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Oct 19, 2001, 2:22pm

I wrote my last request post in some haste, so I take this time now to
clarify some points with further explanations of why and how I would
like to see some of the changes I've mentioned.

Full Screen:
I'm not the grandest of programmers, Heck, most of what I do is in
Unix. But I do know that Full screen graphical applications do work a
lot better then in window mode. Plus a fixed resolution helps as well,
or at least being able to default to some specific resolution standards
(640x480, 800x600) would be nice only because they are recognized and
pleasing formats to view 3d graphical spaces in. I know the screen is
currently adjustable, but sometimes it would be nice just to have have a
menu option to instantly set the screen size to see how the new
resolution fares.

Lag:
I tend to think this term gets abused far far too much. From how I
see it, Lag in this case is when there is a noticeable delay in
communication between two systems. In this case, from Server to client
or vise versa. This lag is usually caused by overloaded servers,
internet delays, or packet loss.
I would assume, although am not positive, that the transmission of a
'action' is but a simple small packet that informs the clients that the
user is performing 'x' action. One simple small transaction that a 2400
baud modem most likely could pick up on in real time.

But in this application, when you receive a 'action' packet, it forces
an animation sequence to be performed. This then stresses your
computers graphics equipment to try and processes the animation. If
multiple people perform complex actions or do so with complex avatars,
then that users graphics processor will be easily overloaded and
suddenly you get very jerky displays and slow reaction times from the
client computer. This is not exactly LAG in my view, but what I refer
too when I talk about "The frame rate dropping" The computer can not
render the display fast enough, and so takes as much cpu time as
possible to try and keep up with things, resulting in the system not
responding well to other commands, resulting in the game appearing to
'lag'.

Why do I make such distinctions separate? Well it's because the
problems are solved doing two very different resolutions. True lag is
usually an internet problem. Perhaps a bad hub, router, Server
overload, etc. Usually this is the hardest to solve.

Poor frame rates can be fixed by the client through better hardware or
reducing the client window size, or looking at lower polly portions of
the world. On the server side, eliminating the use of High polly
avatars and objects helps keep players happy with higher frame rates and
faster response times.

That's my clarification of what's true Lag and the results of Poor
Frame Rates masking as Lag.

Bots:
I can't stress this enough. Bots usually are just player 'patches' to
necessary but unavailable features they want. The best example of this
is found on IRC. In the beginning, players had nothing to help control
their channels. Occasionally they would be taken over by other members,
sometimes the 'maintainers' would find people they didn't want as ops of
the channel, and other times nobody with ops would be around to grant
ops to old time users, forcing them to shout "Get out!" To kick everyone
out and try to regain ops.
(An "Op" btw is an operator, or basically someone who has master control
over the channel, including kick and ban rights.)

So Players created Bots to sit in the channel as an OP and do a lot of
the things I talked of above. They sat around in the channel, oping
people on their op list, kicking people on their kick lists and
providing information when people asked.

Maintainers of irc servers found that all these 'bots' where really
not a great idea. For one thing, they took a lot of unnecessary
bandwidth, they where often buggy and sometimes resulted in erratic
behavior, and people who wanted bots sometimes had no clue how to get or
maintain one but wanted something like a bot to keep there channel in
control.

Hence came Services. ChanServ, NickServ, MemoServ, etc. These are IRC
Server maintained "Bots" That can help you register, maintain and
control a channel, register and maintain a NickName (A problem in irc),
and Send messages to people while they are off-line (MemoServ). This
then eliminated a LOT of bots, because
1) The services usually became stable very quickly being maintained by
the irc server admins.
2) One interface, thus making it easy for people to ask other users
how to use it since most likely they too have used the services.
3) Constant updating, allowing for the latest security and feature
patches to be added without having to apply the patch yourself.
4) Users did not have to run the bot on their own machine, saving them
from any expenses that created.
5) Saved the irc server owners bandwidth costs.
6) irc server owners can actually HELP users with any channel or nick
issues, having admin support to the services.

So as you can see, "Services" Helped eliminate the need for a lot of
bots. Now did they completely wipe out everything with services. Nope,
you still see role-playing bots and game bots and Info bots as well.
But they tend to be very specific and concentrated on just one set of
services that are obscure and very custom. But those bots also don't
have to have lots of generic code to deal with things such as oping,
deoping, kicking, etc. They just need to do one specific thing and
that's all. Services do the rest.

I don't see why this can't be true for ActiveWorlds. Since the
situation is almost the same, and one can see that the results could
easily be the same as well. For the most part, ActiveWorlds already
takes care of a lot of the features that IRC has/had issues with.
Nickname control, off-line messaging, basic channel/world control to
name a few. But bots still exist in high frequency and they tend to
again, perform a lot of the same functions. Auto Greeting, Kick
control, auto reply to chat commands, Day/night background changes,
gaming activities (Rolling dice). All things that could be combined
into a service like device or in the case of things like Day Night
Control, and Auto Kick, could be included as functions or features of
the World server software.

Just an idea.

Sentack

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