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Nov 27, 2000, 2:16am

Atriarch is another role-playing game in which players will be able
to build homes and cities as part of their online roles. Unlike a lot of
MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), Atriarch will
not be set in a medieval fantasy world: instead it will take place on a
distant planet with its own ecology & animals; participants will choose
from Atriarch's intelligent beings, & can join together to develop new
areas or build cities. It will probably be ready sometime in 2001.
Read about it in the interview done recently as a part of the
GameSpot series on MMORPG, at
http://www.zdnet.com/gamespot/stories/features/0,12059,2657266,00.html;
a brief article about how online building will work can be found at
http://pc.ign.com/news/27081.html. For additional information, check the
Atriarch fansites listed at
http://www.atriarch.com/community/community.html.
More competition for ActiveWorlds in the near future.

Dec 26, 2000, 7:47pm

The LostFoundBot is available at
http://www.canopus.org/construction/construction.html. It's a spinoff of
the CensusBot, which I use to find all buildings built during the
previous year (then I visit them to find sites to add to the Mars
Tours). The LostFoundBot only notes property belonging to its owner, but
even then searching a world the size of AW would test your patience. The
1999-2000 Census of Mars took a few hours, on and off, and Mars is about
2000 coords square (AW is maybe 65000 coords square). Luckily you found
your address in some old correspondence. Using the CensusBot or the
LostFoundBot on a typical personal world takes just a few minutes.
(These Bots are invisible, so they can cover property at GZ.)

[View Quote] > Sorry to bother you guys, but I've been trying to locate my past builds for
> some time now with no avail. I've been getting tips and hints as to a Lost
> and Found bot that can speed up the proccess of searching for my property in
> AW, but no one knows the url. Does anyone here have the url? ANY help would
> be much appreciated. :)
>
> Nornny
>
>

Dec 29, 2000, 4:55pm

During 2001, two online role-playing games will be issued that are
likely to supersede AW. First there will be Neverwinter Nights, which
will give everyone who purchases the game a free world server (with up
to 64 visitors at a time), a set of objects (avatars, seqs, scripts,
bots, etc.), and a toolset for building one's own world (offline). Then
there will be Atriarch, which will offer a massive online world (for a
monthly fee), in which visitors will be able to build online, play a
full set of social roles (not just fighters, but merchants, artists,
bankers, etc.), and interact with bot and visitor characters (the
world's ecology evolves as decided by the players). Both of these
"real-time, multi-user, interactive environments" are appearing on all
the year-end forecasts for Best of 2001. (See
http://www.neverwinternights.com and http://www.atriarch.com.)


[View Quote] > The main point I was making (perhaps poorly) was that the end result from a
> level editor is a fixed environment ... basically a set of predefined rules
> which equates ONLY to a fixed, completed world in AW (replace this wall with
> this one when someone shoots it, crumble the floor when someone walks on
> it). What it cannot handle, as AW can, is the scenario where one "player"
> can be on the third floor of a castle when another "player" comes along and
> replaces it with a rose garden. This is where I see the fundamental
> difference to AW which is focussed as a real-time, muti-user, interactive
> environment.
>
> If it is used to create a world which is then baselined and published, then
> yes, a comparison can be made, but I don't see how the central supports of
> the AW "community" (basically AlphaWorld and other public building worlds)
> could still be provided in that case.
>
> I have to agree that there is a likelyhood of new, better alternatives
> overtaking AW, but then that's how things work in the world. Its inevitable
> that someone else WILL come along and steal (at least) some of AW's market
> share. Its how AWCI respond to that intrusion that will decide their fate. I
> doubt they are a big enough company right now to pre-empt it.
>
> Final comment ... I know I've expressed this opinion before and I'll try to
> make it the last time. What AWCI do and how they do it is their business. A
> little more recognition of citizens as "customers" would be nice, but at the
> end of the day, if they don't want to concentrate on placating existing
> customers, then they don't have to. If they want to run the company into the
> ground (which I am not saying they are doing by any means), then it is the
> shareholders they answer to, not the customers (us).
>
> When there's comparitive competition, then we'll see what happens.
>
> Grims
>
>
>

Jan 6, 2001, 11:42pm

It's not really correct to call the Aurora Toolset in Neverwinter
Nights a "level editor", because level editors require all the
programming & graphics skills of an experienced game professional
(oftentimes they are the same computing tools used by the game's
original designers). NWN's Toolset is specially crafted for ordinary
world-builders: you "paint down" objects & tiles, and "wizards" turn
your ideas into scripts--just like there's a big difference between
designing avatars & objects versus us ordinary citizens just plunking
down objects & making bot-patrol scripts by walking through the path
while a bot-wizard watches.

Yes, NWN's world-modules will be compiled, & the geometry will run on
the client. Because, unlike AW, there are lots of scripted characters &
events going on all the time. The server is not just taking care of a
modular database; it is also updating the state of all those characters
(& movable items) in all the parts of your world, & communicating all
those facts to all the client computers. Till bandwidth gets broader &
home computers get bigger, that's how it's going to be for awhile, as
you say. Because NWN is going to let ordinary folks with ordinary
computers run their worlds for others to visit over the net, like AW
(except the NWN world-servers will be for free). Most "level-editors"
compile world-modules -- but you have to download the entire compiled
module-program from a webpage, which is both inconvenient & risky. By
putting the same geometry & AI & objects in all the clients, NWN avoids
risk, is as convenient as browsing the Net, & puts ordinary people in
charge, not talented hackers & massive entertainment companies.



[View Quote] > That's just the beginning. We're just starting to see games appearing that
> use etremely impressive new technological innovations, like NWN's 'build a
> D&D campaign to play online' thing. Granted, that still uses an external
> level editor and most-likely does some sort of compiling (of course, I don't
> know for sure - and if it doesn't I'll be impressed). Regardless, if you
> look around these days, you'll see games with extremely impressive
> graphics - and that's just the beginning.

You are by no means limited to Dungeons & Dragons campaigns when using
the NWN toolset to design a world of your own. Bioware just wants to
make possible all the character races & types from a fantastic setting,
and all the combat moves & avatar costumes of a medieval environment. If
you want to go beyond using the toolset at the simple "paint" & "tell
script-wizard" level, you have access to all the objects, triggers,
events, weather systems, lighting effects, character traits, quest
outlines, personality quirks, etc. at the detail level, too, so you
could for instance have a game that is nonviolent, favors conversation &
love over monster-encounters & gore, & takes place in a forested, hilly
world of your own imagination.
....................

> the dynamic implementation of a vis system and a
> full lighting/shadow system (..um... even this has to be saved a bit for
> higher end systems; a true all-geometry shadow system would be intensive),
> the editor of the geometry itself needs to be IN THE SOFTWARE.

Neverwinter Nights has amazing lighting and shadow effects: check out
the screenshots at http://www.neverwinternights.com.

............................

> Treat the ground, if there is any, like solid mass, and give builders
> (or players?) the ability to remove chunks of it by editing (or
> destroying?).

A number of 2001's games are aiming to allow players to remove chunks of
ground or add new terrain while playing the game online. Or to build or
destroy objects in the world while playing online. The most promising
seems to be Atriarch, a science-fiction world in which player-builders
choose to play any of several alien races. (See
http://www.atriarch.com.) The price we pay for having shared online
world-construction privileges sometime in 2001 is to have to stick with
Massive Multiplayer Servers of the type AW has, & to do our online
building along with lots of other builders.

> .................
> new game that knows what it's doing allows you to recode the game rules. So
> you want the option for gaming? Just put in a simple mod-scripting system.
> World owners can leave it alone (no game whatsoever - just a regular
> building/exploring world, like we see in AW these days), or they can modify
> the rules of the world (how much gravity? how much friction? how fast do
> people run? can they jump? how high? can they fly? how fast? you get the
> idea), OR they can write in rules for gaming (inventory? Weapons? What kinds
> of weapons?
> There. There's your future-product. It does everything all at once. You can
> edit the geometry, you can recode the world so that it can by anything from
> a simple public building world to a racing game, it will run fast, and you
> build the world and drive the car (or kill terrorists, whatever your things
> is) using exactly the same software. You'll never have to buy another game
> again. Quite frankly, I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon.

..................

The problem for all of us AW fans is how to make AW secure through
2001! One shrewd thing that AW did, given its shortage of programmers,
was to snare a lot of free programming assistance from the players--I
mean the SDK, & all the bot programs that keep coming out. The best
single thing that AW could do now after 3.1 is to carry out Roland's
plan for "subbots" -- each citizen is still allotted 3 "bots" in a
Universe, but 100's of "subbots" in each World once 1 of the 3 "bots"
checks in there. The "subbots" would be able to do everything the old
bots could do, except log into a universe & world & start up a lot of
local bots. You could have a world with lots of "people" in it & lots of
special effects each managed by its own bot.

The second best thing that AW could do, given that it only has 2 or so
programmers, is to give bot programmers access, through AW, to
Renderware calls. The reason that AW is not exactly comparable to a
game-programming company is that it doesn't write its own "game engine"
-- which is written for it by Renderware (Criterion). It's paying for
the right to innumerable DirectX goodies, but it's using only a small
subset of them now, because it doesn't have enough programmers even to
test plug-in functions for them. It should isolate some of these, & let
its programmer citizens try to make them work. The SDK was a risk, but
it paid off handsomely: all that programming and new options, no
salaries, no pensions, & lots of new ideas for free! If you look at
Renderware's own programs, there are many uptodate effects that could be
used by AW -- that aren't used in AW, & that won't be used in AW anytime
soon: why not let AW citizen-programmers have a direct pipeline to those
effects? Maybe even 35850 will decide to take a break from quantum
biochemistry & do some razzle-dazzle for the rest of us. ;)

Mar 31, 2001, 5:22pm

Judging by the documentation, Adobe is aiming the Atmosphere Browser at the
widest possible internet audience, including machines that don't have
powerful 3D cards. That's why the software rendering.

They will probably make money by selling the Atmosphere Builder component.
Once you buy the Builder, you can build a World (Objects, Avatars, Textures,
&c) & post it on a website, for anybody to visit. If you make your World
available via Adobe's Community Server (or anyone else's), visitors can see
and interact with other visitors. Your World may not look as beautiful, but
it can be as big you want, & you won't have to pay Adobe anything for it,
unlike AWCI, which charges more & more for big Worlds, on a per square meter
basis.

If I read the Adobe doc's right, the Builder component is not only capable
of making objects and worlds offline, it also has the potential for
supporting online building. (You'd need to script objects for behavior the
same way you program or script bots.)


[View Quote]

Apr 12, 2001, 7:10pm

Daily Radar recently ran a feature article on the Xulu Universe
(http://www.dailyradar.com/features/game_feature_page_2597_1.html), a system
of worlds that can be visited online or in VR entertainment centers. The
Xulu Universe has been under development since 1995, and is expected to open
during 2002. If you go to a Xulu entertainment center, you can travel from
planet to planet in fullsize "pods", looking out through window screens. If
you play Xulu online from home, you can explore via your computer screen,
like in AW. Xulu is based on a physics engine, which means that its worlds
and objects are user-deformable. So online users can expect to build online,
adding to the readymade cities on the Xulu planets. There is a lot more
information in the article, and some downloadable movies are attached to the
article.

Sep 26, 2001, 5:46pm

After downloading 3.2, I went immediately to my homebase on Mars to see how
things looked. When all the "items" had been reinstated, I looked around &
was stunned: many, many objects were invisible. I went to a dozen other
locations, & even GZ: the same, lots of missing or partially visible objects
(not little black triangles--you can select them, but you can't see them).
Even the Mars Ground was invisible.

So I went to Meta, to compare. Same problem, but weirder, because a lot of
building objects started out visible, yet, as "items" continued to load,
disappeared, or left only smeared ceilings or walls. (At least Meta's ground
was visible, even if a lot of its objects weren't.)

Following hallowed AW tradition, I exited & erased the Cache. No luck. Same
things went wrong again with both Mars and Meta. I went to the old Mars
Object Yard, & waited out the "items" loading: about 50% of the old Mars
objects were all or partially visible--most rocks, most air ships, most
tanks, most pipes, etc. Same at the Meta OY, except that some objects
appeared & then later disappeared or partially dissolved.

I'm running Windows ME, with a GeForce 2 Ultra card, 384MB RAM, set at
1024*768*16 colors: a typical setup these days. I didn't even have time to
fiddle with the 3.2 defaults. Did this happen to anyone in Beta? Are the
old-style Mars and Meta objects now obsolete?

Sep 27, 2001, 12:34am

Thanks, Brant. I upgraded from DirectX 8.0 to 8.0a, but that didn't
help--maybe made things even worse. I'm using the Spring '01 release of the
Detonator Drivers for the graphics card, mainly because the latest release
makes it impossible to play a lot of current VR games. So I tried switching
to the OpenGL option--and the invisibility problem went away. Plus all the
textures reloaded a lot faster.

The GeForce Ultra series cards were famous for their ability to load vast
amounts of textures onto the card, instead of competing for access to
general memory like previously. I wonder if the new system is handling
textures right on the Ultra. Also, should texture-mipmapping be a default?
3.2 was supposed to make things easier for general AW users, not force
everyone to be computer geeks.

[View Quote]

Sep 27, 2001, 12:45am

For comparison, I'm getting 40-80 fps on Mars, mostly 50-60 fps, using the
OpenGL option.

[View Quote]

Jan 11, 2002, 5:23am

Well, now it's after January 3, 2002, and yes, the activeworlds.com website
says that new citizenships cost $114 per year. Like most other people here,
I wonder if existing citizens won't soon have to pay the same $114 per year
after their current citizenships run out.

$114 per year is what people are paying to go online and meet with friends
in virtual worlds, plus interact with hundreds of virtual people (animals,
monsters, imaginary beings) and experience those worlds like a character in
a story. Here in Activeworlds, we can go online and meet with friends in
virtual worlds, but the only adventure we can have is that of building.
Millions of people are paying $114 per year to take part in virtual stories.
I don't think very many will pay $114 per year just to be able to build.

In a couple of months, Neverwinter Nights will be on sale. It too lets
people go online and meet with friends in virtual worlds, plus interact with
hundreds of virtual people (animals, monsters, imaginary beings) and
experience worlds as one were a character in a story. But it is doing
something radically new and exciting: once you fork over the initial $49,
you can visit the imaginary online worlds of NeverwinterNights for FREE. And
I said WORLDS, not world, because the NeverwinterNights box includes not
only an example world you can adventure in, it includes a TOOLSET that lets
you build, populate, and script your own world. The game's producers,
Bioware, plan to make their money later by selling additional objects and
avatars, not by charging you to visit the worlds you make with them. How
does ActiveWorlds plan to compete with this?

Sometimes AW fans say "but I don't want to play a game, I just want to build
an imaginary world and relax in it, meeting friends there". Exactly:
repeatedly killing monsters bores me, too. So I'm going to use
NeverwinterNights' toolset to build a world where I can relax with my online
friends, and a lot of scripted imaginary people, just to make the background
complete. All that for an initial $49, nothing more, except to hook my world
server into the NeverwinterNights network--which is also FREE.

I truly don't see how ActiveWorlds is going to compete with this, even if we
longtime citizens don't have to pay $114 a year. And if we do, ActiveWorlds
should consider giving every citizen that pays the $114 a P-50 WorldServer
with 10 users and 3 citizenships. Then at least we might be tempted to stay
around for the privilege of online building.

{You can read about Neverwinter Nights at http://www.neverwinternights.com
the official site. There are some independent previews and lots of
screenshots at
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/0,11114,188666,00.html }

[View Quote]

Feb 7, 2002, 2:12am

How do you tell whether a world is open to tourists? I went to Alphaworld,
Mars, and Meta just now, and their World Rights says they are "open to
everybody". (Of course I could always try re-entering as a Tourist.)

[View Quote]

Feb 7, 2002, 2:33am

Maybe the truth is that AW is somewhere between a chat room and an online
game. The chat networks cost next to nothing, and the online role-playing
games cost $9-$10 a month (and the first month is usually free--which gets
new users involved). AW allows user-made towns or worlds, which the older
generation of online games don't do (the new ones like Neverwinter Nights,
Dungeon Siege, Atriarch, and Star Wars Galaxies promise to do so as they go
public over the next year).

What AW sadly lacks, and even the oldest online games have, is thousands of
fully-scripted bots (non-player characters), with hundreds of distinct
player and bot avatars. AW has some beautiful cities, but it completely
lacks people (cits, bots) to make those cities come alive. Raising the
monthly fee to 2/3 of the online game fees means AW ought to provide us at
least hundreds of fully-scripted bots, and not just objects and sounds.

I think I can guess why AW is charging worldowners extra to let tourists
in--this will send the tourists to the business worlds (they can afford the
extra amount), because most all the other world owners will have to refuse
them.

[View Quote]

May 20, 2002, 10:26pm

Bioware (http://nwn.bioware.com) has made its online world-building toolset
available for free download. This is a sample of the toolset that will come
with the Neverwinter Nights game this summer.

NWN will be playable as an offline single-player game or as an online
multiplayer world for up to 64 players (there will be no monthly fee for
using your worldserver and you can choose who and how many to admit to your
world).

I've been playing with the toolset since it came out over the weekend, and
it is amazingly easy to use, especially for AW citizens. The sample toolset
has a vast number of terrain tiles, buildings, avatars, clothing, movable
objects, etc., and it only covers Rural and Crypt building (Forest, City,
etc., will be revealed in the game set). That Bioware site has FAQ's, a
Toolset Forum, News, and Links to the numerous fan sites (like
http://www.neverwintervault.com). World builders will be able to set up
teleports to their friends' world (no universe fee either, just pay once for
the game).

Check it out. Bioware is the maker of the bestseller Baldur's Gate
role-playing game series. But.....AW world builders can just use the
Neverwinter Toolset to build their own worlds and link into a universe of
AW-like worlds.

May 21, 2002, 12:49am

[View Quote] Hey baro, there are a lot of free download sites that are listed in the
Toolset Forum at Bioware's site. (Also be sure to go to the Forum to find
pix of the cool stuff users have been creating in the last couple of days.)

I got the entire download from
http://www.3dgamers.com/dl/games/neverwinternights/Thirdparty/nwn_tools_beta
..exe.html and it was both free and quick. If you want to get the download in
13 separate d/l segments (it's 250MB altogether), go to
http://nwvault.ign.com/index2.shtml and get them all for free. (While you're
there check out the samples and builder suggestions on the site.)

May 21, 2002, 1:18am

[View Quote] If you mean, why post about that here? It's something to look forward to,
if AWCom goes out of business and we all lose the online player-built worlds
we care about.

It also shows why charging a monthly fee for visiting player-built worlds
online, to say nothing of charging ever-bigger fees for running them on a
world server, is going to be utterly noncompetitive.

May 21, 2002, 3:08am

It is.

With the toolset, you build the world, including the people and creatures
who live in it, and script how they will respond to the players who visit it
online. When the Neverwinter Nights game comes out (in June?), you'll get
the complete toolset, plus the means to run the world you build from your
own server, where friends or other players can visit you. Bioware is letting
people get acquainted with the world-building process. Read about it all on
the website.

[View Quote]

May 21, 2002, 3:29am

[View Quote] To the role-playing entity purporting to be one Anduin-Lothario:

The toolset makes it possible to script the bots so that the visitors to
your world can play roles and interact with your bots, like characters in a
story.
****OR****
The toolset makes it possible to script the bots so that the visitors to
your world see moving people and other creatures in it. Background: like the
inn, the millpond, the trees, and the sunset. This is not a game, just a
setting, though possibly more realistic than AW's settings.

You can choose either way to use the toolset.

--The real Canopus, visitor to imaginary worlds

Jul 15, 2002, 9:59pm

If the worst happens, and Activeworlds closes down, the community should
emigrate to Neverwinter Nights. I'll tell you why I think so.

I've been using NWN's toolset to create a personal world that's about 100 by
100 coords--a city, a harbor, a deep forest, wild sea-cliffs, plus inland
rural areas. Constructing all this took about a week, parttime. Now I'm
putting in a population of inhabitants that move about on their daily lives.
Whenever I want, I can put this world online, going through the official
world server, and meet with online friends there. Plus I can set up teleport
links to other people's worlds.

So far this is what I could have done in AW....if I had a lot of money to
pay AW's world and hosting fees, plus new citizenship fees! Using NWN's
server costs nothing. Creating a personal NWN world costs nothing, except
for the onetime US$60 for the game+toolset+script collection+objects/avatars
in the box.

Now if I wanted to, I could use this same toolset to script and build a
complete game, with a story and plot and roles for people to play. Maybe
most of the hundreds of thousands of NWN game purchasers intend to do just
that, and it looks like NWN is so easy to use that it might actually be done
by a lot of them.

But I just want to build an online world, complete with living beings, that
will be a place to meet with a few old AW friends and to check out the
worlds that they are building. Just select the Alternative category on the
NWN world server: it's for this sort of thing.


[View Quote]

Jul 17, 2002, 2:19am

Well, yes and no. There's no 1st-person view, which is a shame. It's a 3/4
down view, because it limits the amount of data which has to be sent from
your computer (working as the server) to your online guests. It's sending a
lot more than AW does, because your NWN world can include complex
interactions between citizens and the background population.

NWN supports plugging in additional objectsets (users have already
contributed desert and arctic objectsets). One reason NWN can offer the
universe server and citizenships for free is that they plan to design (and
sell) a lot of new avatars and objectsets. Clothing is separable, and you
can change clothes and armor online.

You can't pull terrains to make heights and valleys, but there are objects
for cliffs, ramps, waterfalls, and raised terraces. There are many
variations that don't show when you just scan the list of objects: for
example, if you put down a stream approaching a road that runs along the
foot of a cliff, you can then pull the stream-end over the road and up the
cliff, and toolset will make a bridge in the road for you, and a waterfall
down the cliff. The lighting, both adjustable on the objects and in shadow
and fog effects, is also more sophisticated than AW. Occasional rain,
thunder, and lightning can be scheduled with a single checkmark; another
checkmark, and you have a night/day routine.

The scripting support is far more comprehensive than AW's SDK. And you don't
have to be a programmer to create complex events, because there are
scripting wizards, and plentiful example scripts to copy from. After you
play the game in the box, you can see how every scene and every action was
done, because all the scripts are there to read.

[View Quote]

Jul 20, 2002, 5:27pm

Online multiuser building should appear starting in late 2002 in MMORPG like
The Sims Online, StarWars Galaxies, Horizon, and Atriarch. But to get it in
NWN needs serious scripting.

But--don't think that an exciting, realistic NWN world, complete with
nonplayer characters and special effects, requires scripting.

No. Every person, beast, building, or placeable item in the toolset comes
with a default script: just by placing creatures or objects in your
landscape, your world visitors get to see and hear all their default
behaviors, with no scripting on your part at all.

Open up the panel associated with any of the creatures that you placed in
your world, check a few options, and your creature will roam about at
random. Check a different panel option, put down a few invisible waypoints,
and your creature will follow the path you indicated. Check another option,
and the creatures will fight or greet others encountered along the path,
returning to routine when the fight is over.

A few days ago, to test this out, I put a sprinkling of characters from
different factions onto the docks in the City Harbor, chose a few options,
selected clothes and weapons for them, changed their abilities, their hair
and skin colors, and gave them individual names. When I went to check them
out in the game, there they were, strolling, pausing, yawning, walking up
the ramps into the residential section, splashing through the shallow harbor
canals, etc. One pair of them had already gotten into a fight. And when I
spotted a Celestial Tiger near the Guard Barracks, he rushed over to deal me
a humiliating lesson in swordsmanship.

All that without any scripting whatsoever.

[View Quote]

Jul 30, 2002, 4:21am

Excellent work, ptolemy. Good stuff on the web site, too.

How did you do it? Send a bot to survey the whole world and then draw the
maps? Anyhow, thanks!


[View Quote]

Dec 12, 2002, 2:53am

I agree, facter. Second Life sounds uncannily like AW, but with uptodate
graphics, model-making, chatting, world-building, and online delivery. The
big new RPG I've been playing have spectacular graphics, like Asheron's Call
2, or encourage players to build and script their own online worlds, like
Neverwinter Nights, but they still make it hard to reproduce everything that
we've gotten used to in AW. (For example, I built a noncombat,
erotic-adventure world out of NWN tiles, scripted dozens of characters, ran
it online --caves, lava lakes, island castles, canal city, and all-- it was
terrific fun, but tiles aren't AW objects, and everything has to be built
ahead of time.)

This Second Life seems to be about to do everything we like in AW, and do
it better...if we can believe the previews. Maybe we should sign up for the
SL Beta, and find out for ourselves how really good it is.

[View Quote]

Dec 12, 2002, 5:28pm

Whatever became of Roland's "sub-bots"? They would go a long ways toward
making AW competitive with Online RPG's (and Second Life). In the Tech
Talks, Roland reported that, contrary to his assumption, running hundreds of
scripted AW bots had little effect on resource usage in individual worlds --
it was the handover from the universe server that caused the delay. By
passing a "parent bot" through the universe server, and then letting
it spawn any number of desired "sub-bots", individual worlds could be
peopled with scriptable role-playing bots. Roland said that it would be easy
to program, but then he had to put the idea aside to do lots of other stuff
coming from the main office.

Yes, we've got lots of talented bot scripters already, but we also have
hundreds of cold, beautiful, empty worlds with nobody, not even bots, in
them. Asheron's Call 2, after announcing that there would be no NPC's in
their new online worlds, already reversed themselves after the first two
weeks, and NPC's (scripted bots) are now turning up in key spots in each
world. It would humanize the AW universe if there were more people, even
virtual people, in each of its worlds...why not use Roland's idea then?

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Jan 9, 2003, 11:01pm

Also today, Myst Online announced (http://uru.ubi.com) that the online
version of Myst would be taking applications for Beta testers. Besides its
usual great graphics (broadband preferred), Myst Online will allow you to
decide whether you want to explore the world (Uru) on your own, socialize or
just hang out in your individual Myst world (online voice communication is a
feature), or just figure out how everything works (puzzle solving, not
killing, is the challenge).

Star Wars Galaxies should be going into the third Beta stage soon, too. It's
one of several Online Role-Playing Games coming out during 2003 that in fact
seem likely to allow player building online (one primary player profession
in SWG is the Architect). The others are Horizons and Atriarch.

[View Quote]

Jan 16, 2003, 11:14pm

There's a new interview on Second Life, which you can read at
http://www.gamespydaily.com/news/fullstory.asp?id=4550 It has quite a bit of
new information, such as how building and scripting is done online, and when
the public beta will start.

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