We will be porting our InterMOO MUD server from Unix to NT and then exploring ways to create a new kind of MUD server that is oriented around DCOM and other NT facilities.

InterMOO is a new MOO server (MUD Object-Oriented) that, like other MOO servers, provides an environment for developing and using multi-user virtual spaces. The system was originally designed for text-only virtual spaces (e.g., multi-user adventure games) although it has been used by Intermetrics and others in systems that use 2D graphics or even 3D VRML to represent spaces.

The MOO server includes a dynamic object-oriented language that is loosely based on the language Self. Unlike traditional languages, however, the objects in MOO are always persistent. Evolution of the structure, inheritance hierarchy and functionality of objects in MOO is much easier than in almost any other system that must deal with existing persistent data. InterMOO uses the Texas Object-Oriented Database to achieve persistence. Texas uses a pointer "swizzling" architecture (similar to that used by ObjectStore), which is based on hooks into the operating system's virtual memory system. Porting or replacing the database system will be one of the more challenging aspects of making the system work on NT. The system also has a rich set of communications primitives that is based on TCP/IP sockets. This will also be a major concern in the port.

Because MOO and other extensible MUDs are essentially evolutionary development environments that operate with persistent data, we believe that it would be possible to create a next generation MUD engine that is based on developing and evolving COM objects. We will be exploring NT features that might make such a system possible.