One of the best benifits of this is the move some of the server workload to the client side.

Think about resources, instead of players waiting for resource to repop, the client can activate a mini-map for resource gathering, and just updated the results to the server when the player returns to normal play. Ditto for processing resources. Player inventory could be managed client side and updated when the inventory screen is closed. This could even allow player to work on and in their private buildings, updating when they leave. It could even allow for these tasks to be done offline, saved to file, and updated when they reconnect.

It's just a thought, but I think it could make for some good gaming that benifits both player and host. the player will have more options, and the host a reduced work load on the server.

What do you think?

Arureal
High Lord of Lowbies

[weems]

Sounds like it opens the window for a LOT of cheating and duping.

[Arureal]

I thought about that, I suppose a good hacker could get into the program to cheat. It can be made hard to do, but not impossable. Saveing data to disk in text format would not be a good idea. but for the most part I think cheating can be controlled as well as duping of equipment. Not sure if my programming skills are up to it though, but it is a factor that must be considered.

Arureal
High Lord of Lowbies

[lingolas]

how do you stop botters?

[weems]

If I were you, I wouldn't worry so much about processer usage. Fast processors are very cheap these days, and as long as the code is optimized and fast, there shouldn't be much problems, unless you do some really fancy stuff with the AI.

[Zeraphin]

The more functions you move client side, the more hacks and exploits that can be created. The only way to try to stem this is to keep things server-side.

Besides, the honest fact is a MUD of DL's size uses a very modest amount of CPU (when not looping )

A secondary example: In World of Warcraft, everything is server-side.... EXCEPT movement. As a result, there are teleporting exploits that some people use to quickly navigate zones or escape fights.

[Arureal]

When I first thought of this idea it was just to push graphics from the client side, I just got carried away with the idea. Common problem like botting, ect could be delt with. However Zeraphine made a good point. It may open up ways I cheating that I had not thought of. It is hard to prepare for unforseen problems. Thanks for the feedback.

Arureal
High Lord of Lowbies