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Feb 5, 1999, 3:32am

As I have been spending a great deal of time working on my world which is
themed as a very traditional medieval/fantasy setting, the question is
starting to nag at me. . .

Why are we dead set on creating replicas of the "real" world? (Or previously
imagined ones) Isn't part of the point of this medium to do things that are
not possible? Perhaps we can create environments that have internally
consistent rules that are completely different from those that we expect of
a "world." Shall we do more "virtual" and less "reality"?

And for heaven's sake, don't do just a weather bot, at the very least if you
are going to get into hyper-realism, do an eco-system bot.

Archon Manus
Vizier D'Magienne





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Feb 5, 1999, 9:03pm

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Indeed, the features of AW are far from the state of the art, the attraction
for me is that is a (near) real-time, persistent, sharable "universe" over
which I can have significant control with minimal investment. I can create
stuff that I can enjoy and perhaps others can as well.

My point tho was to do entirely different things with AW than make what is
recognizeable as a "world." One idea that I am considering, but have not
taken the time to execute is to host the object path on a web server under
my control and to have a utility that renames all the object files every 5
minutes or so in a predetermined or even random :) cycle. If the objects in
the "world" are created and layed out with care, this would have the very
odd effect that every time you bounce, you are looking at a completely
different "world" than you were 5 minutes ago. I would guess that it could
be like being inside a giant 3D kaleidoscope. There needs to be more to it
than just this novelty, but that's one direction away from the standard AW
world that we know and love.



you
>
>Considering a "simple" weather bot would be complicated enough, an
ecosystem bot would be way more complicated. I mean even the deer bot
someone is working on doesn't sound very realistic. Not ALL deer run away
when people are x meters away from them.
>




Heh, what I'm implying is that if you take on a LARGE challenge, perhaps
boredom will disappear. On the other hand it may be offset by frustration :)




give

Feb 6, 1999, 3:58am

I like your zone idea, it'd be really nice. . .especially since I don't have
anything to do with coding it :)

Archon Manus

Feb 7, 1999, 4:53am

Kudos!

This idea and variations on it make for very interesting thinking. . .thanks
:)

Archon Manus
Vizier D'Magienne


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Feb 5, 1999, 3:10am

Congrats! This looks to be an extremely interesting project. . .definitely
keep us up do date :)

Archon Manus
Vizier D'Magienne

Feb 5, 1999, 3:45am

CoreWars
---------------

Write a scorekeeper bot that counts the objects in a world that were created
by a given citnum.

Basic rules of the game:

- Start with an empty world
- All contestants' bots enter the world for a given period of time
- At the end of the period the contestants' bots building right is revoked
- The scorekeeper is let loose and counts all objects in the world belonging
to each contestant
- Winner: the contestant/team with the most objects in the world

I'm sure there could be many variations to this, a couple could be:
- Winner is the contestant with the most objects visible from a given
altitude
- Winner has the most connected objects


Archon Manus


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Feb 5, 1999, 3:50am

A Virtual Pet
------------------

Create a bot that has a life cycle, learning abilities, must be fed, can be
trained, mates and procreates, expresses itself in non-verbal emotions.
Personally I would find an entirely new species more interesting than a
virtual dog, cat or fish.

I suspect this could be a revenue source if done well :)


Archon Manus


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Feb 5, 1999, 3:55am

Well, if you want a game-bot challenge that could be worth your while,
program a bot to play the game GO.

I understand that there is a US$ 1 million award for the first computer
based implementation of the game that can beat a professional player in a
tournament match.

Archon Manus



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Feb 5, 1999, 9:10pm

Actually what I describe is modeled after the game Creatures and Creatures2,
Cubic.

I'm glad you find it absurd. . .and I plan to create many, many other things
that waste far more bandwidth than these. If building is your thing, then
"Party on, Dude." I enjoy building greatly, but prefer not to limit the
scope of my imagination to merely that.

Archon Manus
Vizier D'Magienne



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Feb 5, 1999, 9:11pm

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Building is serious?

Archon Manus

Feb 5, 1999, 9:13pm

LMAO!

Archon Manus

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Feb 5, 1999, 9:20pm

Well, we need a scorekeeper first. . .it'll be awhile if I need to write it,
my AW todo list is pretty long at moment :-P

Archon Manus


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Feb 5, 1999, 9:40pm

This may have already been done, and I'm just unaware of it. . .

I've had several people mention that they'd like to move a site from one
world to another, for various reasons. . .just bought a world, don't like
the world owner, sick of the neighborhood, those darn dolphins are just too
creepy (just kidding!)

So I suspect that many builders would love a

Photocopy Bot
---------------------

Moves a designated area from one world to a designated area in another
world.

There are some serious kinks to this one. . .the worst, in my mind, being
that of malicious use. Perhaps requiring the PS right in the target world in
order to use the tool? Not sure.

Another issue is the probability that objects used will not be available in
the target world.


Archon Manus


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Feb 6, 1999, 3:44am

Runway Model bot
--------------------------

A bot that will show off the latest fashions in avs and av outfits from the
best designers in AW with the appropriate sass and attitude on the runway of
a fashion show held for the benefit of the AW universe's world owners.


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Feb 5, 1999, 9:28pm

Let me know if I can help beta test the SQLbot :), it'd be very useful in
doing large scale transformations as well as providing a more standardized
software interface to any type of world creation/ modification/ backup/
duplication.

Archon Manus



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Feb 5, 1999, 9:55pm

Anyone know if there is an ODBC (or RDO, ADO or MDAC) driver for the
database that AW uses, and where it can be found?

Thx,

Archon Manus
Vizier D'Magienne

Feb 5, 1999, 11:39pm

Ahh, good distinction. . .I meant a local driver for the database used by
the AW server, since I run a world server on a personal machine. In other
words, a driver that will allow me to read and write the world server
database directly from an application running on the same machine as the
world server. A cache driver might be of use as well, but I don't see as
many applications, at the moment.

Archon Manus


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Feb 6, 1999, 3:53am

I understand and appreciate your SQL bot design and intend to use it as soon
as possible. My question was unrelated and remains unanswered, though. . .I
would like to access the AW Server database of my world directly. Is there a
known ODBC (or related) driver that will allow me to do this?

Archon Manus
Vizier D'Magienne

Feb 6, 1999, 9:07am

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Thanks, I appreciate your searching for it :)

Archon Manus

Feb 9, 1999, 4:04am

This doesn't help with the avatar detection issue, but remember that you can
create an object that is not centered on its 0,0,0 point. The limitation
then becomes that the anchor point has to be visible. In general, this means
that you could have clouds within 60 meters of land that you control, and
they would usually be visible.

Archon Manus
Vizier D'Magienne


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Feb 9, 1999, 11:23pm

>I don't get this "not centered on its 0,0,0" issue. Why can't I just have a
>little cloud rwx file and place it 40 meters off the ground (or 60 in your
case,
>my vis is only 40). It can be moved and changed for other little cloud
objects
>as the weather pattern transforms through time.


It certainly will work great. . .I was pointing out that you can put weather
40 meters away from your land on top of someone else's land :)

Probably not a polite thing to do, but certainly feasible.

Archon Manus

Feb 10, 1999, 7:07pm

There is a VB-SDK that is a DLL written by MrGrimm. It is basically a
wrapper for the AW-SDK that makes it VB friendly. Unfortunately it hasn't
been updated since AW-SDK v10 and I have not seen MrGrimm on lately. Last we
spoke he said he was planning to keep it in sync, but this hasn't happened.
.. .he also mentioned that he was going to ask Roland if the AW-SDK could be
made VB friendly, since the code changes (reportedly) are minor. (Roland,
has he contacted you? Are you aware of the changes that need made? I'm not
sure what the changes would involve, but if you need someone to research it,
I'd be happy to pass on what I can find out.)

Another issue with the VB-SDK is that MrGrimm mentioned a bug in his wrapper
for aw_query().

So, to sum up, Shamus. . .
- The VB-SDK is available at http://www.geocities.com/~misersoft/awtech/
(click on Bots to the left)
- There are some issues with using it
- If some changes are made to the AW-SDK, it can be made VB friendly
(Roland, can this be done at this late date? I know there are plenty of
VB programmers who'd like to use it)


Archon Manus



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Dec 12, 1998, 3:23am

It seems (in my small experience so far) that whispering only works from one
sdk app to another. I'd like to have a bot whisper to an avatar in order to
reduce noise pollution. Am I missing something? If not, is this a proposed
enhancement?

Thx,

Archon Manus
Vizier D'Magienne

Dec 15, 1998, 12:45am

Thanks. . .I'll wait for the new release :)

Archon Manus
Vizier D'Magienne

Feb 10, 1999, 7:17pm

There is a VB-SDK that is a DLL written by MrGrimm. It is basically a
wrapper for the AW-SDK that makes it VB friendly. Unfortunately it hasn't
been updated since AW-SDK v10 and I have not seen MrGrimm on lately. Last we
spoke he said he was planning to keep it in sync, but this hasn't happened.
.. .he also mentioned that he was going to ask Roland if the AW-SDK could be
made VB friendly, since the code changes (reportedly) are minor. (Roland,
has he contacted you? Are you aware of the changes that need made? I'm not
sure what the changes would involve, but if you need someone to research it,
I'd be happy to pass on what I can find out.)

Another issue with the VB-SDK is that MrGrimm mentioned a bug in his wrapper
for aw_query().

So, to sum up, Shamus. . .
- The VB-SDK is available at http://www.geocities.com/~misersoft/awtech/
(click on Bots to the left)
- There are some issues with using it
- If some changes are made to the AW-SDK, it can be made VB friendly
(Roland, can this be done at this late date? I know there are plenty of
VB programmers who'd like to use it)


Archon Manus



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Feb 10, 1999, 10:55pm

Thanks and kudos for the work done. . .looking forward to your continued
efforts :)

Archon Manus


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Feb 15, 1999, 2:35am

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Thanks for taking the lead on this, Rjinswand. . .the timing cannot have =
been better as I was planning to get back into sdk programming mode this =
week, and I much prefer to work in VB. :-D

Archon Manus
Vizier D'Magienne


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<HTML>
<HEAD>

<META content=3Dtext/html;charset=3Diso-8859-1 =
http-equiv=3DContent-Type><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 =
HTML//EN">
<META content=3D'"MSHTML 4.72.3110.7"' name=3DGENERATOR>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=3D#d8d0c8>
<DIV><FONT color=3D#000000><FONT size=3D3>Thanks for taking the lead on =
this,=20
Rjinswand. . .the timing cannot have been better as I was planning to =
get back=20
into sdk programming mode this week, and I much prefer to work in VB.=20
:-D</FONT></FONT><FONT size=3D3></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=3D#000000><FONT size=3D3></FONT></FONT><FONT=20
size=3D3></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3D3>Archon Manus</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3D3>Vizier D'Magienne</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3D3></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
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Mar 14, 1999, 1:04am

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I second the motion. . .
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<DIV><FONT color=3D#000000 size=3D2>I second the motion. . =
..</FONT></DIV>
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Mar 14, 1999, 3:50am

As you deduce. . .we have read, and in fact commented on past threads. .
..just getting it out there again to see what's being/been done.


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Mar 14, 1999, 4:42am

Thanks for the link. . .unfortunately:

"This example includes the aw.dll version 10 and the VB sdk that works with
it." (from Rjin's page)

AW.DLL version 10 was disallowed a while back and the VB-SDK is version
specific. In a previous post Lucio mentioned that he'd take up the project.
.. .after VRML '99. My hope is that this will jog his memory or interest
someone else in re-doing the VD-SDK.

Archon Manus


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