This may sound like a crazy idea (it probably is), but since the demise of Google Wave, they have announced that they will be releasing an open source version of the Wave server and client. It won't be quite the same as the current web-based client (which may turn out to be a good thing honestly), but I think it will help the project live on.

See the announcement here: http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2010/0...

I wonder if the Wave Federation Protocol could be adopted for MUDs. I think it could quite obviously be used for some kind of inter-MUD mail as well as chat, but are there any possible ways it could be used as the foundation for an entire MUD engine? The possibility that comes immediately to my mind is to use waves for storing data and keeping track of movements. That's extremely over-engineered and probably a terrible idea of course, but I do find it interesting.

Google Wave has always planned to be open source, since the start.

Anyway, this has been discussed before. I made a topic on this I think? I forget where though.

Open standard, not necessarily entirely open source. They were open sourcing large parts of the codebase, but the only parts they had fully opened sourced was the core stuff. This new announcement signifies that they will be open sourcing a fully functional wave server and client, which is a large step forward.

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I have indeed seen RPGs on Wave, but they struck me as more similar to play-by-post games rather than traditional "enter a command, get a response" MUDs. What I'm trying to conceive of is a traditional MUD that relies on the Wave Federation Protocol as its backend. I'm not sure if it's feasible. For an intermud communication system, it makes perfect sense. For actual gameplay coding, it seems to be shoving a square peg into a round hole.

Not to be a naysayer, but what exactly is the point? What is Wave providing that we don't already have? What is it doing better? As you say, it seems like shoving square pegs into round holes. Even for intermud chat systems, we have basically working protocols, and we could use something like Jabber or IRC if we really wanted to; what is Wave providing here?

Wave is actually based on XMPP I think. XMPP is a more powerful protocol than telnet, and Wave is a more powerful protocol than XMPP. For actual engine coding, I don't think it would be very beneficial at all. I mean, you could probably cobble together some weird system that uses waves for data storage, but I don't see the point. MUDs are inherently single-server architectures (or distributed systems presented as a single system), so a federation protocol like Wave for actual game code just seems weird to say the least.

But for communication purposes, benefits would be:
-Unified protocol for inter-MUD chat, and mail
-"Gadgets"

XMPP really only provides instant messaging. Any kind of mail system with telnet would need to be cobbled together. Wave is a protocol built with federated persistence as well as realtime IMs directly in mind. The gadgets part intrigues me the most. In the current Google Wave, these are manifested as HTML and JavaScript. But could they be extended to make something that could be embedded into simple Telnet clients that enhance the inter-MUD experience?

Mostly, it's just better because I don't want to learn Telnet. :D Of course, I'd learn WebSockets long before I learned the Wave protocol, which is far more complex than that or Telnet.

So, just to make sure I read what you're saying right…

You'd rather try and shove a square peg in a round hole over learning to use telnet?

I'm not sure whether this is a display of incompetence, idiocy, or insanity.


You might not want to be, but I am going to be a naysayer, and state that I don't think Wave is an applicable alternative to telnet. Wave is an alternative to Forums, and the like, not a MUD.

It seems pretty practical for some kind of tabletop (D&D, card games, etc.) RPG platform, turn-based game, or other group/social type gaming.

Secret hidden option: display of sarcasm. I know how to use telnet. I've just never bothered to learn the depths of the protocol itself. It's like HTTP. I know what HTTP is, how it works, and the basic protocol (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE), but I don't go around writing programs that manually concatenate a string together to make an HTTP request.



I don't think it would work for actual gameplay. It seems insane to try that.

But why wouldn't it work for intermud mail/chatting?

I think its more saying "why do that when rhere are fully featured protocols out there?".

What does it iffer that IMC doesnt; gadgets is vague and can mean any number of things.

As for a "unified" protocol - adding -another- protocol to the mix for MUD devs to have to consider implementing is not unifying anything in my eyes.

Maya/Rudha