FYI:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/h/news.html

Nothing terribly new or exciting, but we're still moving along.

yay so deliverator will be done in two months. excelent.

thanks for the update.

Actually, work on the new erlang back-end went pretty well tonight. It may be a functional part of the game, sooner than expected. <crosses fingers>.

There now, ya went and cursed it.

dont jinx it!

Thanks for the info Inc, hope it all goes well. I do appreciate that it's a lot of work .

In the meantime the rest of VO is still enjoyable , and I shall go and find out what "Erlang" is.......

Ecka

Erlang at Wikipedia

Thanks for the update incarnate! I could hug you just for the newspost, but I think it might make us both a little uncomfortable...

*dances the fog-n-erlang dance*

erlang? what's next, brainf*ck?

just kidding.

Erlang? Nice choice imo. But, do tell, can we get a roundup on how its working out for you as a platform? (not as a language, but as a whole, implementation platform and all)

Oh Em El Es, it's Spider, he's alive!

*runs in fear*

Aaanyway: I'll just keep on waiting until the good stuff comes along.

that's the problem with them fancy languages. they're so seldom-ly used that their back-enda are like swiss cheese.

what would make erlang more adept at holding up to it's promises than lisp?

why couldn't these processes run in more mainstream (/debugged/tested/reliable) languages/runtime?

I'd hardly call the 'back-enda' of sbcl or cmucl 'swiss cheese'. We don't know the cause of the problem we're encountering with deliverator on sbcl/cmu, or we'd have fixed it or gotten the sbcl devs to (depending on where the problem is), rather than assigning blame and switching platforms. The problem, in a nutshell, is that *something* isn't getting garbage collected despite the fact that we can't seem to find it from the root objects (which is how the garbage collector is supposed to find out what's garbage too, hence the confusion).

We chose common lisp primarily for its rapid-prototyping capabilities. In CL, it is very easy to define 'mini-languages', which is what I've done for missions, objectives, senses, reflexes, state-machines, business-models and more. All the code written in these special languages will remain untouched, and be auto-translated (by CL code) into erlang. As I develop new missions, reflexes, etc, I will continue to use the mini-languages; the processes they describe will simply be running on a distributed, fault-tolerant, erlang-based platform instead of the simplistic single-threaded one they have been running on. We had hoped for the simplistic system to continue to serve for a while yet, so that we could focus on player-visible features, but we always knew it would need to be made more scalable at some point.

If you know of a 'more mainstream (/debugged/tested/reliable)' language/runtime than erlang that provides:

1) *very* light-weight processes
2) distributed, message-passing concurrency;
3) unification/pattern-matching
4) a soft-real-time, distributed, disk and/or ram-based relational/object database usable with or without transactions (just a few of mnesia's features),
5) facilities for zero-downtime code-upgrades, and other high-availability features
6) a powerful enough set of semantics (eg. closures) to make auto-translation from lisp less painful than a complete rewrite

please tell. In short, Lisp did live up to its promise, and we are only expecting Erlang to excel in the particular areas it was designed to (and which a number of other companies use it for: http://www.erlang.org/faq/t1.html#AEN50).

As I undestand it, the definition of what and how things should happen with the bots is created in lisp due to the simplicity of developing in that language and its functionality in creating artificial intelligence (or simulating it, if you prefer). lisp has been the premier language for AI.

lisp then will compile down and instruct Erlang, which will handle the bot behaviors autonomously from that point on. Erlang is not as simple to work with as lisp for developing AI, but it is designed to run non-stop and with VERY minimal use of processor time. It's a hardy performer that shouldn't have the memory leak problems of lisp, and is scalable. If lisp should go down (which would probably be far less likely since Erlang would be managing a lot of the work), Erlang would still manage the day-to-day lives of the bots already in existence until lisp could be brought back up.

/EDIT D'oh! I got called away mid-post. My answer is rendered obsolete by momerath! (heh! Thanks mom - I missed that important detail)

"back-enda" was a typo for "back-ends" but you figured that eh?

tried bash?

no, i'm not serious.

those are pretty hard requirements. i thought perhaps smalltalk could do the job but i'm not sure about smalltalk's memory requirements. i have a friend that used to develop on that and he sometimes mentioned things about large "memory images" being tossed around.

anyhow. i'm not contesting anyone's choices. i was merely wondering what were the reasons for choosing those languages.

obviously, we all wish you guys luck with this new platform. we're all anxious to get a chance to stress-test it.

My method would be to go with what has the coolest name. Lisp is dumb, because who wanth to talk with a lithp? Erlang, that sounds cool. Sounds like a Norse god or something.

PC, have you considered business school? Not law school, somehow that might be too concrete for you; Gods forbid medical school... But yeah, business school is right up that approach's alley.

/me puts on Dr Lecter's suit.

Dr Lecter, have you considered political science? Not physics, that might be too concrete for you. Gods forbid chemistry...but yeah, political science is right up your alley!

Did my share of physics, minored in chem, hated poli-sci. Next.

(also, please learn to differentiate between when I'm being actually vicious and condescending and when I'm making a joke; it may help yer blood pressure. Hint: in this case, the joke in at business school's expense more than PC's)

Glad you lot understood that ....

Me , erm , if the moth breaks I don a space suit and hit it with a big hammer till the beams come on......

aye , and I can weld stainless.....

Ecka