World

'Physical laws'

Building blocks: Material things are going to be build from 4 elements: earth, water, air and fire. Soul and mind are non-material 'building blocks'.
Forces: Magic is the force that 'runs the show'. Life force if equivalent force for non-material things.

When magic is not visible: resembles out world, Greek scientist might for a while think that they are same. Researching new spell would be something similar to what 'real wizard' in fantasy world would do.

Elementary building blocks ('atoms') are much larger than in 'real world'. However minds are not build of atoms, instead they are itself building blocks. It would be difficult to build computer from atoms and it would not certainly be comparable to mind. Think of atoms like lego building blocks and minds like MindStorm computer block.

I doubt all is going to be simulated from basic building blocks in version 1.0, but it sets goal for some future day.

Your suggestions.

'Living beings'

It is likely infeasible to simulate all minds in game all the time, so they are going to be simulated according to where player is. (I plan to eventually support something like Beowulf)

For example farmer could have these tasks(/events):

a1. Daily goes to tend fields.

a2. Goes home to eat.
a3. Sleeps at nights.
b1. Defend against wolf(s).
b2. Sow fields.
b3. Harvest crop.
b4. Gossip about b* happenings.
c1. Gets children.

c2. Relative dies.
c3. Wolf eats lamb.
c4. Gossip about c* happenings.

a-c*: Would be simulated if PC is at village.
b-c*: Would be simulated if
PC has visited village.
c*: Would be simulated if PC has not visited village.

Your suggestions.

Player

There is living being that has it's mind hosted outside of the game world. That is you.

There are going to be characters that are going to have a lot detail including relationship with other <A HREF= "definitions#NPC">NPC (especially anybody that lives near them or is otherwise related). They are good/neutral/evil characters.

You can choose one of those as your character and then:

Use that pregenerated character
Modify it

Create your own from scratch.

Other way to view this:
In the beginning you chose your character:

Soldier: You would be strong and you were serving in army.

Wizard: You are some student for wizard.
Thief: You would be member of thiefs guild and would have characteristics of a thief.
etc..

You could of course modify your character: For example make you wizards like character be that character that is member of thiefs guild.

Your suggestions.

Difficulty levels

You starting character defines this.

God=Wimpy
King=Easy
:

Slave=Hard

Goal can be anything you want. Classical would be to rid world of evil.

Engine

Plan is to divide game into several engines:

'black box': this will run the world. It doesn't need necessarily anyone to interact.
text and graphics engines: you use this to interact with the world. There could be several of these running at the same time. They would be different players or one player is controlling group of characters using one interface engine.
Optional GM interaction: GM is a kind of pseudo-GOD of the world. You could define certain trigger when GM is going to take over certain <A HREF="definitions#NPC">NPC:s. He could follow what players are doing. He could create anything on the fly or before play session.
There is going to be two options to patch AI deficiences: partly pre-scripted scenarios and active GM.

Plan is to have something like WWW is: world module (like Apache) and mind modules (like Netscape) expect that world module will keep persistent info about places of minds and similar things.

Slant in development is likely zero/single/multiplayer/online world in this order. This means that 1.0 release should have game world suitable for single player and enough large for small online world.

Zero player=screensaver ;-)

Or more seriously one where you follow what happens in the world and then tweak it. Repeat. This is only mode currently.

What I mean that world should just run itself like 'real' virtual world does. Then some of those creature might be controlled by mind that is actually human.

Your suggestions.

Events between world, things and minds

World takes care of geometry, time and sending events. Things process events from world and 'decide' what happens to them. They may produce events.

Example1: House receives fire event. It catches fire, modifies it's environment and begins to send fire events.

Example2: Body receives "remove sword" -event. It send to world "I don't contain anymore sword" -event. It might send to mind "touch: thief is stealing sword" -event if it has good perception.

Minds receive input events from their bodies. They then decide what to do. They generate appropriate events(=output) and body then process those events. It then forwards events (possibly modified) to world. World then decides what happens and generates next input events.

Example4: Body receives "Farmer says 'I want to buy axe'" -event. It forwards it to mind and mind then thinks about it. It generates "Say to smith: 'It costs this much'". Body then utters those words.

Example5: Body receives from mind move forward event. It decides that it's too exhausted to do that. It sends to world "fall down" -event. It sends to mind "dream" -event.

Example6: Mind receives "sight: orc attacking" -event. It decides to draw sword. Body then either draws it or sends back "not here" -event.

Currently only events between world and mind are implemented.
Suggestion for events between world and things is by <A HREF= "credits#BrainBoy">BrainBoy: Original mail

Your suggestions.

Current TODO -list

0.0.8:

easier talking and understanding (=very simple language)
rumors
0.0.9:
rewrite core using <A HREF= "http://www.santafe.edu/projects/swarm/">The Swarm Simulation System (Uses Objective-C)

Scripting will remain Python -based
0.0.10:
simple economy
0.1.0:
simple battle

0.X.Y:
evolution
neural nets

Your suggestions.

Road map

v0.1 will have simple 'simulation' of small village or small part of it. Interface will be text/command line. Release year is 1999.

In future there will be 2D (Gnome canvas?) and 3D interfaces (Crystal Space?).

Simulation and story are IMHO important and therefore in the beginning there is only text interface. Goal is to have your mind immersed in the game like reading book.

It is important to have your visual to be immersed too, so good 3D interface is goal too.

0? Sometime next millenium ;-)

Your suggestions.

Event protocol

How to use Cyphesis from client
Description of protocol between server and client

Your suggestions.