🚀 go-pugleaf

Piercarlo Grandi (p...@aber.ac.uk) wrote:
: >>> On 4 Jan 1995 10:50:08 -0700, edr...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Eric Dreas)
: said:

: Eric> Quake will be completely configurable.  This means that it can be
: Eric> like DOOM or it can be like Heretic or it can be like RotT or
: Eric> whatever.

: Eric> With Quake the story lines will be limited only to the imagination
: Eric> of the person who sets up the server.

: I would really like for people developing this sort of graphics engines
: to make them really extendible, for example, would you believe, with
: MIME.

: A somewhat realistic 3D presentation can be used for much more than
: games; for example as a substitute for Mosaic, as a WWW client. I am not
: joking -- I often delight in walking around WADs without monsters or
: after having killed them all, walking back, just to explore them. How
: much better if objects/actions in the WAD could be linkable to entities
: outside the WAD.

: If you could design a WAD with the layout of the Museum of Modern Art,
: with the bitmaps of the pictures hanging on the walls (this could
: already be done, rather easily) and they be clickable...

: Having tools instead of weapons, and each tool triggering a different
: sort of action. Consider a room containing objects representing files in
: a directory: with one tool you FTP the file, with another you see it in
: HTML, with another you see its attributes...

: As of now the DOOM engine is a browser (in the sense of the Smalltalk
: class browser, or of Windows file manager, or of Mosaic) of closed, game
: oriented, WAD worlds; it would not be too difficult to have it become an
: explorer of open, configurable orientation, worlds.

: I think one needs two different levels of extensibility:

: * objects/actions in the WAD are linked/operate on entities outside the
: WAD (e.g. handling an object representing an MPEG fragment spawns off an
: mpeg player).

: * objects/actions outside the WAD can inject actions/behaviour into the
: WAD (e.g. clicking on a wall activates an external programs that builds
: dynamically a PWAD that is added to the ammbience).

: After all these two types of extensibility are what give things like
: Mosaic/Chimera their flexibility and power.

: Eric> I compare it to graphical MUD code.  Some MUDs are futuristic,
: Eric> some are social, and most are AD&D like.

: None of these ideas is new; for example somebody once did a MUD that was
: a Unix shell (yes, each room a different directory, with 'rm' begin
: shooting a file, 'ls' being looking around, and so on).

: In a sense Mosaic/Chimera are the Nethacks of user interfaces (flat,
: somewhat graphical). I think it would be much easier to extend something
: like the DOOM engine to be like Mosaic than to extend Mosaic to provide
: 3D ambiences. there are two lines of development of adventure or shells:

: adventure	line oriented, single user
: shells		line oriented, single user

: rogue		character graphics, single user
: vsh, nc		character graphics, single user

: MUD		line oriented, multi user
: News		line oriented, multi user

: sail, trek	character graphics, multi user
: talk, IRCs	character graphics, multi user

: XTetris		2D graphics, single user
: Mosaic		2D graphics, single user

: xtank		2D graphics, multi user
: WhiteBoard	2D graphics, multi user

: DOOM		3D graphics, single & multi user
: ????		3D graphics, single & multi user

: In each stage the first line is a closed, game oriented example, the
: second is an information/file sharing general purpose interface (some
: exmaples are contrived, especially those related to information sharing
: groupware, but I think they are still conveying the point).


: It's time the old metaphor (sheets on a board/desk: windows) be replaced
: by by a new one (3D ambients with objects, tools, actions: WADs). There
: are many advantages: one of them is that multi user interactions become
: very natural, while currently they are hardly possible (Mosaic), or
: clumsy (groupwares), because it's hard to work cooperatively on a desk
: full of sheets. In a 3D ambient with objects, tools, and people/robots,
: it's enormously easier. From DeathMatch to collaborative groupware? :-)
So its like.....Ahhh....That Imp wants to steal my email!