Norn Fantasy
slink
I was brooding over not having a bank of Pentiums to run parallel
Albias when I was struck by the mental image of networked computers
running Albias, with norns free to travel between the worlds at will.
Kind of like computerized Habit-Trail (sp?).
Sandra
The Eikenberrys
In article <33D64477...@ix.netcom.com>,
Ben <Dict...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>I was thinking about that as well. It would be great if Cyberlife made
>different worlds and if you had more than one computer you could
>actually allows norns to cross between them. The alternative is having
>multiple worlds on the same computer, although with the number crunching
>that Creatures already does it would probably be hard. Actually, I have
>almost started that somewhat. I keep my two computers right next to
>each other and will allow run Creatures in one just letting them wonder
>around, and then use the other for selective breeding and just
>"experimenting" in general. But I like the idea of kind of a
>continuesly growing world. Actually if they could do that on a local
>network level I'm sure that if you could make it so the game didn't take
>up too much bandwith you could actually have your Norns running around
>in worlds on the internet.
>
>Cya
>
>-Ben -Dict...@ix.netcom.com
>
Or maybe Cyberlife could have an internet patch for creatures, where someone
hooks up a computer with albia on it to the 'net... that could be the
"server". Then, we could all inject our norns into the server and see who
survives, etc. An unlimited number of norns in a world.... yeesh, you'd need a
supercomputer. :)
Lordfly
----------------------------
Well, seems the spammers got me. Remove the ** at the end of my email address to reply. Thanks.
Thomas Hafsaas
The Eikenberrys wrote:
> survives, etc. An unlimited number of norns in a world.... yeesh, you'd need a
> supercomputer. :)
> Lordfly
Actually not. The way I visualise that is. You got the server. The only
thing on the server is the world.
The users on client machine all run the creature program and a internet
patch (Yes I am before my time :)) Get hooked up to the server with
creatures running. (Your machine will only controll your norns) The
server will then supply information about where the other norns, e.g
other peoples norns are to your computer. The server would hold all
information about the different objects. Did that make any sense?
Oh, I forgot you can only talk to your own norns...
Hey mindscape are you listening? If you ever do it this way, I thought
of it ;) (isn't there a credits list? <hint hint> ;)))))
(Actually I think that options is feasible, alas it could work, though
is that the system engineers teeth I hear grinding?) It would be quite a
remake of the source code.
--
Thomas Hafsaas. thaf...@sn.no. http://www.sn.no/~thafsaas
"I swore, * "When in doubt;
and the dying ember of * jump out of the nearest window.
the night leaving me cold * At least it keeps the surprise
beneath the stars, * on their side!"
I swore, *
to go with you." * Also known as Zatar
Ben
Thomas Hafsaas
Thomas Hafsaas wrote:
> Hey mindscape are you listening? If you ever do it this way, I thought
> of it ;) (isn't there a credits list? <hint hint> ;)))))
Dang, I meant "crazy ideas from the net thank you list" not a credits
list... <sigh> to little sleep....
Positronic Cat + DataHawk
Hello, I'm new to this group, started reading it after I saw my friend
with Creatures, and really wish I hadn't read this group. I have to pay
off just a couple more bills now and I'll be able to get a copy of
creatures for myself.
Anyways, this post brought to mind a great idea. What if a Norn would
could be run out there on the internet. It wouldn't necessarily have to
be a super computer, in fact it wouldn't really need to be that powerfull.
It would also solve the problems of many norns on one system.
Imagine if you would, an object in the Norn's world, like the teleported,
but a little unique. When activated it would light up so a norn could see
it was ready, then it would teleport the norn off of the system and onto
the online world. However, the users computer would be calculating the
naural network and bio systems and DNA, it would simply be projecting the
norn into a world, and all it would need to get back and forth would be
the interactions of it with it's environment, and vice versa. Depending
on how much data was send about the environment, it should be possible for
many many computers to run their own Norn on this distant world, where
norns would interact.
PosiCat
The Eikenberrys (jbe...@tdi.net**) wrote:
: In article <33D64477...@ix.netcom.com>,
: Ben <Dict...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
: >I was thinking about that as well. It would be great if Cyberlife made
: >
: Or maybe Cyberlife could have an internet patch for creatures, where someone
: hooks up a computer with albia on it to the 'net... that could be the
: "server". Then, we could all inject our norns into the server and see who
: survives, etc. An unlimited number of norns in a world.... yeesh, you'd need a
: supercomputer. :)
: Lordfly
: ----------------------------
: Well, seems the spammers got me. Remove the ** at the end of my email address to reply. Thanks.
--
+-------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| |\ /| | From: Positronic Cat (pos...@pobox.com) |
| (o) (o) | and : DataHawk (data...@pobox.com) |
| | HomePage: http://www.pobox.com/~posicat |
| =(__*__)= | - - - - - - - - - - - - -|
| `` '' | It sounds simple, that's what you're thinking, |
| `` '' | but, love can walk through fire without blinking |
+-------------+--------------------------------------------------+
Benjamin Micah Goldner
The Eikenberrys wrote in article <5r5rak$645$1...@adonis.tdi.net>...
>In article <33D64477...@ix.netcom.com>,
> Ben <Dict...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Or maybe Cyberlife could have an internet patch for creatures, where
someone
>hooks up a computer with albia on it to the 'net... that could be the
>"server". Then, we could all inject our norns into the server and see who
>survives, etc. An unlimited number of norns in a world.... yeesh, you'd
need a
>supercomputer. :)
>Lordfly
>
>----------------------------
>Well, seems the spammers got me. Remove the ** at the end of my email
address to reply. Thanks.
>
>
What I'd really like to see is a multi player version of Creatures. It
could be something like (Maxis') _Unatural Selection_ Which was basically a
game where you seeded creatures and tried to make the best creatures you
could. When you had a whole bunch you would go to an Island and compete
against the computer's creatures; the object was to only have your creatures
left.
I don't know what the objective could be for a multiplayer creatures, but I
know it would be fun!
slink
I tried to like that simulation, but the emphasis on combat scenarios
ruined it for me. Not to mention that that there was no way to pause
the game while you read the periodic data outputs. I could see making
all actions in that game occur in realtime, but people can't read and
think at the speed of a computer.
>I don't know what the objective could be for a multiplayer creatures, but I
>know it would be fun!
>
>
In a sense Creatures already has the biggest competition factor of all
involved in it - evolution. Your norns are competing against each
other and would compete against any norns imported from someone else.
So there's no real need to make the game "multi-player" since there is
nothing for two or more players to be doing except watch and see whose
norns are adapting better.
I'd rather see the game itself evolve into something similar to a dog
breeder/trainer's competition than into a pit bull fight club.
There's already a glut of real-time tactical combat games on the
market. Really good artificial life simulations are hard to come by.
Sandra
Fierybird
what everybody seems to be forgetting is that we already have a set up
like that in existence. remember the quake servers, or The Realm?
things like that. but what would the purpose be? to breed with other
creatures, and have them teach other things, like french words in
place of your english...ugh, it would be a teachers nightmare. mabye
we could have different areas for different languages.
slink
Actually, I confess I was being very selfish in my fantasy. The
purpose in my mind was to allow me to have dozens of norns instead of
just one dozen, on several Pentiums instead of just one Pentium. The
network connection was just to make transfer easier, and allow the
norns to move themselves when it got overcrowded. I pictured myself
all alone, in an empty office-type network environment, seeing norns
drift from screen to screen. I never once in this fantasy envisioned
controlling the actions of the norns in competition with anyone else.
When I said Habit-Trail, I was being literal. Multiple cages for my
pets, not multiplayer combat conditions. :)
Sandra
cow...@erols.com
>On Tue, 22 Jul 1997 23:08:07 GMT, sl...@netins.net (slink) wrote:
>
>>I was brooding over not having a bank of Pentiums to run parallel
>>Albias when I was struck by the mental image of networked computers
>>running Albias, with norns free to travel between the worlds at will.
>>Kind of like computerized Habit-Trail (sp?).
>>
>>Sandra
>>
>
>
>what everybody seems to be forgetting is that we already have a set up
>like that in existence. remember the quake servers, or The Realm?
>things like that. but what would the purpose be? to breed with other
>creatures, and have them teach other things, like french words in
>place of your english...ugh, it would be a teachers nightmare. mabye
>we could have different areas for different languages.
we could link the norns up with duke nukem, the results
would be quite interesting, though maybe not to the norns.....
cow...@erols.com
>On Tue, 22 Jul 1997 23:08:07 GMT, sl...@netins.net (slink) wrote:
>
>>I was brooding over not having a bank of Pentiums to run parallel
>>Albias when I was struck by the mental image of networked computers
>>running Albias, with norns free to travel between the worlds at will.
>>Kind of like computerized Habit-Trail (sp?).
>>
>>Sandra
>>
>
>
>what everybody seems to be forgetting is that we already have a set up
>like that in existence. remember the quake servers, or The Realm?
>things like that. but what would the purpose be? to breed with other
>creatures, and have them teach other things, like french words in
>place of your english...ugh, it would be a teachers nightmare. mabye
>we could have different areas for different languages.
we could always link up a norn world with a duke nukem level
that would be interesting (maybe not for the norns), though short.
Jeff Bone
slink wrote:
> I was brooding over not having a bank of Pentiums to run parallel
> Albias when I was struck by the mental image of networked computers
> running Albias, with norns free to travel between the worlds at will.
> Kind of like computerized Habit-Trail (sp?).
I've only been playing Creatures for a few days now, but this thought
occurred to me as well. I gave some thought to the technology needed,
and it turns out I don't think this would be particularly difficult.
There's actually a premise for this sort of thing dating way back ---
UnterMUD, in about 1990, was a distributed MUD that worked via object
migration. The idea was that constituent MUDs would have exits in them
that were linked to other constituent MUDs. When a player waled through
one of these exits, their player object and its contents would be
removed from the current server (exported,) transported over-the-wire to
the destination server, and "injected" into that world.
The architecture of Creatures actually potentially makes this pretty
easy. Here's how I see this working:
(1) Cobble up a "Portal" object that can be injected into a world.
The portal object should look more
or less like the transporter, with a couple of differences.
Each portal has as its destination a
single other world, indicated by IP or host name and a port
number. Like the transporter, it should
have a button that a Norn can push to make it go. There
should also be some kind of an interface
that allows the destination server to be specified, with some
facility for turning the portal off. The
action of the transporter is to essentially export the
activating Norn, then contact the second piece
of the equation, the "PortalServer" on the local machine.
(This happens via TCP? DDE?)
(2) The "PortalServer" is a background process or daemon that a
user who participates in the
Norniverse runs while Creatures is running. Its dual
purposes are to push Norns
to other PortalServers and to inject arriving Norns into its
own world. It is contacted by
Portals in the local world whenever a Norn tries to use the
Portal; the Portal gives the
PortalServer the Norn's moniker and name as well as
information about the destination
address. The local PortalServer then contacts the
destination PortalServer, authenticates
itself, and transfers the relevant files. It then saves the
traveling Norn's files in a local
backup directory and disconnects. It is the job of the
remote PortalServer to sanity check
the received files and inject the Norn into the local world.
(The file transfer should just
use http or ftp. The portalserver could be implemented as a
minimal httpd with servlets.)
(3) The topology of the Norniverse is determined by a network of
participating worlds, all
connected by unidirectional links. It's totally up to the
participants.
(4) There probably also needs to be some kind of support for
retrieving a traveling Norn,
wherever they may be. This is known as "the forwarding
pointer problem" in object
migration systems.
There's a lot that you could do with this; it would be nice to be able
to "see" through a remote Norn's eyes, and so on, but I don't see how
that could be done. Additionally, if the architecture of the Portal and
PortalServer system was designed to be extensible, you could play all
kinds of interesting "Star Trek-y" tricks with Norns coming through the
Portals: scanning genomes and export files for disease or malady and
patching up on the fly, etc. Things to do that sort of thing could
essentially be "plugged in" to the PortalServer.
Just some thoughts... "bibble!" ;-)
Jeff Bone
Chief Technologist
Activerse Inc.
slink
Wow! A development flowsheet, no less. Not that I can implement it
at my current level of expertise, but thanks just the same. :):):)
Sandra