<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: CT - A Hypothetical Session (mid 1995) --> <!--X-From-R13: X Q Znjerapr <pynjNhaqre.rate.ftv.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 01:13:22 +0000 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 199803130113.RAA02529#under,engr.sgi.com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, CT - A Hypothetical Session (mid 1995)</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg00692.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00694.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg00694.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00692.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#00693">Author</A> | <A HREF="#00693">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#00693">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>CT - A Hypothetical Session (mid 1995)</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#null,net">mud-dev#null,net</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: CT - A Hypothetical Session (mid 1995)</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: J C Lawrence <<A HREF="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 17:13:17 -0800</LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> Did this ever see the light of day? The web pages are fairly extensive (and self-congratulatory): <A HREF="http://www.cyberterm.com.au/">http://www.cyberterm.com.au/</A> No, I'm not going to touch the glaring security and technical problems in the below. <A HREF="http://www.cyberterm.com.au/ctuser.html">http://www.cyberterm.com.au/ctuser.html</A> CT - A Hypothetical Session (mid 1995) Last page update on February 3rd, 1995 What follows is a possible session within a single Cyberterm system which will connect via modem to a central server which has many other users logged in. The technical features mentioned in this article are based upon the current functionality of the Cyberterm 1.0 (alpha) version (october 1994) and upon work in progress. When the program is started you are presented with a window which represents a 3D view into the virtual environment controlled by the local server which resides within the same program. By default, the system immediately connects you to the server and you are allocated an "avatar" which is a 3D object which acts as your representation within the world. You view the world through the eyes of the avatar (ie you do not see yourself). The avatar itself is an agent, which means it has the ability to act and react with objects and the environment. In this special case, it reacts specifically to your commands from the mouse and keyboard to move about etc. Any other user who may be encountered will communicate with our you via his own avatar. As the avatar handles all messages to and from a user, these messages can be filtered and perhaps acted upon without direct intervention of the user. For example, if an avatar receives email (as opposed to a direct text message), then it will automatically pass the mail on the user's mailbox (another agent) and will send a notifying message to the user in much the way that an iconised mail program may change it's appearance or beep when mail is received. The difference here is that the mailbox itself is a separate program which may well have changed its appearance when the new mail was received. Of course, the mailbox may have reacted differently to the received mail. It may have created another object which looked like a human mail man. This man could find you and hand you an object that looks like a piece of paper but has the message actually written on it as part of its shape description. Back to our screen. You have just emerged into the virtual environment. Beneath your feet is a textured floor, several buildings which look like houses and offices are ahead of you and other objects on unknown purpose are scattered about the ground. Some objects hang motionless in the air like huge abstract sculptures whilst some small shapes scurry about between the buildings on some unknown task. From the 3D window menu you can select the status window to show your current world position, the direction you are facing and your speed. Opening up the Radar window shows symbolic representations of the objects about you. The Message window is blank if you display it, but it will display any incoming messages that you might receive. As you are turning around, looking at the world, just getting your bearings, a humanoid figure approaches and a message appears in the Message window: "Hello Andre! Would you like a tour of things to see around the town?" You recognised the automated tour guide and decide you will follow for a bit to see where it heads this time (it shows something different each time). "Come this way" appears in the Message window and the guide turns around and moves off to the left down the street. You pause for a moment having seen a movement within one of the houses. The guide stops and calls back, "Are you coming?". You turn to the guide and start moving forwards, following as he(?) takes a side street and stops in a square before a large billboard. You click the mouse on the guide's back and the Status window shows the guide ID and name: "Andre's Guide". Smiling to yourself you turn to look at the billboard. "This is the current state of affairs in town, Andre," says the guide. "Reading it may help you around town. Bye now." The guide turns to move away, but as he does so the guide becomes more and more transparent until he has disappeared altogether. The Billboard wasn't here in your system the last time you logged in, you can see some messages on it, but first you want to check out who put it there. You call up the AUIB window (pronounced "orb", Agent User Interface Buttons) next to the Radar window and close the Status window. The orb window has a single button in it labelled "Bag". Clicking on the bag interogates your Bag agent which then displays more buttons for each object you have, as well as the buttons "Drop", "Use" and "Close Bag". You see the "Super Sniffer" button, which is a useful tool you picked up in CT Central when you logged in their a few days ago. Some hacker on the CT net had programmed it up and made it freely available from the CT Public Domain file tree in CT Central's File District. Activating the Sniffer produces a new button in the AUIB window, labelled "Sniff". You click on the billboard in the 3D window, then click on "Sniff". The Sniffer agent interogates the billboard for all publically accessible information. It then sends you messages in the Message window showing who the owner is, when it was made, it's purpose, whether it has any attached files etc etc. You see it was made yesterday by the Sector Controller. That must have been when you logged into CT Central. The doorman at Central had asked you if you wanted to download the latest utilities in the background while you were logged in and you'd given him the okay to write to only your C:\CTW\UTILS directory and to modify your startup files. You wonder what other things have changed in your virtual environment since you were here last. A small rodent artificial life form goes skittering past your feet. Hadn't you eradicated all of them? As persistent objects, the rats exist from one CT session to the next. They were benign enough to begin with but you are tempted simply to call one of the Sector Controller Garbage Agents to clean them up for good. The Garbage Agents have inside access to the environment. The sneakiest of artificial lifeforms or agents simply don't have any option to resist the Sector Controller's agents. Of course, as the system's owner you could just step in youself, but you tend to prefer to let things go their own way. It makes the virtual world so much more interesting. A scrap of paper blows past you feet and you retrieve it by a direct command and clicking on it with the mouse. When you get the paper it transforms into a butterfly and flys away sending you a parting message from your friend Jason, "Meet you at The Club at 8." It's a message from your mailbox. You changed the mailbox to create paper and other objects which you come across one by one to read your mail. Of course, you could simply read the mail, but it was an interesting programming exercise in Tcl/CT and took less than 100 lines of code. The billboard has some messages pinned to it describing some new facilities available at CT Central. A faster line was now available to the main North American hub server and the sysops at Central had decided to open up a new sector of cyberspace for building development over by the Bay. Bidding in virtual credits had already started for prime locations. You open the Bag again and check your wallet, entering your personal code number to unlock access to the funds. 12,000 credits could buy a nice sized block, maybe even on the foreshore. But you've been saving for a faster modem to speed up the service for users in the direct mail order business you have operating within your machine here. Turning around you can just catch a glimpse of the activity in the distance, right across town where people and agents have gathered around the ordering booth. There are only a few people milling around as it was still early. From your Bag you check the credit takings for the day. Most had bought floppy disks, stationary and some other small items, although one agent has ordered a VFAST modem for its owner. Some goods had been paid for in virtual credits, some in real dollars and some were on credit (from known users with a trading history). Checking your Microsoft Windows 3.1 clock you see it's 7:45pm, so you head over to the booth and the gateway that stands nearby. This is just the standard unmodified grey marble platform a few feet across. Engraved on the surface of the platform are the words "Gateway to CT Central". Things look quiet here so you step onto the dias... The screen goes black for a few seconds. It would be slower if the line hadn't already been open and the gateway agent had had to dial the phone and wait for the modem to train up. Suddenly the screen fills with the familiar scene of the lounge room of your house on CT Central. Stacked neatly against the wall is your 3D file stack which can display the files in your home directory. Various tools and devices sit on shelves around the room. This is where the tools go when you're not using them, where the Bag puts them when you don't take them with you. Usually when you hop to other servers, your Bag only takes a reference to these objects with you, but sometimes you actually take an object through with you as some need to be remotely present to operate properly. Your Dog is sleeping in the corner. He hasn't stirred yet so you leave him be. As you go to the door you notice a chewed book by the Dog's nose. He'd obviously found it somewhere. A quick examination shows the data is badly degraded but it looks like some spells from the Dungeons of Mor. Obviously a player had dropped it when he held too many things. Normally the Dog didn't wander so far by itself, but since you'd modified it's ranging behaviour it had picked up some interesting things while you've been away. The Dog uses up many virtual credit points in CPU energy whilst you are away, but as you tend to own so few objects at Central (unlike some people who tended to hoard things) you'd negotiated with the sysops for increased CPU time for the Dog in your absence. You hope it'll pay off one day when it comes home with something really useful. As you step outside your modem's receive light is still flashing as cached information on the immediate area around you is still being downloaded. In the 3D window you see objects pop into being for a few nore seconds. Checking a system status window you see that some of the objects you see don't match the stored libraries of objects on your hard disk. A perusal of the list shows that David Hendel, who owns the house across the street has changed it's appearance again and your system needs to download the new description. You haven't got automatic aspect updating turned on, so you manually give the OK to download the new house description in the background whilst you head off to The Club near the town centre. You live fairly close to the centre of Central as you were one of the first users to register. Now there were nearly 2000 users and the streets are busy with activity. Glancing at the radar window with its symbolic display of objects you notice that most of the objects moving around are agents, with a dozen or so real avatars in sight. Some of these may be agent controlled too so it can be hard to tell who is human and who isn't. Two humanoids are talking in the street ahead and as you pass by you pop up the chat window to overhear what they say. "What do we offer then?" "25k" "What?! Not worth it!" "And let a commercial company buy in?" "What would *they* do with a hill?" You recognise Steve and Biro by their avatars. It's getting towards 8pm so you can't stop. "Hi guys, catch you later," you type hastily in the chat window as you zoom past at a run. A teleport booth is coming up on the pavement. It costs a virtual credit per 100 unit jump. Once you enter the teleport booth you quickly tell it to take you to The Club. The screen goes black and you see objects pop into existence around you as the object cache reloads. First you see the things up close, then things further and further away. The centre of town is crowded with objects as this is the oldest part of CT Central so the modem receive light is still blinking away furiously as you approach The Club. Turning around you see the building of the File District towering nearby. The top of the New Files Building is red so that means there are new files available. You have a couple of minutes so you walk over and in the front door. At first when you enter, the large high ceilinged room is empty, then suddenly a towering, sparse tree with a few nodes appears before you. Doors to the sides lead to individual file sections, but this tree shows the complete hierarchy. Moving around the tree you read the names of files written on the nodes. You click on the name of a Microsoft Windows executeable file called RAVEN.EXE with the right mouse button and a floating menu asks if you want to execute the file or download it. You select execute and 3 AUIB buttons appear, "Download Status - RAVEN.EXE", "Pause Download RAVEN.EXE" and "Stop Download - RAVEN.EXE". There are no other files you want so you leave the New Files building. Raven is a small program and as you are approaching The Club, the Windows executeable program, which has been downloading as a compressed file to a temporary directory in the background, fires up. It's a game of some sort. It looks interesting so you close it and copy the files to a new directory for later examination. If the program had been in Tcl/CT you could have executed it remotely, locally or downloaded it. In addition, many Public Domain agents have 2 file associations. One is the file which created the agent and one is a description file describing the agent. Both may be blank, especially for dynamically created agents, but often the programmer will make sure there is a description file available describing what the agent does. If you're interested he'll usually leave his CT email address in the description file and you can contact him for a copy of the original code (or to buy or barter for it). If you select to execute an agent locally then it'll run on your local server. If you want to run it remotely, it'll run on the remote server provided you have permission and haven't used up your quota in agents. Some sysops provide Safe Zones where new agents can be tested if you're not too sure how they will perform, but usually people run and test agents on their machine at home in a test world, just in case something goes wrong. The doorman of The Club has been eyeing you off as you approach, checking your security clearance and other details. When you get nearer he opens the door for you to enter. Jason is waiting in the usual booth. These are soundproofed regions that are screened from eavesdroppers by hardcoding in the underlying design of the building. You see a few people scattered about, no agent-controlled avatars are allowed in here. The sysops booth has a few figures hunched over drinks (they always do that). You wont be moving for a while so you select the 3D window option for Enhanced Reality and the modem light flickers for a few seconds, gathering extra scene description data. The lighting in the room changes and the clarity of textures and reflections in the room increases. Jason waves hello and begins, in chat mode: "You hear about the hill?" "I heard Steve and Biro mention it." "3 hills, nearly 50 feet high, with a view over all of Central. Enhanced server coding has been added so you can see the US Hub in the distance. And sailboats on the bay!" "Neat. Go audio." You select another menu item and pull out the microphone plugged into your Sound Blaster card. This takes heaps of bandwidth and has a few seconds delay, but is worth it by a mile. "Online, Andre." You hear Jason's familiar voice in your headphones plugged into the Sound Blaster card. "Online. So what's the deal?" "MultiMedia International." Jason sounds smug. "The interactive TV guys? What about them?" "I suggested they hook a link to Central for ordering movies realtime and they want in." "And the Hill?" "They'll pay for agent programming and services, in *real* money!" "All right! And we buy some of the Hill, stick a flag on top or something to advertise." "No hardware needed. They can do it all via Central. They need just a permenant modem line. I've already talked with the sysops, it's no problem once the funding happens." "So do they have any idea about CT? What they want for agent interfaces?" "Not really. We're to make a real world presentation to them early next month." "Better get started." Jason's avatar turns on the booth's "blanket visuals" button and the rest of The Club disappears. To other people in The Club, the booth has just gone black with a red light indicating that it is occupied. A template under the light shows the names of who is inside and a button marked "talk" is next to the template. Aside from that, Jason and Andre are utterly isolated. Andre tells his mailbox to hold incoming messages as Jason places a complex small 3D model on the table between them. "I've programmed up some demo agents. Here's a scenario." Your modem receive light blazes red... Cyberterm runs on a 486DX PC under Microsoft Windows 3.x and is due for release in early 1995. (c) Copyright Michael Snoswell 1995 Cyberterm Pty Ltd (ms#cyberterm,com.au October 26th 1994) Permission is granted for the distribution of this text by electronic or other means provided that it is accompanied by this copyright message and appears in its entirety. This text may not be sold, nor may someone furnishing this text to a distribution resource receive any direct funds because of this text alone. It may be used to accompany a paid printed article on cyberspace, Cyberterm etc provided that acknowledgement is made of the original author and the article is accompanied by the above copyright message line. Partial reproduction of this text is forbidden without prior consent from the author. NOTE October 3rd, 1995: The current version of CT achieves approximately 90% of the functionality described here. Author Michael Snoswell (ms#cyberterm,com.au) -- J C Lawrence Internet: claw#null,net (Contractor) Internet: coder#ibm,net ---------(*) Internet: claw#under,engr.sgi.com ...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith... </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00692.html">Magic as Metaphor</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00694.html">2Cyberconf: An article</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00694.html">2Cyberconf: An article</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00692.html">Magic as Metaphor</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#00693"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#00693"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>Re: [MUD-Dev] What in THE Hell was that?</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="00710" HREF="msg00710.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] What in THE Hell was that?</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:Jon.A.Lambert#ix,netcom.com">Jon.A.Lambert#ix,netcom.com</a>, Sat 14 Mar 1998, 00:38 GMT </LI> </ul> </ul> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00696" HREF="msg00696.html">(short) AnarchyMOO parting salute</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Fri 13 Mar 1998, 02:14 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00695" HREF="msg00695.html">(long) AnarchyMOO Primary Log</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Fri 13 Mar 1998, 02:02 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00694" HREF="msg00694.html">2Cyberconf: An article</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Fri 13 Mar 1998, 01:32 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00693" HREF="msg00693.html">CT - A Hypothetical Session (mid 1995)</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Fri 13 Mar 1998, 01:13 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00692" HREF="msg00692.html">Magic as Metaphor</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Fri 13 Mar 1998, 00:05 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00706" HREF="msg00706.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Magic as Metaphor</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Fri 13 Mar 1998, 03:24 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00714" HREF="msg00714.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Magic as Metaphor</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:Jon.A.Lambert#ix,netcom.com">Jon.A.Lambert#ix,netcom.com</a>, Sat 14 Mar 1998, 04:59 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00730" HREF="msg00730.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Magic as Metaphor</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Tue 17 Mar 1998, 01:57 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>