[875] in Coldmud discussion meeting

Re: ColdCore

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Fri Jan 5 21:42:25 1996 )

Date: Fri, 05 Jan 1996 21:27:28 +0500
To: coldstuff@tombstone.sunrem.com
From: mwilson@vt.edu (Mike "Zaphod" Wilson)

>     They will, indeed, be a CPU killer.  I implemented one of the
>first 3D systems in MOO (a startrek-ish combat simulator on LambadMOO

I did 3-d space in MOO as well.... I think the first system in which
the entire MOO was based on that system.  Final Frontiers I (TrekMOO,
whatever ya want to call it).  However, but getting a little creative
with data structures for relating distances between objects, you
can squash some of that lag.
>
>     The big problem you're going to run into is line-of-sight
>calculation scaling up as you start to get, oh, a few dozen objects
>moving around.  Add another order of magnitude and you're going to
>bring the server to it's knees.  The best thing for this, really, is
>to have some special built-ins for mathematical functions, maybe even
>some special built-ins for 3D stuff.

Well, theoretically, a few dozen objects is all I should *ever* have to 
calculate line of sight for.  The first trick would obviously be to
eliminate all objects that are not 1) within range of my 'sight distance)' 
and 2) not withing the range of my peripheral vision.  These calcs are
much simpler than line of sight.  This should leave you with less than a few 
dozen objects that are 'visible' at any one time.

>     One of the more recent redesign efforts I started involved some
>fancy scheduling and geometrical code.  The idea was to get something
>a bit closer to a real, newtonian-motion 3D system.  Each object has
>vectors.  From these vectors you can calculate whether or not they'll
>ever collide with other objects, and when and where that will happen.
>You can also factor in a radius so your calculation tells you when,
>oh, object Alpha will get within range X of object Beta - and when
>it'll get out of range.  

While this may well be a way of doing space related items (if I do ever
re-code a space system, I'm gonna look into this method), it's not going
to work for the generic practices of a core-db.  The relational aspects
of this DB need to extend to players, common objects, etc.  These things
will either not be moving much, or not moving at constant velocities, etc.
they will be abnormal in their movements and unpredictable.  Therefore,
I think its gonna be better to have a 'snapshot' approach of what the
universe looks like at any given moment, as opposed to the 'beginning'
picture followed by a schedule of events.


>     Good luck :-) If you want a 3-D coordinate system, personally I
>think you'd be better off building some sort of basic 3-D system in C
>and plugging it into Cold.

The whole point of this is to do it in DB so it's customizable at any time
for whatever purposes are necessary.  Certainly, if this system goes
to the point of being graphical driven, then things will have to be
taken into the server for that.  However, I think all in all, if the
system is well thought out, and efficently coded, a reasonably well
endowed site should handle this system, even in db.

Hell, if I can get 3-D space code to run on a MOO on a 486-66 w/ 24M
with minimal lag, and only a handful of server mods (spherical coordinate
conversions) then this should be childs play :)
-Mike
mwilson@glock.com                                             mwilson@vt.edu
    It's difficult to kiss a woman one moment, and kill her the next.
   If Bill Clinton is the answer, it must be one very stupid question.