Zugg Software :: View topic

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 4379 Location: USA

Didn't I just mention how to get the most space possible for the MUD output window? You maximize it. I didn't even mention that you could right click on it to remove the status bar and move the title bar so it becomes a vertical caption on the left side. Now the MUD output window occupies the whole screen except for the command line, and if you don't want to enter any commands, you can even turn that off!

I've seen for myself the speed improvements. I've timed zMUD and seen that it has gotten faster. It is not just how it seems, it is how it actually is.

These are the facts I'm talking about. Notice how all of your claims have a simple solution. The only thing that is somewhat subjective is the speed, and I know for a fact, because I've timed it, that zMUD is faster. Zugg has done tests too to prove it.

If you don't want any of the feautures I mentioned and the countless others I didn't, then you are right, you shouldn't use zMUD. Stick to Window's Telnet. Simple, fast, and does nothing more than send whatever you type into it.

One more thing, how about you stop using that word you find so amusing. It is not allowed. The forum does cover it up, but it can still be seen. Use it again and find your posts deleted.

Kjata

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 4379 Location: USA

The mapper does not consume any memory if it is not open. That's why the mapper commands and functions don't work if the mapper window is not open.

Also, in my computer zMUD consumes 22K base. Of course, once I start to receive MUD output, that goes up since it is saved in memory in order for me to be able to scroll up. If I don't want it, I can just change how much memory zMUD should use for this.

Kjata

Novice Joined: 22 Nov 2000 Posts: 40 Location: USA

quote:

Also, in my computer zMUD consumes 22K base.

Point taken. My mistake for having taken the screenshot after Zmud had been open for awhile. Still. 22MB base? Compared to the 8MB or so base of SimpleMU? With more or less the same basic features? Do MSP and MXP take up THAT much extra Ram all by themselves? I suppose I'll have to wait and see if SimpleMU eats up this much when she gets the support done.

As for the mapper not consuming resources if it's not open. That doesn't help your argument. It hurts it. That means Zmud eats even MORE resources while using it. Which is what a few other posters are pointing out. Zmud = Bloatware.

Edited: Those K's should have been MB's. Man, what a difference that makes!

Magician Joined: 25 Oct 2000 Posts: 461 Location: USA

Complaining about the mapper because it is not useful to you is not the same as the mapper not being good. Very bad argument. The mapper is _excellent_, and has come a very long way since Zugg first began working on it.

Almost every person that has ever complained about the mapper has always said "mappers are easy, I could write my own"... yet I know of only TWO other mud clients that have even attempted to create one - and neither are close to the power or simplicity of zmud's. You'd think for something so simple, there would be a lot more competition around, eh?

And for the other clueless person... control-z will also turn off the split screen. I believe I learned that by reading the documentation or asking a polite question about it on the forums.

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 4379 Location: USA

Yes, I agree. I don't want to make an argument for zMUD's consumption of memory. I'm quite sure that there must be a lot of clients that use much less memory than zMUD. Personally, it doesn't really bother me that it uses that much memory, zMUD makes it up in functionality. It really isn't that big of a deal with the amount of memory computer have these days (Windows XP requires 128 megs all to itself and 256 if you want it to run decently). However, I do understand that not everyone has a lot of memory to spare, so it is a factor for some people.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I can see where memory usage could be a big deal for some people. I agree with those that really do have little free memory and want programs consuming as little as possible. In my particular case, if having zMUD consume less memory meant trading off functionality for it, I wouldn't change it ever.

Kjata

Novice Joined: 22 Nov 2000 Posts: 40 Location: USA

Not saying you need to trade off the functionality to save memory. Just took a gander at the newest version of Mushclient which also possesses a similar set of features. MCCP and MXP included in that. It's base memory usage has dropped considerably from the last time I looked at it. MXP parsing still isn't working properly. ANSI is still suffering badly too, which is why I'm not using it yet :) My point here is that it might be time to look at why Zmud is bloating so much when other similarly able clients aren't.

Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2002 1:29 pm

How about we just love zMUD like it is? Like Kjata said, if it uses a few K or a few MB is hardly an issue for most computers these days.. I've only got a PII/300, but it's got 256 MB RAM (SIMMS costing next to nothing a while back) and zMUD runs lovely in win2k vmware under linux using half of that.. (Yes it takes a while to start, but there, you can't have everything ;)

As to the turning the scroll-bar off, I usually use '#FREEZE' (shortened to '#FRE') for that, so there's another way :)

And as to zMUD+Linux+Wine, there have been several posts saying it works (to varying degrees, I'll admit) someone even wanted to write a web page about getting them to work together. I've gotten them all to work up to the ones that need MDAC, apparently that works as well if you install IE in it which includes MDAC or something..

I'm starting to think we need a forum for 'alternatives' to discuss linux, other clients, swapping between zmud and other clients, and such. Just to show that zMUD exists alongside these other things..

Anyway, if you're interested in Linux/Wine etc. search the forum for the posts about it, and try it out.. (Elicense seems plenty Wine-friendly, MDAC is more the problem I think) Hmm, maybe I'll write an article for the library about getting it to run...

Lady C.

Beginner Joined: 08 Nov 2000 Posts: 21 Location: USA

i'm a little to tore up to read all these posts. but the point is i'll buy another license for my zmud. i've used it for eons and i wanna support the big z-man.

merry festivus

Novice Joined: 22 Nov 2000 Posts: 40 Location: USA

quote:

Like Kjata said, if it uses a few K or a few MB is hardly an issue for most computers these days..

Showed this thread to a friend, I was made speechless by the remark myself. He had this to say though:

quote:

The idea that just because you have more space it should be used is the dumbest damned thing I've ever heard. Instead of working so hard to expand our boundaries, we should be working harder to expand what we can do with the boundaries we already have! Does that mean we should stop trying to advance? No. But when you think about the fact that around a decage ago 40 Megs of HD space was MASSIVE... now people complain about 120 Gigs not being enough! The lazy ass attitude of so many programmers today is the reason for that. If more time was spent on clean, optimized code, instead of more flashy features, then you wouldn't need a new operating system every 2.5 years.

I couldn't agree more. He prefered to remain anonymous.

Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2002 5:06 am

Anonymous people shouldnt be quoted, if you're not brave enough to name yourself you dont have much confidense in your oponions whether they're valid or not.

As for how much space programs take, I saw a certain screenshot with a program called phoenix.exe taking up 50mb of ram, which is double what a "bloated" MS Internet Explorer uses. Has the certain user complained about phoenix? Doubtful. Programs need to live inside RAM to run as fast as they do. EDO ram from god knows how long ago is still faster than todays uber harddrives, so if you want speed you want the program to be memory resident, NOT in the pagefile where lots of programs try hide large chunks of themselves so they appear more efficient. I saw your system specs Samson, you have an "uber" machine. You're part of the so-called "problem", owning the latest/recent hardware as well. Why do you own all this hardware if you're so against using it to its potential? Do you donate the spare cycles to folding@home or seti@home? Whats the point of owning nice stuff if you're too scared to use it to its potential? CPU's are designed to be run at 100% usage 24/7, and intel harddrives excluded, so is everything else in a modern computer.

Whats this crap with "you wouldnt need a new operating system every 2.5 years"? New operating systems are an evolution of programming attitudes and techniques. New operating systems drive the new hardware we want/do buy with hard earned cash. New operating systems bring new features and functionality to the community. Anyone remember windows95 and the lack of USB support? Or windows98 and its lack of a native support for NTFS? How about unix being turned into a mainstream platform by hobbyists and hacks? Where would linux be today without "a new OS every 2.5 years"? What about apple macs and their gui? They didnt create it, they took it from Xerox. And the mouse, that was designed back around the 60's. Where would we be without support for pointing devices like the mouse without an OS to drive it? Why dont we go back to pre AARPA days, before operating systems were unified, before support for even networking was designed. Better yet, lets go back to the 1800's and build Babbage machines, since they dont use as much power as todays beasts do AND you wouldnt need an operating system, just a can of oil, a foundry and ironsmith for technical support, and an engineering degree just so you can make it compute PI down to 20 decimals. I also note you cant stop trying new *nix releases becaese each release has something you're just itching to finally get working (raid controller), they are quite often released earlier than "every 2.5 years", and they are also made up of code and snippets and bugfixes hobbyists have contributed. Do you bitch about the bloat in redhat cd's too? 6.2 was released on one cd, now 8.0 is on 2, 3 cds. Even windowsXP was released on ONE cd, and that actually plays games and is quite stable. Write to Mr Torvalds and whine about his minix clone being too bloated now, and see what his response is :)

The requirements of programmers, hardware designers and gamers push eachother to the next level, remove one and you lose everything.

Anyway, I must bow down to your "friend" and his blissful existance :) I'm gonna go get a lobotomy so I can hang in your leet circle, maybe TWO, just so I can fit in more!

Why oh WHY did I have pass door on...

Novice Joined: 22 Nov 2000 Posts: 40 Location: USA

Yes, well. There's a reason I need an uber machine to be able to deal with this. It's because my operating system takes up so much space I needed the extra power to be able to do anything useful with it without growing old waiting for it. If that makes me a contributor to the problem, so be it. I can only work with what I'm given. Would suit me just fine to dig up my old K63/450 with 64MB of ram, but we both know Zmud in it's current state would eat up half the ram all for itself.

As for the Phoenix jab - pot, kettle, black. You're attacking an early beta product on the very same issue Zmud itself is guilty of even though it's no longer a beta. Given enough time I would bet that Phoenix will acheive the goal they set out to and be far less bloated than IE. BTW: this make you any happier? http://www.alsherok.net/Samson/zmud.png

quote:

CPU's are designed to be run at 100% usage 24/7

Every try to do anything with a system that's doing this? I bet you haven't since you'd know that it's just not going to happen. CPU's are definitely not meant to be pushed like that continuously. That kind of resource usage is a red flag telling you it's time to upgrade because you're doing more than the system can handle. Not to mention that you'd probably burn the thing out if it wasn't cooled properly.

Oh, and if it makes you feel better, you can attribute the quote to me if you like. I doubt your anonymous enemy would mind much. Perhaps he just didn't feel like going through the hassle of registering in order to make one reply and disappear again?

Wanderer Joined: 13 Aug 2001 Posts: 51 Location: USA

Actually CPUs ARE designed to be run at 100% usage 100% of the time. Anything less is inefficiant usage of resources. The reason most CPUs don't run at 100% all the time is twofold. One, there's not enough to do, and the second, all OSes suck.

As to your comments on RAM and hard drive space, it's generally not shoddy programming but the wealth of data required for the programs. For example, FS2002 requires something around 1.2 GB of hard drive space for install. Shoddy programming? I think not, it's the huge amount of texture and topographical data required to make the program look as good as it does. You can whine and cry for nice compact programs all you want, but they aren't going to have the power that programs making use of their resources do.

You're now probably wondering what the hell this has to do with zMUD, nothing directly, it's countering your beliefs that programs should not use their resources, that we should continue to restrict ourselves to programs designed to take up a small percentage of a 40 MB hard drive and 640K of ram.

More towards zMUD's resource usage, it has to do with speed. When you compile a program, you have numerous choices to make, one of which is the decision between small size and fast speed. Compile with no optimizations(sp?) and you have the smallest possible code size, and no speed improvement over the straight code you wrote. Compile the same code with aggressive optimization, and you get a much larger executable, sometimes double the size or more, but it can also run much much faster. Obviously this varies widely between each piece of code, but when you have a program as complex as zMUD, it is practically impossible to write perfectly optimized code, so the compiler is relied upon to add a speed boost. Yes this kicks executable size, but most people are more worried about speed of operation. As people have said, RAM is cheap, and any unused RAM is inefficient usage of resources. If you don't believe that, then you need to take some computer architecture courses.

Novice Joined: 22 Nov 2000 Posts: 40 Location: USA

quote:

Actually CPUs ARE designed to be run at 100% usage 100% of the time. Anything less is inefficiant usage of resources.

quote:

As people have said, RAM is cheap, and any unused RAM is inefficient usage of resources. If you don't believe that, then you need to take some computer architecture courses.

God. I'd hate to try running anything on a computer built by people who think like this. You'd never get anything productive done if you chewed up all your CPU cycles and all your ram doing routine daily things with your systems. Thinking along these lines is exactly why Microsoft and it's ilk get away with programming the way they do. Would you prefer to have one program gobble up everything, then need to close it down and open another to take it's place as "King of the CPU and RAM"? Or perhaps you LIKE the sound your hard drive makes when it thrashes about making a mess of things because it needs virtual memory to compensate for the 32MB you apparently run? ( Yes, I know this sounds like a retarded argument - yours did too )

No, I don't believe this is wise. Not one bit. Neither will anyone else who has taken the so called courses you're hinting at. Whoever taught courses that way should be retrained PROPERLY. Just because ram is cheap doesn't mean people should rush out and buy more. Just because huge hard drives are cheap, doesn't mean people should have them. Just because blazing CPU's are cheap, doesn't mean you should need one. See where this is going? Just because you CAN use all the system resources you have, doesn't mean you SHOULD use them.

Adept Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 224 Location: USA

All I have to say is, if you do NOT want scripting, automapper. buttons, advanced features, yadda yadda, or basically do NOT want to use anything alot of us find as a necessity or very useful, use the free version, shutup about how much memory it takes up, and please stop bad mouthing the software.

If you have information to back up your claims (anything other then memory use? Heck, you can get 256MB of pc2100 DDR memory for 40 bucks now) please e-mail it to Zugg, do not bother the forums with it, because most of us probably don't feel that way.

Nothing personal, but if you don't like it, don't use it, even though there is so much to love, what can you hate?

For the record, my computer is cheap, AMD 1800+, cheap mobo, gforce2 graphics card, 512mb ddr memory, 20GB seagate harddrive, you can built what I have now for less then 350 bucks if you know where to shop.

zMUD is wonderful, please don't try to drag it down.

Evangelist/Pernius
www.phidar.com/phidar.html

Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2002 7:21 am

Heres my screenshot, you're so fond of throwing them around :) (warning diallupers, 500k screenshot, no artifacts = no photochopping)
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/humour/zmud.jpg
This is with zmud fully loaded with my scripts and the map module open, default 1000 line memory. As you can see, I've even enabled virtual ram to be displayed, its still not alot of resources being used. Its not even close to 40mb of hard ram. I even tried maxing the mapper as well as zmud up to the display, no difference at all.

Maybe your dismal results are due to a dirty install of zmud, ie ontop of an existing copy.

Why oh WHY did I have pass door on...

Wanderer Joined: 02 Nov 2002 Posts: 76 Location: Tuvalu

Jesus... You people need to get over it. The program is bloated... So what? You don't want the extra features, get an earlier version. Or use telnet. Hell, whistle into a phone line. Just don't come on the boards complaining... You don't accomplish a damn thing.

-Shibbidy Joe
If only I could lock topics...

Novice Joined: 22 Nov 2000 Posts: 40 Location: USA

Never said I didn't want all those features. Wasn't even trying to bring Zmud down. Was simply offering an oponion on what could be done to make it better. Only instead I get told "ram is cheap" or "my system only cost me $350", both of which I still say "so what?" to. In 5 years when we all need twice the systems we have now, will you still say "quit being cheap" or will you wake up and realize why the entire software industry is tearing itself apart? Oh wait, I made another unfounded claim! It's called the power of observation. I've been around long enough to see this play itself out over the last 15 years. I have no reason to expect it will get better. Zmud alone is now larger than my entire Windows 95 install used in resources. That right there should be saying something.

It can't hurt a damn thing for Zugg to take a look at his code and see if he can find ways to trim fat. If a "dirty" install of Zmud can supposedly create resource stats like my screenshots show, it's logical to also suspect "dirty" code could cause the program to bloat.

I'm no great guru of programming myself, but I recently cut the size of my own mud codebase in half - all without sacrificing a single bit of it's functionality. Is it still bloated? Probably. Is it still pig code? Very possible. But if I can do that much with a few simple bits of reorganization and trimming, surely someone with Zugg's knowledge can do better.

Wanderer Joined: 13 Aug 2001 Posts: 51 Location: USA

You obviously have no idea how a computer works. Have you ever designed a CPU? Have you ever designed RAM? Do you know how an operating system works? Apparently not, otherwise you would realize that ALL computers and OS's ARE designed to use 100% of the CPU 100% of the time. As I pointed out before, there are a couple reasons why this doesn't happen, and if your computer is dog slow when it is at 100%, that is also because the particular OS that you chose to use, sucks, as do most.

Apprentice Joined: 16 Dec 2002 Posts: 114 Location: USA

Yeah Yeah, I know, not me again, right?
Oh well. I just got back from my vacation,
and was lookign over the threads. Zugg, if
you are having so many problems, then why
are you STILL ignoring one of the leading
responses you seem to be getting?

1.)Muds are Not dying, so of course clients
are gonna be used in variety. No client
can satisfy everyone.
2.)You have heard many people say they cant
stand Elicense, yet you still seem to think
its the greatest. Granted, my registration
is supposed to be deleted, you really want
to remove my registration, fine. Send me
an email, and ill give you my id (you think
im kidding try me. Reason im willing to give
up my id: I dont appreciate being the only
person getting hassled for being honest. If
that is the way that truth is rewarded in
this company then I can do without your
products.)
3.)Another issue you have to deal with, is the
bloat factor. Yes, Zmud is bloated. Yes, that
can be solved. Make more of its features DLL
based and have selective installing.
The mapper is a good example. Not everyone
uses it, or thinks its good, instead of
hardcoding it in the program, make it a dll
that can be added. (I dont like the mapper for 1)
4.)Give your customers a reason to want to
buy more from you. Example: Buy Zmud, get
Zmapper free *limited time offer*. Things like
that do attract business.
5.)Make sure that everyone on the forum is
treated equally. Dont allow these "Flame-
wars." That gives you a bad image as well. If
your not willing to protect each and every one
of your customers or potential customers, then
why should they all protect you?

These are all just basic starts. Granted, Ill be waiting
to get flamed on for this but hey, Im not worried about
it. (forgive the spacing and crap, i write everything in notepad then paste.)

+------------------+
|Demone YoungBlood|
+------------------+

Novice Joined: 22 Nov 2000 Posts: 40 Location: USA

Do you ever come out of your little lab and see what the real world is like? Apparently not since you don't seem to realize what using 100% of your available resources does in the real world. It all looks great on paper, I agree with that. But all too often it simply doesn't play out in reality. I don't see RalghaOS out there anywhere yet. Until I do, you're argument means all of nothing. I don't see a SamsonOS out there yet either. But assuming it ever happens, you can damn well bet I'm not going to allow it to occupy the CPU 100% of the time.

Apprentice Joined: 16 Dec 2002 Posts: 114 Location: USA

In response to the 100% cpu and ram usage. Ralgha, if you seriously took a Comp Arch class, then your teacher was a babbling moron for passing you. If you use your resources at 100% all the time, your gonna fry your system. Ive taken the courses, AND fried systems just to prove that point. Most times, your not even GONNA hit the 100% usage mark unless your running mem leaks (which just so we all understand, are BAD).

+------------------+
|Demone YoungBlood|
+------------------+

Wanderer Joined: 13 Aug 2001 Posts: 51 Location: USA

How many times must I repeat myself? These are not from labs, they are from reality. As I said before, ALL OS's ARE DESIGNED TO UTILIZE THE CPU 100%. If you think I mean that all of those cycles are kernel threads, then you are mistaken again. The OS itself doesn't use all those cycles, it uses 100% of the CPU by always having the CPU doing something, not necessarily running the OS itself.

You won't see a RalghaOS, because there won't be one. I may say all OS's suck, but I don't mean that in a bad way. It is incredibly hard to make an OS that WILL ACTUALLY use 100% of the CPU, but they ARE ALL designed with that goal.

The most common problem that results in system slowdown when the CPU is at 100% is not actually the CPU usage, but thrashing. I.E. you are way beyond out of memory, and every time the running process accesses memory, the location that it needs is on a page that has been swapped out to disk. The OS is brought back on to swap in the required page, but that results in yet another page fault, requiring another swap, and so on, not letting anything get done. THAT is probably what you are seeing happen, and it is NOT a result of attempting to run the CPU at 100%.

So please, stop trying to tell me that this is not how OS's work, because you are flat out wrong. Let's get back to zMUD or close the thread.

Apprentice Joined: 16 Dec 2002 Posts: 114 Location: USA

Ok, im gonna put this simply. If you are using 100% of your cpu just to run your os, then your not gonna be able to run anything else. Hence: OSs are designed to use the minimal amount of the cpu necessary in order to run efficiently. If you have one process hogging all the cpu, then your other processes have to shut down due to "insuffient system resources", the same goes for the os. If it is using all of the cpu, then you arent gonna be able to do anything aside from running the os itself.

+------------------+
|Demone YoungBlood|
+------------------+

Wanderer Joined: 13 Aug 2001 Posts: 51 Location: USA

If you really want to get into the specific courses and what you should and shouldn't be failed for, you should have called me on saying computer architecture is where you learn about resource usage, because that's not where you learn about it. OS design addresses things such as CPU and memory usage. Computer architecture is all about making it bit bang fast.

As to frying from 100% utilization, I've witnessed some of our servers running near 100% for days and...lo and behold...they still work! It's not like there's any moving parts, it's all about heat dissipation, thermodynamics if you will. There will be an equilibrium in movement of heat, yes even when it's running at full bore, just need to make sure that equilibrium is below the breakdown point of whatever component is the point of concern.

This is kinda fun, but bed calls.

Novice Joined: 22 Nov 2000 Posts: 40 Location: USA

Except I maintain that you are in fact wrong, Rhalga. If your OS is designed with the explicit goal of monopolizing the hardware - specifically your CPU - 100% of the time at 100% usage, you'll NEVER EVER get anything else done. Not even running Zmud. Is this not clear somehow? An operating system is designed to allow you to operate the computer. Not BE the computer. It can't allow you to operate anything if it's taking over the whole system for itself.

quote:

ALL OS's ARE DESIGNED TO UTILIZE THE CPU 100%

quote:

The OS itself doesn't use all those cycles

Uh.... does this seem contradictory or are you agreeing with me in stealth mode? In either case, this is how you're able to continue to enjoy using Zmud, and how we're both able to come here and have an all out shouting match over what the OS is for.

quote:

As to frying from 100% utilization, I've witnessed some of our servers running near 100% for days and...lo and behold...they still work!

Goodie for you. Just means you won the gamble. I've seen the same thing torch the CPU inside of a few hours, complete with that horrible smell associated with burning electronic parts. You might be singing a different tune if the box that burns is the one you're trying to run Zmud on with an OS that's consuming 100% of the resources :)