One such "essential" feature is support for loading external modules. This may seem obvious [lol], but until now my test modules have been in the same project, and thus loaded at compile-time for me. I did a little research into ClassLoaders, and found a standard URLClassLoader class. I can (indirectly) pass it a File object on construction, which means I can directly control where to look for classes without relying on the classpath.
The idea is to have a configuration file containing everything the Nucleus needs in order to run. One of the datums involved is a list of paths to look for modules in, which allows the user to decide exactly where the modules will be sought after. (The configuration file itself will be found either in the same directory as Nucleus, or passed along as a command-line argument)
These detour-ish additions are vital to Nucleus, because they give power to the user. You could run Nucleus with one configuration file as the "main" server, and another file as a "development" server. And I'm working on some so-called "hotloading" functionality, to allow modules to be reloaded at runtime. It'll certainly be interesting, that's for sure. [smile]
