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