Anyone remember LMTS/IMTS?

Eldanien

So while (re-re-re-) working up my system, I succumbed to the temptation to compile everything as an application for speed.  Then I was reminded that this already existed - or used to - in the form of IMTS/LMTS.  I went looking.

Anyone know offhand why it died off?  I'm currently futzing around with it, updating it for GMCP, but I'm curious if it's just that support went away.

Altrea

It's still used somewhat over in Imperian if I recall, but it's not really necessary. Both clients really used today, MUSHclient and Mudlet, support Lua which is extremely fast on its own (and I believe MUSHclient has the ability to have the standard Lua implementation replaced with LuaJIT, which is even faster as it compiles your Lua code to machine code as it runs and caches it; not sure about Mudlet as I don't use it). The only places I could honestly even see any speedup mattering would be in things like pathfinding and networking (which are still non-issues. Using a weighted A* implementation, I can path myself from one end of the game map to the other using no shortcuts in under half a second using a 5 year old CPU, and I'm actively running a HTTP server out of my system for debugging purposes with no latency whatsoever).

As well, for the speed benefits, there's a lot of detriments. Abstracting your code away from your client seems nice in theory, but what happens when you need to change any bit of that code for any reason? Fewer people can work with C/C++/whatever than with Lua in the community, so you're less likely to have any support whatsoever. You're forced to connect to a non-game source, which requires reconfiguration anyway. And if I recall, Mudbot/IMTS/LMTS are just C++ with Lua, which is what both MUSHclient and Mudlet are anyway, so it ends up being a situation where you're just adding another layer for no gain whatsoever. As well, and this is less an issue for you if you're coding your own system, but most people pick clients or whatever else due to system support, and as of this time, there is no even remotely available system for Lusternia on Mudbot.

tl;dr: Lack of support, and it's arguably useless anyway. If you want to use it though, go for it. You do you.