Sim UniWiki (Split from "Spam Killed...")

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, that would be a really useful tool.

Mike

[DevP]

About time marking: we could agree that things can only happen "forward": even if scene A is moving "faster" than scene B, if some event in A occurs than nothing in B may contradict that, even if B happens before A.

It really should be reasonable to track. For one thing, take that Wiki, put on a RSS feed, and *BOOM* you have a rolling blog of the latest events (i.e. story items) that are occurring. You could even customize the feed per user to focus on whatever.

What I'm thinking is less co-ordinates, and more "pointers" ala records in datastructures. This includes full object orientation. That is, things can be nested inside each other.

Ah, my language. I would certainly recommend going towards "shared ideas relative to each other" rather than coordinate systems, since that could become limiting + busywork for not too much game. (If an Author violates some in-game causality about traveltimes or whatever, quitely give them a fine in the background.)

As for the overall structure: how nested can we be fore we get useless? I think overorganization kills creativity dead. Yes, some nesting can be helpful, and it could be even abstracted away. For example, you could have an Elves component, and Fubarr the Elf as a sub-component, and his sword Jingilo as his sub-sub-component, but you only need to access the sword'd traits at your lesiure; really, it just adds to Fubarr's Importance socre. (Right?)

(Also, I realize this: everything in Universalis is really either a Thing or a Fact. Things are made up of Things and Facts. There are also global Facts (i.e. Story Frameworks/Rules Gimmicks/Social Contract). So we could build nested things out of that.)

[Christopher Weeks]

Interested parties should check out the Unigame homepage for recent developments.  For one thing, you can now be notified via email of changes, though only once per day.  

It appears that we're ready to assemble the players, set up the rules (if we're not just relying on tenet phase) and then play.  If the rules are to be established via tenet phase, I think we need more than one round.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

Excellent, Chris. I'm excited. I'm also very busy right now, but I'm going to make an effort. I think the daily email will also help spur attention for those who subscribe. Well, it will for me, anyhow. :-)

About time marking: we could agree that things can only happen "forward": even if scene A is moving "faster" than scene B, if some event in A occurs than nothing in B may contradict that, even if B happens before A.

Well, it all depends on how many scenes you allow. If there are 20 going on, it would be very difficult.

One of the visions of this sort of thing is that it might eventually become "Massively Multiplayer". Just something to consider.

It really should be reasonable to track. For one thing, take that Wiki, put on a RSS feed, and *BOOM* you have a rolling blog of the latest events (i.e. story items) that are occurring. You could even customize the feed per user to focus on whatever.

Can we get an RSS feed for the game in question? Then could we have some good notes on how to get that feed? I've heard about how to do it, but I can't remember, myself.

(If an Author violates some in-game causality about traveltimes or whatever, quitely give them a fine in the background.)

Normal challenges I think, first. But, yeah, there are mechanisms for fixing things.

As for the overall structure: how nested can we be fore we get useless? I think overorganization kills creativity dead. Yes, some nesting can be helpful, and it could be even abstracted away. For example, you could have an Elves component, and Fubarr the Elf as a sub-component, and his sword Jingilo as his sub-sub-component, but you only need to access the sword'd traits at your lesiure; really, it just adds to Fubarr's Importance socre. (Right?)

First, for myself, organization increases creativity (in fact, I am not able to be disorganizedly creative). I may be odd in that, however.

Second, I'm talking about locations mostly in terms of nesting. That is, there is the world of Middle Earth as an overall component (it's fun to add traits to the world). Then there's the region of Eregion in Middle Earth. Inside that, there's The Shire. Inside that there's Hobbiton. Inside that, there's Bag Row. On Bag Row is Bag End. In Bag End is Bilbo's Kitchen. In Bilbo's kitchen there's a chest. In the chest there's a box. In that box there's an envelope. In that envelope, there's a magic ring, secret and safe.

"Through a door from the Kitchen" is the Dining Room. If one moves the chest from the kitchen to the dining room, then the chest is merely listed as being in the dining room, and that automatically adjusts the location of the box, envelope, and ring by the linkage. This is the advantage of Wiki here.

The Old Wood is "Just Outside the Shire to the Southeast". Inside the Old Wood is....

Well you get the idea.

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

Why don't we go ahead and play it as a generic game of Universalis and write Tenets to make it a sim and to wiki-enable it?  I think what we need is a date.  Would everyone be game for 26 July at 0001 server time?

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

Heh, that's about what I just proposed on the site itself. :-)

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

OK, I added the first tenet a while ago.  Anyone interested should get over there and start setting up the rules that we'll be playing with.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

Just a heads up to anyone reading, it looks as though we may have invented a way to automate the tracking of expenditures in the Wiki. Making a ton of recording effort go away entirely. In fact, the way we have things automatically cross-referencing in this game means generally lots less work. I'm very excited.

Also, in general the way things are set up makes it a lot more intuitive to use than the average Wiki. For the most part, all play is filling in the appropriate form. As such, all you have to understand is how to make a WikiWord, and you're off and running.

So I'd encourage people who may have been shy before to come over and check it out.

http://wiki.trmfineart.com/bin/view/Unigame/WebHome

Mike

[Bob McNamee]

I just have to say I'm really thrilled about that Tenet expenditure tracking! And when it expands to theother aspects of the game.... WOW!

Coin tracking, Scene locations traits...how cool.