At 05:09 19.08.01 -0700, Lawson English wrote:
For my son's birthday I bought him a 6-month subscription to the EverQuest online adventure game. If you haven't played it, then I suggest that you obtain a copy and try it
Sounds like the father who buys his newborn child an electric model train :-)
I never played EverQuest or Ultima Online or any other graphical MUD, but I know the old MUDs, am an enthusiastic fantasy role player, and can therefore perhaps imaging that this kind of game as a high coolness factor.
Actually, I'm playing with the idea to create such kind of game (perhaps with a much smaller scale) on my own for a long time now some of my friends would love the idea to flesh out and build a fantasy world and/or play such a game, but they lack the skill to program such a system.
If you were suggesting to create a EverQuest client in Squeak, that would be illegal, I think, but if you think about creating a whole client/server system, let's continue to talk about that :-)
I admit, for various reasons I thought about writing such an environment in Java, actually, writing a Self-like language in Java which then would be the language to code the world in. But Squeak might be an alternative, at least for a prototype.
In addition to the "wow" factor of letting every kid host his/her own baby graphical MUD, a Squeak-based implementation would allow all sorts of collaboration between researchers, teachers, students, etc. Sorta a graphical realtime Swiki.
Sure, gaming is just one aspect of such a virtual universe.
Perhaps, this will also fit somewhere in the strategy of Squeakland? I don't know.
bye -- Stefan Matthias Aust \ Truth Until Paradox