DGD and LPC

Dworkin’s Game Driver is a powerful interpreted language primarily aimed at running persistent, state-heavy applications attached to network sockets. It was originally a from-scratch reimplementation of LPMUD, but it has diverged significantly over time. The language of DGD’s VM is called LPC, after the original LPMud language. DGD runs a fairly distinctive dialect, which might reasonably be referred to as “DGD LPC.”

These pages are meant as an introduction to DGD and its LPC language, and a set of resources to learn them.

DGD forms the lower layers of Skotos and ChatTheatre, and has done so for a number of MUDs, at least one BitCoin exchange, and a few other assorted services.

DGD has some unusual characteristics that can be very powerful for the right application.

It also has a long and storied history.

Installing

Here’s how to install DGD.

When running DGD, see also:

• DGD’s Configuration File

Using DGD

You may wish to use the Kernellib when writing a new DGD application and your existing applications may use it, as SkotOS and eOS do.

• Error handling in DGD
• Objects in DGD

• Functions in DGD

• DGD API Documentation for Auto and Driver objects
• DGD’s built-in editor reference
• DGD’s parse_string function for building grammars
• DGD Kernel Functions (kfuns)

ChatTheatre Resources

This is one of several documentation sites courtesy of ChatTheatre, which aims to make DGD more straightforward to install and use.

• Kernellib Documentation
• SkotOS Documentation
• eOS Documentation

DGD Resources

• The LPC Reference Manual from DGD - very incomplete

• Self-Conscious DGD is an unfinished book about DGD and DGD’s LPC dialect.

• For many years, the Phantasmal DGD documentation site was the preferred resource for DGD documentation. You can find the most recent versions of its source files on GitHub, and ChatTheatre is attempting to adapt its most useful parts to something modern.

• The most comprehensive resource on DGD remains the DGD email list archive. The list operated from August of 1997 until July of 2019. It isn’t easy to sort through, but the amount of raw DGD content is unrivalled.

Non-DGD LPC Resources

• There is a well-known but very outdated LPC book, titled simply “Intermediate LPC.” It’s not DGD-specific, but you may still find something useful there.

Copyright & Status

Unless otherwise noted, the contents of this repository as declared public domain using the Creative Commons “No Rights Reserved” CC0 Declaration.

Felix Croes (“dworkin”) has declared his work in this repository to be in the public domain (reference: https://github.com/dworkin/lpc-doc/blob/master/LICENSE).

CC0 Declarations

Under US law it is a bit more difficult to declare something public domain (see article). Creative Commons offers a CC0 tool that combined with GPG signed commits to this repository, helps with this issue.

The following parties have declared their contributions to this repository as public domain:

• Noah Gibbs

To the extent possible under law, Noah Gibbs has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to lpc-doc repository. This work is published from: United Kingdom.