I'm afraid this is the first helpful suggestion that I'm going to have to turn down wholesale, for a variety of reasons:

1: I don't want to have to learn how to make Perl read a database created with some external package.

2: My work involves two databases, one MS Abcess, the other SQL. I've just spent a hellish afternoon trying and failing to produce a list of items from a given list once each exactly in the SQL database. I know I could have written Perl to do the same thing, given an appropriate data structure, in about 5 minutes. I'm trying to learn, yes, but I'm doing this for fun.

3: I have the version of Perl I got with Redhat Linux. I don't see Access for Linux anywhere, and I'm not about to start going to the mountings of the Windoze directories to fetch data. The adventure is intended to be self-contained.

4: Judging by my experience today, transitive exits would be quite a challenge in SQL, etc. I'd rather produce my own editing features, integral to the program, so that I can tinker as I go.

The game is intended to be multiplayer, in the sense of sitting around a single machine. AI is an option. But I'm not quite clear how drowning in SQL helps me write AI later.

Sorry to discard your advice - I'm just not a databasey person! :-(

Tiefling

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.