[vworld-tech] Modern MUD server design

[Brian Hook]

>> In my opinion, a pretty solid approach.  Of the architectures
>> I've seen for both professional and "hobby" multi-user games, the
>> better architectures have usually been those that gravitate more
>> toward very high-level languages (or structured data) for
>> defining game content.
>>
>
> Why is that?  What advantages are there to writing the game logic
> in a scripting language versus writing it in the same language as
> the kernel.

Not to state the obvious, but because you get all the advantages of 
the scripting language.  Assuming you believe that a language such as 
Python, Ruby, Lua, etc. has significant advantages for higher level 
application development than a lower level language, then using it for 
your game logic gives you a bunch of rapid development advantages.

If you're using a compile/link language like C/C++, then having to 
recompile and relink everything just because you've changed an orc's 
pathfinding algorithm can suck since you have to bring down the world 
(you could, in theory, use shared libraries, but that presents its own 
set of problems).

Basically, Python et. al. have a slew of advantages over C/C++ for 
logic programming.  C/C++ are great for many things, especially when 
you need good performance and tight control over memory layout, but 
Python et. al. are really nice for fast development.  Intrinsic 
garbage collection and dictionaries alone are practically worth the 
price of admission, then toss in all the various standard packages for 
sockets, io, SSL, etc. and it becomes a no-brainer.

> If all things else are equal

But rarely is that the case =)

Brian