disk-based mud

Game Play & Game Design
#1

opinions?

I have coded 2 diferent systems, both ram based. I have considered(just to do it, like climbing that mountain) building a disk-based version.

#2

Could you be a bit more specific on what you mean?

A) At runtime the game is always synced to disk?
B) At runtime the game is in RAM, but then persisted to disk at certain key points?
C) Something else all together?

Kev

#3

Perhaps he is diversifying from a game where you play a male sheep to one where you play an inanimate circular object? ;D

#4

[quote]Could you be a bit more specific on what you mean?
[/quote]
Normally, IIRC, a disk-based MUD is one where you use HD + RAM instead of just RAM, thereby implementing your own memory-management system; this is a good opportunity to also implement semi-continuous synch to disk, so both your A and B often go hand in hand.

MUD’s often have hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of mud-objects; the OS isn’t anywhere near as intelligent at managing this as the MUD could be, and paging performance can be improved considerably. The last time I tried this, I found the same was still true of java (1.2.x I think) - that if you know a lot about the lifecycle of your “objects” (which may or may not be implemented on a 1-1 mapping with java objects) you can do a lot better virtual mem mgmt than OS + JVM would do for you automatically. Then again, some OS’s (e.g. linux) can be incredibly bad at virtual mem mgmt even today, so this is not saying much!

#5

blahblah… is where I think I am trying to go. I guess to rephrase my question…

What is a good, baseline for when an object should go back to disk and out of ram? Obviously if there is noone near that room, the room and static objects(non-mobiles) in that room don’t need to be in ram yet.

#6
  1. Go to kanga.nu
  2. Subscribe to MUD-DEV mailing list
  3. Post this question there
  4. Await detailed feedback from lots of other MUD-developers. Although, if it’s been asked before on the list, you should google for

“MUD-DEV” disk-based [etc]

although if someone on-list rmembers a thread on it, they’ll probably provide links and possibly search-terms.

#7

[quote]Perhaps he is diversifying from a game where you play a male sheep to one where you play an inanimate circular object? ;D
[/quote]
P.S. LOL

#8

thanks!