Re: Killin bugs was ...

From: JTRhone (ujtr@lady.cs.sunyit.edu)
Date: 02/14/97


> > Find all the bugs in *any* code?!!?!
Ha.  Agreed.  Isn't the accepted average 1 bug per 100 lines of code?
Regardless of how signifigant it is.

> But its more likely to find the bugs in your own code than in any other code.
> I mean, after all, you made your own code, you know what you thought when you 
> wrote it.. (hopefully). 

Ack.  Why have code reviews, or peer reviews?  Why have QA?  Why have test
and integration phases of software development?  Simply because authors of
code inevitably miss their own bugs.  It's similar to writing an english
paper, it's always better to have someone proofread it, imho.  How many
times have you stared at a bug for hours and not even realize it was there
until you crashed yer mud with it? :)

I *do* agree that mud coding is hardly professional, it's hacking for the
most part, to one degree or another... and it's usually a hobby.  Since a
lot of the formalities of code dv. are ignored in hobby-ish coding, I
think it's safe to assume there are higher than average bug rates in mud
code :).  I think a mud-coder should spend ample time trying to figure out
a problem on their own, after all, you learn from mistakes.  What's ample
time?  I, for example, am stubborn, and rarely ask for even pointers, and
I never post code and ask for help on it.  The whole point of mud coding
to me is to make me a better coder (along with the afore mentioned
hobby-ish reason).  Some people are not in it to learn, they just wanna
run a mud.  Why am I wasting time on this thread?  I don't know.

ObCircle:

Related to some of the features someone said they'd like to see in OLC in
the future.  Someone mentioned (Sam I believe) it would be nice to set up
a zone how you want it, without wandering mobs runnin around and such.
Then you could just give mobs items and force them to wear, wield, etc.
And you could put objects in containers and such, however you want things
to be set up on a zone reset.

I have been workin on an OLC of my own for a couple years now, (RoAOLC I
call it.)  A couple on this list have seen and used it and agree it rocks
the house.  Anyways, I use a 'locking' mechanism to do this.  Before a
builder starts work on a zone, they 'lock' it.  This sets a Z_LOCKED flag
on the zone and everything is basically frozen.  Upon zlock, the zone is
purged and everything is reloaded at 100% probs, so ya know everything is
there.  Then you can go around, give mobs stuff, load mobs in certain
rooms, give em swords, make em wield em, whatever, full sets of armor etc.
You can also do anything with objects as well, put them inside something,
then give that to the mob or leave it on the floor.  Lock doors, open
doors, close doors, basically do anything to the zone to make it how you
want it to look on reset.  When the builder is done, they 'unlock' the
zone, which rewrites the zone comlist (just passes thru each room and
parses out a zone command list).  After it does this, then the zone is
purged again, and things are reloaded normally, based on percentage loads,
so it's like a soft reset.  The Z_LOCKED flag is removed, and mobs which
wander can do so.  (along with the other activity of the zone).  If the
zone is connected to the rest of the world, players are given a nice
little message when they try to enter a locked zone, saying it's down for
construction or whatever.  This is so players don't disrupt a zone when a
builder is tryin to set things up.  

Well, that's how I did that, hope it flicked a light switch for somebody.

jtrhone aka vall RoA

+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ: |
|   http://cspo.queensu.ca/~fletcher/Circle/list_faq.html   |
|    Or send 'info circle' to majordomo@cspo.queensu.ca     |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 12/18/00 PST