Why Islandia is going down...
Lynxiwynxipooflemuffins
Because of (naturally understandable) curiosity, I'm posting to explain
why we (the tinkers of Islandia) are going to take it down in the near
future.
Reasons for:
1. Islandia is too large. Even if we get a permanent site, even with
pruning (which could probably bring it down to 50k), it's eventually going
to far exceed any machine's capability to keep up.
This is, of course, true for any MUD; eventually they're going to get
too big for their servers, no matter how large they already are. But
Islandia's size is such that it's going to happen faster because there're
many people on who would build. Smaller MUDs are at the low part of the
exponential growth curve, and have a great deal more life ahead.
Some statistics...
- Virtual memory: 19-20M total, 9.7M currently resident.
- 0130 Saturday to 0117 Tuesday, 100 CPU minutes (roughly)
- 11.6M DB dump (with compressed strings)
- 74488 objects = 10224 rooms, 43360 exits, 12963 things, 5472 players,
2469 garbage
- the dumped DB is two thirds the size of the ClassicMUD DB
(11.6M vs 15.6M).
2. Islandia is showing all the signs of age. Some of the places people
build at are pretty well unknown; in particular, lots of building through
the post office. This is probably a personal thing, but we're also
experiencing the typical increase of annoying people on Islandia though
fortunately they aren't quite as bad as those in Classic's last day.
We could just let it run on like this, but the problem will only get
worse over time. Hacking and slashing at the db is incredibly time and
energy consuming, though it bought us time before; in fact, the last time
made some people unhappy as items not often used got recycled, including
many building projects left incomplete.
3. Islandia's tinkers are showing signs of ennui. We could admittedly
hand the system over to a bunch of newer tinkers, but they'll be facing just
the same problems we are at some point. Not a pretty situation at all. My
feelings is that the tinkers are part of what have made Islandia what it
is. We aren't paid to keep Islandia up forever, come what may, and in our
opinion, it seems best that Islandia choose a proper time to shut down.
4. Islandia shouldn't be abruptly shut down. Chaos is setting a good
precedent by setting a specific date and shutting down at that time. Jim
Aspnes's note on the crash of ClassicMUD was also a good method. If a MUD
should die, it should pass away gracefully.
Reasons against:
1. Loyal users. A bunch of people probably still like Islandia lots,
even with the other MUDs and advancing MUD technology. *sigh* I guess the
only thing you *can* say in times like this is that everything passes away
sooner or later, but we should make what efforts we can to let people keep
what they've built, by letting them have extracts, or use Jiro's
anti-builder software.
I have personally received pages from people who're sorry that Islandia
has to go and would like us to keep it going. I thank those of you who
cared enough to tell me how much you enjoyed Islandia, and those who helped
out offering sites. Pbblts to those of you who demanded we keep it up with
no thought as to what it costs us in time and energy, of course.
2. Islandia as a tradition. This is, frankly, a silly reason, but
people may believe it's somehow a duty of ours to keep the place running.
Summary:
We, the tinkers of Islandia, have pretty well decided that it's come
time to take Islandia down, and put its database in mothballs. We'd like to
try to make its going dramatic, and give people enough time to save what
they like; that's why it's going to take a month to sink it.
It won't be the end of the MUD world. There are at least ten up and
running MUDs out there of various flavors and types. Brigadoon (MUCK), for
instance, is reasonably well built, and has already inherited many of the
users of the now-departed Chaos. Perhaps it's time for another MUD to enjoy
its time in the sun.
And someday, Islandia may rise for a short time like that mythical city,
Brigadoon, perfectly preserved by the seawaters...
__ ___ ___ _/' Name: Conrad Wong (UCB CS senior)
/ \ _/ \----' \-' c`-o Mail to: cw...@sim.berkeley.edu
| | / > __/_ / __/_`, _| or: cw...@ocf.berkeley.edu
\__/ \____\`--\____\ ;/' Opinion: what opinion?
Donald Burr
What is "Jiro's anti-builder software"? Where may I obtain a copy?
______________________________________________________________________________
Donald Burr, c60...@danube.Berkeley.edu | "I have a seperate mail-address
University of California, Berkeley | for flames and other such nega-
Majoring in Computer Science | tive msgs; it's called /dev/null."
enrique.conty
>
> 1. Islandia is too large.
Bingo. Probably most users (socialites) haven't seen most of Islandia,
or care to. Maybe you were trying to do too much with it.
On a related note: I haven't seen any of the MUD code, but how bad would it
be to change it to use a disk-based db with memory caching of the active parts?
In theory, you could have a much larger virtual database (or much smaller
memory usage, depending on how do you want to go about it).
> 2. Islandia is showing all the signs of age. Some of the places people
> build at are pretty well unknown.
Then restrict building, or ban it altogether. Make builders prove that their
castles are going to be used. Give them a month's trial period (to make sure
that the place will still be visited once the initial furor dies down). Make
it clear to the builders that monthly recyclings of unused objects will be
enforced.
> This is probably a personal thing, but we're also experiencing the typical
> increase of annoying people on Islandia.
Popular places attract everyone, including the vermin. Especially the vermin,
since there will be more people to annoy there. There's nothing that
can be done about that, except reserve the right of admission.
> 4. Islandia shouldn't be abruptly shut down. If a MUD
> should die, it should pass away gracefully.
What about a shutdown party? :-)
--
E n r i q u e C o n t y
jes...@ihlpl.att.com