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Path: utzoo!watmath!watdcsu!herbie
From: herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong [DCS])
Newsgroups: net.games.rogue
Subject: Re: Are there multi player rogue games?
Message-ID: <1142@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Mar-85 09:50:19 EST
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.1142
Posted: Wed Mar 20 09:50:19 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Mar-85 01:59:28 EST
References: <49@cadtec.UUCP>
Reply-To: herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong [DCS])
Distribution: na
Organization: U of Waterloo
Lines: 34
Summary: 

In article <49@cadtec.UUCP> cate3@cadtec.UUCP (Henry Cate III) writes:
>
>     Are there multi player rogue programs?  We have several
>people here who really like rogue.  How would the scoring be
>handled?  Would there be one central process with the description
>of the dungeon, then each player would query it as the game 
>progressed?  Would they be able to fight each other?
>-----
>
>     Henry III			UUCP: {nsc,csi}!cadtec!cate3

if there were, you would need an awfully co-operative system
administrator.  rogue (esp. the more complex versions) takes a lot of
CPU because curses may do optimal cursor motion, but it bites the big
one for speed unless you are doing very minor changes to the screen.
thrown in for good measure would be the overhead of inter-process
communication.  the game would slow down considerably because you have
to handle requests from players more or less in a synchronous manner.
for an example, find someone who has sail.  if you have 4.2bsd, sockets
remove the need for a file interlocking scheme, but it then causes just
about as much overhead in system calls.  in summary, until you are
willing to develop it, and you find a way to allow multiple
communications with less overhead, you'll just have to wait until
someone does it for the PC.  i have one game anyway for the PC called
Zyll that is a two person adventure game.

Herb Chong...

I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....

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