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Jun 26, 2005, 2:46pm

I'd like to make a feature in a bot to conduct random tours throughout
AlphaWorld. This has likely already been done but I'd like to do it myself
just for the experience.

The help for the aw_teleport() method says "The calling instance must be
owned by a caretaker or have the EJECT right in order to use aw_teleport."
(neither of which conditions I satisfy) so instead, I'm considering having a
bot create a teleport object (to random coordinates) in front of my avatar,
delete the teleport object after the avatar has leapt, then having the bot
move to the new location to prepare for the next random leap, etc.

As a sanity check, can anyone think of pitfalls I might try to avoid in this
experiment? One that comes to mind is that there may be no immediate vacant
land on which to create a new teleport object. In that case I might
continue attempting to create it farther in front of the avatar until
succeeding or aborting the whole tour at some specified distance in front of
the avatar.

The only intended purpose of this is to discover interesting, previously
unknown places in AlphaWorld. Most random locations are likely to be vacant
or garbage-ridden areas so perhaps the human explorer could rate each
location and the bot could record only the highly-rated locations for future
guided tours. Perhaps some heuristics could be formed along the way to make
future expeditions more productive if less random.

Related, I recently tried to locate the "50% vacancy radius" in AlphaWorld.
The program calculated random coordinates at specified radii from GZ. I'd
go there and record whether there were any visible objects in the vicinity.
After recording results from large samples at each radius and increasing or
decreasing the specified radius in a binary search fashion, the answer
converged on approximately 1967 dekameters from GZ. (It's unlikely to be a
strictly monotonically increasing function, hence the approximation.) I.e.,
at 1967 dekameters from GZ in any direction you might expect a 50% chance of
finding vacant land. It would be interesting to have tracked this metric
over time since AW's big bang.

Jun 26, 2005, 11:16pm

Thanks for the personal response, John.

I'd rather not bother AWI. They seem too busy with other things and this is
just for kicks anyway.

I'm having some success with this project. It now creates teleports that
send me to random locations but the vast majority are barren. For now I'm
using the back button to return and create a new teleport but I hope to
leapfrog the bot along with me soon. The idea is to have a human team up
with a bot so they can both contribute their best to the exploration goal.

Have fun!
Jim1

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Fricker" <johnf at 3d-reality.com>
To: "Jim1" <JimMoore2 at Cox.net>
Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 4:46 PM
Subject: Re: Random Tours Advice


> You could beg AWI to do this on a bot with eject
>
> :-P
>
> John
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jim1" <JimMoore2 at Cox.net>
> Newsgroups: bots
> Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 5:46 PM
> Subject: ISO: Random Tours Advice
>
>
>
>

Jun 27, 2005, 1:07pm

[View Quote] I think I get what you mean, Jim. You would want a bot that teleports
with you, spits out information, maybe even move slowly to whatever,
like a real tourism thing, right?

Jun 27, 2005, 9:45pm

[View Quote] Yes, that would be the ultimate goal after all the exploration yielded
fruit -- like the Vincent bot in the VanGogh world. (Nice world, that.)
For now, bot-aided exploration is the goal.

Now I see that the vast majority of random locations are completely vacant,
making the exploration boring. Maybe it should randomly select only from
sectors found populated by an aw_query() survey. That seems impossibly
slow.

So far it creates teleports directly in front of and facing my avatar
regardless of avatar yaw. It tries to create it every meter away until the
RC_ENCROACHES errors stop (success) or it gets to 100 meters away (abort).

I assume the bot needs to be near the place where it creates an object. Is
that not correct? Could a bot be at one end of AlphaWorld and create an
object at the opposite end?

Now I'm wondering how to reliably detect that the avatar has used the
teleport. I assume that would be when an AW_EVENT_AVATAR_DELETE happens
while the avatar is near the teleport object. Then again, the user might
close the browser while near the object. Maybe I should use activate
instead of bump. I dunno. FunFunFun...

Jim1

Jun 27, 2005, 10:25pm

[View Quote] You could create it in Preston IF you had the time.

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