Re: [croquet-user] Important questions for me..

> Hi, James,
>         Without a protocol spec, and especially one that is accepted by the
> various developers, having multiple worlds that you can visit, and
> especially worlds from different developers you can visit is impossible.
> Think of the protocols as the formal specification of the communications
> between the various elements, thus setting the language of common
> discourse.  If the different worlds all speak differently and the
> clients cannot talk to or with them about the worlds they represent,
> then there is no way that one can understand the other, and your avatar
> cannot cross the boundary, even if you can deal with the language
> differences on the other side of the boundary, which requires a whole
> different level of understanding.
>
>         Right now, Croquet has a spec, Second Life has a spec, MMORPG's each
> have their own spec, and one cannot talk to or visit the other.  This
> has to be sorted out at some point for the web to become fully or even
> somewhat virtualized.  We are all just taking baby steps at this time,
> learning how to accomplish the virutalization is but one piece of the
> puzzle, learning to get from world to world is another, learning how to
> populate and set the environment in these worlds is yet another, and
> this doesn't even touch on the issues with external development.  This
> is just the internal issues within each of the various virtual languages
> and structures.  Furthermore, cross content virtualization will not
> likely come until a breakthrough in expression of the necessary
> requirements for virtualization, characteristics of Avatars and
> environments, and the communications necessary to set the communications
> methods, expressions to use, and structures of components that are
> common to all such environments.
>
>         Progress is being made, but this is a big puzzle, with things like how
> to associate gravity with an object (i.e. property lists and how they
> should be declared?)  or perhaps the means to express the date, time,
> location in the overall virtual world of each location, and what will be
> the standards?  Will there be 3, 4, 5, or who knows how many dimensions
> to the ultimate expression of virtual worlds.  And do the objects need
> to express the full dimensionality of their location, or should there be
> a world location, followed by offsets to tell the objects shape and
> geophysical properties?  Some of these issues will be worked out by
> individual developers, but conferences, and meetings of stakeholders
> like Linden Labs, and the Croquet Consortium will be necessary to
> determine these issues and how to present them across platforms.  During
> that stage, the objects will have to change, inherit the new properties
> so that they will be consistent with the virtual world interface and
> protocol that emerges.
>
>         But do not be discouraged.  Early developers, and especially those with
> interesting concepts, well developed platforms, and large user bases
> will all eventually be drawn to support the further development of the
> Virtual Web.  I can foresee addresses perhaps beginning with VW vs WWW
> to help guide virtual visitors across the new world.
>
> Regards,
> Les H
>
> On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 11:59 -0600, Janet Plato wrote:
> > There are folks running private islands and starting on world building
> > using second life.  The results are starting to get good.  Check out
> > OpenSIM and libsecondlife.  You just run the second life client with a
> > command line option to specify the world to login to.
> >
> > Are any of the croquet folks planning on allowing a croquet world to
> > be accessed by a secondlife client, or a croquet client to access a
> > second life world?
> >
> > It seems you need a large user base to really get things going, and
> > supporting multiple protocols would help with that.
> >
> > Imagine a virtual bazarrre where people can connect from multiple
> > clients to a small  server that provides a portal to private servers.
> > The bazarre becomes almost like DNS, google and the yellow pages for a
> > virtual world.
> >
> > Folks have a stable place to connect to, and debug their client
> > implementations, and they can enter a shop or go through a portal to
> > enter other worlds with content they want.
> >
> > Once the worlds get more common, a better search paradigm would
> > emerge, but this solves the problem the web had before search engines,
> > how do I find content.
> >
> > It's just a thought, but I can say for me without places to go, who
> > cares how cool the protocol spec looks...
> >
> > Janet Plato
> >
> > On Dec 3, 2007 10:18 AM, Doug Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
> >
> > >  If you're looking at a multi-user environment, I'd tend to concur with
> > > Darius that SL might be the best bet for the time being. We're working on an
> > > application that allows direct links down from a Web site to a private
> > > island, a contained group kind of idea, such that users don't even really
> > > need to know they're "in" Second Life. If they choose to explore out, great.
> > > Otherwise it allows us to control the user experience a little more and is
> > > vertical rather than horizontal – driving users to 'sealed' regions from the
> > > Web rather than to the region from within SL itself – although frankly the
> > > combination is probably best.
> > >
>
>

> Mailing lists are relatively slow.  I think people need to be able to
> download the SDK and connect to a place to go and hang out with other
> users in order for a community support network to develop.  IMO, that
> support network and community will greatly accelerate world building.
> I have no interest in making commercial worlds, or in proof of concept
> work.  We are past that.
>
> We need to get people the tools to start building large scale worlds
> and then get out of their way.  Much of this is happening, I just want
> to know the roadmap so I can determine where I fit in.
>

> On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 02:50:49PM -0600, Janet Plato wrote:
> > Mailing lists are relatively slow.  I think people need to be able to
> > download the SDK and connect to a place to go and hang out with other
> > users in order for a community support network to develop.  IMO, that
> > support network and community will greatly accelerate world building.
>
> On irc.freenode.net, we of the #squeak channel get quite a few
> questions about croquet, but are never able to answer them.
> There is a #croquet channel, but there is not often anyone with
> actual croquet experience in there to help newbies out. I think
> you could have good discussions via IRC for now. Many projects
> use IRC very successfully.
>
> It doesn't sound like there is a single place to go meet croquet
> people, and so I often have nowhere to send croquet admirers who
> come into #squeak (and nowhere to hang out myself) regarding
> croquet.  IRC would be great until there is a better place to
> meet croquet people (like the croquet consortium server or an SL
> island)

> On 12/10/07, Matthew Fulmer <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 02:50:49PM -0600, Janet Plato wrote:
> > > Mailing lists are relatively slow.  I think people need to be able to
> > > download the SDK and connect to a place to go and hang out with other
> > > users in order for a community support network to develop.  IMO, that
> > > support network and community will greatly accelerate world building.
> >
> > On irc.freenode.net, we of the #squeak channel get quite a few
> > questions about croquet, but are never able to answer them.
> > There is a #croquet channel, but there is not often anyone with
> > actual croquet experience in there to help newbies out. I think
> > you could have good discussions via IRC for now. Many projects
> > use IRC very successfully.
> >
> > It doesn't sound like there is a single place to go meet croquet
> > people, and so I often have nowhere to send croquet admirers who
> > come into #squeak (and nowhere to hang out myself) regarding
> > croquet.  IRC would be great until there is a better place to
> > meet croquet people (like the croquet consortium server or an SL
> > island)
>
> The Croquet Collaborative server was, I think, intended to be a place
> like this.  It is still available, and reasonably stable.  There are
> several Croquet-ers that have published their contact information on
> Second Life, although it might be nice to have such a directory
> somewhere (is there one in Second Life?)
>
> At one time, the UMN Croquet Team offered free accounts on its Jabber
> server (I believe this is no longer the case) in order to facilitate
> in-Croquet communication with other external channels.  As I recall,
> they had very few takers and little Croquet activity on the server.
> It seems that a lot of the Croquet community would rather work on
> their projects than talk about them, which seems a little odd for an
> environment whose main claim to fame is collaboration.
>
> Dave
>

> It has not been my experience that this world is stable or documented.
>  I am not trying to sound negative, but I come into this without
> understanding the paradigms and metaphors used in this space, and
> being somewhat overwhelmed with where to get started.  I strongly
> suspect many artists, engineers and world builders exist, but are in a
> similiar state of ignorance.
>
> I think that when a project is below a critical mass, having a stable
> place to catch the attention of folks who pass by adds some value,
> even if it's mostly unused.  I would have been incredibly thrilled to
> attach to an empty world with a bill board covered in post-it notes
> pointing me to other worlds and other folks current projects.  Think
> of google, and then think "how could I make a google like service
> using the croquet paradigms"  Think of all the getting started
> documents, and then ask "how do I make the getting started documents
> on the web point to "installation and connecting" documents, and
> moving the rest of it into the world so people will go into the worlds
> and get used to doing things there.
>
> Use croquet to teach croquet.
>
> Every time I see something on the web about croquet, there is a reason
> I cannot participate, which leads me to conclude other folks are in
> the same position.  I see the arts metaverse project and think,
> WOW!!!! but then I cannot connect to it, cannot get the datasets used
> to make it and cannot get a reply from the folks who did it.
>
> I have a day job, and have been unable to attend the last two meetings
> in qwak space. I suspect for most of the people doing this, it's just
> a day job.  This whole thing kind of feels like it's mostly about
> someone milking the concept for a job or research grant.  I know that
> cannot be true because 20 people were in the IRC channel once I found
> it....  but imagine if those 20 people were in a croquet world making
> new avatars, or writing how-to and read-me articles.
>
> A lot of people want to help, we just have to show them how.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Janet
>
>
>
> On Dec 12, 2007 8:25 AM, David Faught <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > On 12/10/07, Matthew Fulmer <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > > On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 02:50:49PM -0600, Janet Plato wrote:
> > > > Mailing lists are relatively slow.  I think people need to be able to
> > > > download the SDK and connect to a place to go and hang out with other
> > > > users in order for a community support network to develop.  IMO, that
> > > > support network and community will greatly accelerate world building.
> > >
> > > On irc.freenode.net, we of the #squeak channel get quite a few
> > > questions about croquet, but are never able to answer them.
> > > There is a #croquet channel, but there is not often anyone with
> > > actual croquet experience in there to help newbies out. I think
> > > you could have good discussions via IRC for now. Many projects
> > > use IRC very successfully.
> > >
> > > It doesn't sound like there is a single place to go meet croquet
> > > people, and so I often have nowhere to send croquet admirers who
> > > come into #squeak (and nowhere to hang out myself) regarding
> > > croquet.  IRC would be great until there is a better place to
> > > meet croquet people (like the croquet consortium server or an SL
> > > island)
> >
> > The Croquet Collaborative server was, I think, intended to be a place
> > like this.  It is still available, and reasonably stable.  There are
> > several Croquet-ers that have published their contact information on
> > Second Life, although it might be nice to have such a directory
> > somewhere (is there one in Second Life?)
> >
> > At one time, the UMN Croquet Team offered free accounts on its Jabber
> > server (I believe this is no longer the case) in order to facilitate
> > in-Croquet communication with other external channels.  As I recall,
> > they had very few takers and little Croquet activity on the server.
> > It seems that a lot of the Croquet community would rather work on
> > their projects than talk about them, which seems a little odd for an
> > environment whose main claim to fame is collaboration.
> >
> > Dave
> >
>