Subject: Graphics in MOO?

From: "Tyrie J. Grubic" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 10:19:18 -0700

I was wondering if anyone had, or was in the stages of doing or
considering beginning, adding graphics to MOO?

I'm imagining something where it has "important points" for each object
and tracks where those are, then the client program knows how to expand it
to the entire picture.  As you wal karound you would slowly move between
rooms, and looking at an object might display an enlarged close-up of it
before you at the angle you are looking at it (into it, at its bottom,
way up at it, etc.) 

I look forward to hearing what might or is being done in this area.

Tyrie J. Grubic
[email-masked]

---

From: David Engberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 10:40:55 -0700

> considering beginning, adding graphics to MOO?

curiously enough, adding graphics support to a server (like Moo) is fairly
easy ... it's just another type of data that you have to deal with manipulating

the problem comes in the clients ... to do something like what you envision,
someone will have to sit down and write _AT_LEAST_ two clients (x-windows and
msdos with modem) plus a decent editing environment to make the images in
the first place.
they will have to deal with calibrating colors and resolutions between
platforms, plus deal with the different communications and graphics mechanisms
underlying the client.

even assuming you find someone who has both the time and talent to write these,
you have to deal with serious issues of transmission and storage:
you undoubtedly want something cool enough looking to be worthwhile, but
you don't want to eliminate use by people on 2400bps modems.  if your server
has to send out five or ten 1k graphical objects per second, it's swiftly
going to consume all of its bandwidth, so you're going to want to force
the clients to cache some of the images, at least in memory, hopefully on
disk... now the client writer needs to be proficient in DB tools.

etc...

i'd give someone else's left arm if some large, high-level MU* group could
get together to hammer out a decent graphics standard and protocol so that
different people could get to work on writing clients, editors, servers
etc... without wasting/duplicating effort.

but we all know that if you get more than 5 people together on a MU*, they're
lucky if they can even decide what their names are, let alone anything
controversial and _useful_.

oh well ... a hound can dream.

dave