Ruby for MMORPG Scripting

[TongKe Xue]

Hey Everyone,

I'm working on a massive simulation project (like worldforge). I need to
be able to allow users to script objects in the world. I am thinking of
ussing Ruby as my scripting language of choice. However:

(1) I need to be able to limit the memory usage of the object.
(2) I need to be able to limit the CPU cycle usage of the object.

I.e. I don't want users to use my game to calculate digits of PI.

Is there a way (or an existing implemntation of Ruby) to let me create
these light-weight tasklets/threadlets/processlets (there's too many
objects to have a UNIX process for each object) such that I can limit the
memory/cpu usage on each?


Thanks,
--TongKe
(When replying, please do reply all as I might unsubscribe due to the
traffic.)

 

[SonOfLilit]

I don't think you'd want to use Ruby for MMORPG scripting.

Current implementations are too resource heavy for that.

Try a Scheme, a Forth, a Smalltalk or Lua.

This comes from a huge Ruby fan. This is one of the ONLY things I
wouldn't use Ruby for.

On second thought, there's a project to compile Ruby to Smalltalk.
Maybe a mod of that would give you what you want.


Aur

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

I don't think you'd want to use Ruby for MMORPG scripting.

Current implementations are too resource heavy for that.

Try a Scheme, a Forth, a Smalltalk or Lua.

This comes from a huge Ruby fan. This is one of the ONLY things I
wouldn't use Ruby for.

On second thought, there's a project to compile Ruby to Smalltalk.
Maybe a mod of that would give you what you want.

Actually, given that C, Scheme and Forth are good candidates, this might
also be a good Erlang application. I don't know enough about Lua to
comment about it, but it's *very* popular in game circles, and it's
quite "C-friendly".

Yeah. Smalltalk would probably work. So would Java, for that matter. I
personally wouldn't learn another language if I wanted to build an
MMORPG, though, since I'm a better Forth programmer than I am a C
programmer anyhow.

I still wonder why the OP wants to build an MMORPG from scratch, though,
given the number of existing open source projects that could be
hacked/forked/whatever. "worldforge" is itself open source, IIRC.

 

[Josh Phillips]

You'd have to do the same thing that users of the other script languages
do, they only perform limited computation and if their computation is
incomplete, they yield and pick up later. The real issue becomes a
matter of how light weight are ruby threads/objects and exactly how many
do you expect to be running at once.

Also, the JRuby and IronRuby stuff looks promising at increasing the
speed of ruby drastically.