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[COLD] NBC Online project

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thu Nov 20 01:55:08 1997 )

Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 23:56:04 -0900
From: Frank Crowell <frankc@maddog.com>
To: Cold Stuff <coldstuff@cold.org>

NBC Online/Homicide plans to include an RPG mud as part of their online
offerings.
(http://www.nbc.com)
Their intention is to have some sort of mud that can be used to exend
the Homicide/Second Story series that's being developed for the web; all
this is in support of the television series Homicide.

NBC Online will not pay for the project (what a surprise!), but they are
willing to have online promotion for the mud/company that gets involved
with the project.  Currently I'm tossing around some ideas with their
software developer and their producer, but I'm not interested in
promotion.  However, if someone can make a decent Homicide RPG Cold, it
could really help give Cold a boost.

I'm willing to provide the Black Rabbit server as a "proof of concept"
server, but the Homicide RPG will have to be moved off the server by the
end of March.  This means that the project will have to find another
machine.  If a sponsor for the site can be found, then that sponsor
should get the promotion from NBC Online.

The project will also need a builder or two and an admin.  If anyone is
interested on working on this project, I will give you complete mud
control so you can get the job done.

There are also some technical problems.  They want the mud to be able to
handle 300+ online users. I believe that LambdaMOO lags to an impossible
level at over 200-- don't know how well a Cold could handle that many.
Many two servers is better.  Suggestions?

Another concern is the use of the web.  I'm still not clear on this
requirement, but I know that they want to tie it in to their web page
some way.  If you look at the NBC web page, you will see that they make
heavy use of web technology, including lots of javascripts, and maybe
even java.  I don't really know what to do about this part.

Finally, there will be some use of NPCs.  The "proof of concept" will
have to include some functional NPCs, TBD.

So what do you think?  Is that a project worth doing and are there
enough resources in the Cold community to make it happen?  It's not a
great project if you want to run your own mud.  But it may enhance your
resume.

So send me some email if you are interested in the project,

frankc@maddog.com