Thread

terrain bot (Bots)

terrain bot // Bots

1  |  

eep

Jul 21, 2004, 9:11pm
Is there a bot (or something) that can put a hole in a terrain cell as a user approaches it from a specified distance? I don't like using terrain (see http://tnlc.com/eep/aw/improve.html#ground ) and would like a way for it to disappear (to be replaced with objects) as an avatar gets closer to it (automatically detected via visibility setting would be ideal, but I'll take even a set distance at this point). This may get tricky if multiple avs are near the same terrain cell (maybe terrain can be modified on a per-user basis?) but who knows...

ubermonkey

Jul 22, 2004, 1:30am
Unfortunately there's just no way to make a terrain cell a hole for only one
user; the change would impact anyone in the world. While a bot could be made
to create this effect, it would be totally broken if there were multiple
users in the world, assuming they didn't all intend to move as a group. If
you only intend one user to see it at a time, then a relatively simple bot
could be made to handle this, however there's no decent way for said bot to
detect the user's current visibility setting (unless you set min vis to 100
and just assume 100m vis for everyone). If a min vis of 200 was possible,
then there would be no confusion at all here, though it might cause some PCs
to die.

Okay, hold on -- it is actually possible, it's just something you couldn't
accomplish unless you were a universe owner or had way too much money to
waste (err, I guess those are effectively the same thing).

The only way I can see this working for a group of people in a world at the
moment is complex and bizarre; it requires you to have as many identical
worlds as you intend to have users. Each user is sent to one of the empty
clone worlds (up until none of them are available, at which point they are
automatically ejected), where the terrain effect in question functions with
no issues. The strange part is that we then use additional bots to mimic the
movements and chat of the users in the clone worlds; the effect should be
totally seamless (assuming all worlds and bots run from the same PC, or at
least the same LAN), aside from the fact that everyone you talk to will have
[these] around their names. Writing the bots would actually be the easy part
here, as the biggest concern is obtaining all those clone worlds and bot
rights.

[View Quote]

xelag

Jul 22, 2004, 3:39am
The terrain specifications are not modifiable locally by a browser.
The only thing the browser can do is download the terrain (ascii) file
and render it. Call yourself lucky if that succeeds :)

In fact, AWI has made a big blunder in its hole code (no pun implied).
Originally, it reserved four of the 256 byte encodings for special
effects. One of them was to become the hole in terrain. The net
effect was that one would have textures from 0 to 62 available in four
rotations (terrain0 to 62 = 63 terrain textures x 4 possible rotations
N W S E, 252 combinations), the non used "terrain63" was the reserved
space with 4 possibilities for special effects, one of them to be used
for hole. Due to bad programming, another byte encoding was used for
the hole, not using one of the 4 reserved encodings, but the one
corresponding to texture62 (a legal texture) fourth rotation pointing
east (try it and you get a hole). I pointed out this mistake to
Shamus, and he called me bluff in the beta ng (by lack of decent
answer), his ignorance and utter arrogance, not mine, any programmer
with a bit of mind can check this. A good programmer will acknowledge
her/his mistakes. The original 3.3 code (and mistake) was from Roland
Vilett, understandable because of his inminent demise, but it was
still relatively easy to correct when discovered early in 3.4 beta, a
few months after the introduction of 3.3. It is now virtually
impossible to do so, because terrain with holes has been widely
implemented and a change in the hole code would be difficult to
correct. So we are stuck now with one texture less: 62 instead of 63
textures for terrain.

The world still goes round though, even if the summer is crappy in
Amsterdam :)

Alex


On 21 Jul 2004 23:30:54 -0400, "ubermonkey"
[View Quote] >Unfortunately there's just no way to make a terrain cell a hole for only one
>user; the change would impact anyone in the world. While a bot could be made
>to create this effect, it would be totally broken if there were multiple
>users in the world, assuming they didn't all intend to move as a group. If
>you only intend one user to see it at a time, then a relatively simple bot
>could be made to handle this, however there's no decent way for said bot to
>detect the user's current visibility setting (unless you set min vis to 100
>and just assume 100m vis for everyone). If a min vis of 200 was possible,
>then there would be no confusion at all here, though it might cause some PCs
>to die.
>
>Okay, hold on -- it is actually possible, it's just something you couldn't
>accomplish unless you were a universe owner or had way too much money to
>waste (err, I guess those are effectively the same thing).
>
>The only way I can see this working for a group of people in a world at the
>moment is complex and bizarre; it requires you to have as many identical
>worlds as you intend to have users. Each user is sent to one of the empty
>clone worlds (up until none of them are available, at which point they are
>automatically ejected), where the terrain effect in question functions with
>no issues. The strange part is that we then use additional bots to mimic the
>movements and chat of the users in the clone worlds; the effect should be
>totally seamless (assuming all worlds and bots run from the same PC, or at
>least the same LAN), aside from the fact that everyone you talk to will have
>[these] around their names. Writing the bots would actually be the easy part
>here, as the biggest concern is obtaining all those clone worlds and bot
>rights.
>

1  |  
Awportals.com is a privately held community resource website dedicated to Active Worlds.
Copyright (c) Mark Randall 2006 - 2024. All Rights Reserved.
Awportals.com   ·   ProLibraries Live   ·   Twitter   ·   LinkedIn