Hi folks, I've got a challenging set of requirements that I think PyPy may be able to meet, but I'd like to get some feedback before I jump in.
I'm developing a collaboratively edited game. It's not a MUD, but similar in concept, and also text based in nature. HogwartsLive.com and lotgd.ne <http://www.lotgd.net/home.php?>t are examples of the genre I'm going for. I believe if a game of that genre makes user modification simple and rewarding enough, it could be self-sustaining and grow quickly enough to keep users interested perpetually, like Wikipedia. It's also a fascinating computer science challenge, because it requires a LOT from a computer language. 1) Sandboxing. To allow users to make changes to the game without being able to "cheat" at it or escalate privileges. 2) Serializeable continuations. With gameplay being based on good plot and story flow, continuations are critical to allow straightforward implementation of 'workflows' that depend on user choice at every turn. 3) Tail-call elimination. By nature, players will accumulate a very large call stack. While this isn't terribly bad a first glance, the following issue combines with it to cause a very big problem: When code changes underneath a continuation, we need to determine how to resume flow. One option is annotating a checkpoint method in each code 'file'. However, if a user's call stack includes every file in the system, each change will cause them to restart. Tail-call elimination would help eliminate unneeded stack frames and minimize re-spawning. 3) Dynamic, strong typing and metaprogramming are key for keeping the API simple. 4) Dynamic code loading. Users will be able to 'branch' their own version of the world and share it with others. There may be thousands of versions of a class, and they need to be able to execute in separate sandboxes at the same time. Source code will be pulled from a Git repository or some kind of versioning database. I'm interested in knowing which of these PyPy already does, and which of them I can make it do. I appreciate your help! Nathanael Jones http://nathanaeljones.com/
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