I apologize in advance for the length of my post! I've been following the AI discussion with GREAT interest. I've always wanted to write some server based software using metacard that would control a simulation that teams of 8 people on separate computers on a network would interact with. AI is not necessarily mandatory but the more complex the program, the cooler the simulation would be.
Specifically, this: Years ago, when I was a 5th grade teacher, we took our kids to the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, FL (MOSI) and they had a space ship simulator - the kids dressed up in pseudo astronaut type outfits, like flight suits, that fit on over their clothes, and then they went into this room that looked like the bridge on the Enterprise, in the sense that it had different workstations that did different things. Kids paired up and they wore headphones with microphones. Each station had a set of directions... One station operated a robotic arm that was "outside the spaceship" and you could see it out the "window" (really it was in a closet set up to look like the surface of the moon, with a robotic arm. Instead of a closet door, there was a door with a window in it, and the door was worked into the wall so that you didn't know it was a "door.") Each station did something different, and all stations had controls and monitors. Over your headphones, "mission control" would tell you to do certain tasks, and the card instructions told you how to do them. You and your partner had to accomplish the tasks. It was AWESOME. It was also expensive. At the time, pretty much all of the stations were Apple IIGS computers. And "mission control" was a separate room, manned by 4 people - they'd be talking to the teams in their mics and switching between teams and they used several Macintosh computers to monitor the progress of the teams. And those 4 people had to be on their toes, obviously, because the kids would do unpredictable things - mistakes they had not anticipated. It left a huge, lasting impression on me, because it was educational and it was extremely fun! It was learning and playing and acting and just about the coolest thing I'd ever seen as a teacher. I thought about how cool it would be to be able to put something like that together, but obviously it was too expensive. Fast forward to now. For a couple of years I've thought about how cool it would be to write software that would do something similar to what MOSI had. On one level, it could be done purely as entertainment - get 6 people on six computers in one lab, get six people on six computers in another lab, and they're each on a "ship." Naturally they'd do battle, hiding from each other behind planets, and whatnot. Each station would have directions, and each team would have a "Captain." To be a captain, you'd need to participate in each position at least once and achieve a minimum "score" - the server program would track the response time and decision making of each person and assign a score for that position. The person with the highest score would be the Captain, though you could work out some other system. The server program would throw in random elements like suddenly appearing hostile ships and whatnot. This would be an OUTSTANDING project for some of our seniors to put together - writing the code, designing the stations, filming video to be triggered by the server program when a hostile ship shows up out of nowhere (You know, wearing an alien mask and screaming "We will DESTROY your SHIP into the camera.) What could be more fun? OR I could see writing something more like the original MOSI simulator, and selling a "kit" with the software installers for Mac or Windows. That would make money but would not be as much fun. Anyway, Alain's post got me thinking of how the server software might operate... Great discussion here. I think everything I stated above could be done in MetaCard (or Revolution.) -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School _______________________________________________ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
