MUD development, wikis and useful info.

Only a few years ago, the various MUD forums were still pretty active.  These days, even the most recent popular forum MUDBytes, has stagnated.  If I had to speculate why, I think that in this day and age there is a larger variety of hobbiest programming activities to do.  And for that matter, a larger variety of general computer related distractions.  I know I have about 20 games I've bought from from either GOG or Steam, that I'd love to play but just can't summon the interest to do so.  I'm not saying MUDs are dying, text-based gaming will always have a niche -- all bets are off when the holodeck comes to fruition though..

Anyway.. I just wanted to post an interesting link which was posted to MUDBytes by Nathan.  It's a thread containing posts from Nick Gammon, and it basically enumerates a large number of the things that factor into the development of a decent game engine.  I know a  lot of them could be a summarisation of the code I wrote for an online 3D-based science-fiction outer-space situated game which has tens of thousands of concurrent players.  And I know a giant hunk of it was handed to me within the design for a system written by someone who previously worked on an online science-fiction first person game about a colony.

George, as you're the only person who reads this blog, imma gonna write this here instead of emailing you.  You've most likely read the same thread, but I think it's worth saying that this seems like a perfect piece of material for the wiki :-)