Habitat Emails
These are logs/diary entries which were taken from Chip Morningstars Habitat Archives.
July 1985
July 18th
Taken from worldComments.
From dragon Thu Jul 18 17:13:15 1985 Subject: microworld (no, not a serious name suggestion) An idea, though... In addition to avatars (which might have different modes of seeing/moving/etc), one might have tools in the other world, such as binoculars (or a telescope, lacking 3-D capability). Perhaps the normal view would be as in Rescue, Eidolon or Koronis Rift, about 90 degrees and not very far away. A telescopic view would present about the same amount of detail, but distribute it differently so that one could see a long distance in a very narrow cone (say 10 degrees). Objects and terrain could have several additional non-visual dimensions of information, such as temperature, reflectivity and metallic content. Thus, different modes of "seeing" might give entirely different views from the same terrain. Electromagnetic scanners, such as radar, would show a metallic object as being substantially brighter than a non-metallic one, for instance. Infrared would show lakes as dark spots, and volcanoes, hot springs or subterranean nuclear power stations as brighter highlights. We should also be careful not to rule out non-human modes of vision (and other sensory apparatus). Many non-human or semi-human races in D&D have infravision, for example, and would see in the infrared spectrum as well underground as a normal human might above ground. In True Names, one of the characters takes off (from the high mountain [satellite] meeting place) as an eagle. This might be represented on a home computer as a flight simulator with a very narrow field of view, and different (but not unrealistic) flight dynamics. The narrow field graphics might provide a certain amount of disorientation, until one "got used to the form", so to speak. Just an idea... Charlie
October 1985
October 30th
Taken from definition.
From chip Wed Oct 30 13:38:14 1985 Received: by kessel; 30 OCT 85 13:38:14 PST From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: chip, rlc, sda Subject: Definition of "system manager's package" Status: RO As we discussed, for section 1-"Definitions" paragraph H: The term "system manager's package" shall refer to the software developed by Quantum under this Agreement which shall reside in the Q-Link host computer system to permit Q-Link operations personnel to make such additions, deletions and modifications to the host database as are needed for day-to-day operation of the system.
December 1985
December 11th
Taken from maillog.
From chip Wed Dec 11 22:08:40 1985 Received: by kessel; 11 DEC 85 22:08:40 PST From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: aric, chip, farmer Subject: Minimum object set Status: R I have just finished my magnum opus of the week, a very very rough first pass at a specification document for the minimum object set. I have copies for each of you at my desk and I'd like your feedback. Remind me to give you each a copy when I come in on Thursday.
December 12th
Taken from maillog.
From chip Thu Dec 12 14:18:59 1985 Received: by kessel; 12 DEC 85 14:18:59 PST From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: sda Cc: chip Subject: Just talked to Marc Seriff Status: RO Next week is too crazy for them to contemplate doing anything. We are tentatively planning a meeting after the holidays, with them flying out the afternoon/evening of Monday, Jan. 6, meeting on Tuesday and possibly also Wednesday morning, and departing Wednesday afternoon. This should be plenty of time to cover the stuff we need to cover. I plan this to be strictly a technical working session, so he won't bring Steve Case with him (unless you want to arrange otherwise -- I'd prefer to keep it focused on technical issues if possible thought). He is going to make the travel arrangements. He'd like us to make hotel reservations for him based on our superior knowledge of the local hostelry. I will get Mary to work on that. He's also going to put the C64 communications code on the system tonight for us to download, with documentation sent by Federal Express tomorrow. I'll set Randy to snarfing that stuff and starting to work with it.
May 1986
May 14th
Taken from demo.aric.t.
From aric Wed May 14 10:03:13 1986 Subject: CES presentation Randy and I talked yesterday about ideas for the CES presentation. Following are some of the ideas that came out of that discussion... Purpose of demonstration: Show off avatars (variety, capabilities) Show off objects (variety, portability, containership...) Show off Regions (variety) Show off Telecommunications (multiple players, shared host) Show off potential for game play Possible demonstration: Begin with avatar at home... Scene: Inside of avatar home. Surroundings include; fishtank, answering machine, avatar, chair, window. Answering machine is blinking indicating that it has a message. Action: Avatar can move things around the house and then later moves to answering machine and gets message that FRIENDX is coming over. Moments later, doorbell rings and FRIENDX arrives. Conversation follows regarding visit to...fountain, park, atm, arcade. Avatars decide to travel to arcade. Avatars leave house via front door. Scene: Front of house. Surroundings include home, Sun, trees, mailbox. Flag is up on mailbox. Action: Avatar opens mailbox and retrieves letter. Avatar can read contents if desired. Flag lowers on mailbox. Avatar realizes that he has no cash, and requests that they stop at atm on the way to the arcade. Scene: Next region over. Contains convenient teleport booth, fire hydrant, trees. Action: Avatars walk to teleport booth and ZAP tm. to side of bank. (we could set destination choice with function keys to get us to any region desired!) Scene: Outside of Bank. Brick wall in back and ATM attached to wall. Action Avatar performs correct mumbo jumbo and Tokens arrive. Avatars are now ready to go to the arcade. Scene: Park. Lots of trees and bushes Action: Walk through Scene: Arcade. Contains targets and guns Action: Shoot targets together, for points, sound effects. Scene: Outside of Cave. Dark entrance with stonework around edge. Action: Decision as to whether to travel inside. Scene: Inside of Cave. Dark background with Rocks on floor and stalagtites hanging from roof. A locked treasure chest lies on the floor here. Action: Use target gun to shoot Rocks, Stalagtite, Treasure chest. When the chest is opened (there should also be a key around somewhere) a gem will be found inside. Avatars should decide who gets the gem. This is a preliminary layout for a possible demonstration, but many new objects need to be added in order to give us a larger range of possible actions. I think that using a scripting system in important in order to view all of the possible variations that we can present. --aric
July 1986
July 28th
Taken from nameflame.
From farmer Mon Jul 28 08:08:15 1986 Subject: Names On Habitat namespace: A Real Problem.... What if I want to play a female Habitat character & My login is distinctly male (The ID function will tell others this). Before Qlink says 'But you can use on of your OTHER Qlink IDs', My wife and two kids use this disk also (have qlink IDs)... You see? Qlink IDspace is almost all used up! I think this could have a NEGATIVE IMPACT ON REVENUES! Hey, If I can't play the character I want on Habitat, why play? Also, have you ever played a FRP? Naming is an IMPORTANT thing.... I would NOT want my wisard named 'BOB76'... This is NOT just a philisophical issue with me, it IS gameplay. Expample: in my adventure, If I choose to dress up like a character/monster... I don't want the adventurers to be able to identify me as 'FARMER1'. 'Hey, MARY56, The dragon's real name is FARMER1.Send him some Mail!' Example2: MARY44 wants to play a male BOB56 enters: 'Hi, who are you?' MARY44: 'Ramses II!' BOB56 : 'Lets go chase some chics!' MARY44: 'sure!' (heh heh, sounds like fun, right??' later... SUSYQ9: Id's MARY44 (who really cares why?) MARY44: "whyed you do that?" SUSYq9: 'BOB56, your friend is really a girl!' BOB56 feels betrayed SUSYq9 has upset MARY44 MARY44 IS DISCOURAGED all involved probably feel that much less like playing Habitat. Just because of namespace, the game is HAMPERED... YOU CAN'T DO WHAT YOU WANT! is the message! Why does QLINK want to hamper our game?? Why remove a gameplay element? Techical concerns? Thats what Steve Case says..we can debunk this. Record-Keeping? bunk. EVEN IF this WAS a problem, there IS a solution. (As far as I know, they've never even thought this out) Politics? Uncomfort? I feel these are the real seasons... They have a naming convention that is inferior to ours and they want to force it on OUR universe.... Lo, and here is my mighty knight BOB77! Give me a break. We all lose. Game Over. Why has QLINK been so opposed to doing things right in the 1st place? (I can go down a list of several examples of requests we have made for stuff that have gone NOWHERE....)
Taken from barwood.t.
From sda Mon Jul 28 09:17:40 1986 Subject: hal's comments, a reminder Hal suggested the following: 1. "Hide a thing".... have someone find it and re-hide it somewhere in the Universe. Have them leave a clue. Finding it is important, and records are kept, announcements made, etc. This is a trans-realm game. 2. Automatons. Like Big Game Hunting, only hunting snipes or something. They try to keep away from avatars. Catching one is a big deal, as they are somewhat mysterious. Loch Ness Monster and Abominable Snowman. Maybe they leave tracks or something. 3. Special gates that only allow certain kinds of people in... eg. ones with fly heads or something. Maybe not made absolutely clear what the criteria are before you get there, to keep the mystery up. 4. Parts/Puzzle. Like Legos. Gather the parts to build a thing (like an H-Bomb). Find out if people build the bomb and blow up the world, or destroy the parts so no one else can.... A little morality play.
August 1986
August 6th
Taken from aricpop.t
From aric Wed Aug 6 17:28:16 1986 Subject: stuff Changes and/or additions to Populopolis Overall Roadblocks... Stores need back doors. Maybe we should expand downtown and add a back alley and other stores. Overall I am pleased with the street layout Addition of missing teleports! We need to create the original Daily Rant issue We may want to create one magazine...These should be specific to one's interests...running, news, software, etc. Bob's Bank Add another ATM for 2 users? News Stand Region shows newspaper and Magazines... We need Text for them! There are only 3 mags and 1 paper there... once gone, they're gone Do we want the paper dispenser or should the get create a new paper? What about which issue of paper do you have? Should papers disappear after 2-3 weeks? Hall of Records No interior for this region and I am not sure what to put in there if we had one. Furniture store Should be locked until users can choose interiors! Place CLOSED sign in front! Cloths store 2 machines should be stocked with pants, shirts, and jackets Kelly's bar Should have a larger interior. 2-3 regions at least! May need to protect items inside from users. General store Need to stock 3 machines inside. We need to decide what items should be inside... Suggestions are: Bag, ball, bottle, flashlight, frisbee, gun?, cloths, various knick knacks, paper, knives. Meeting Hall Seems fine to me! Does Choke machine work? Pawn Shop Nothing to do here at this time... Should the door be locked? Do we need to protect the items inside? New You: Add sex_change device to New-you Stock Heads into machines test Vendo's as background objects! Other Maybe add one special head only found at a culdesac? Feedback requested...
Taken from dnalsi.t
From farmer Wed Aug 6 18:49:03 1986 Subject: My adventure notes. A first Habitat Adventure: By F. Randall Farmer Quest for the Amulet of Salesh: Mixed in with other articles in the 'Weekly Rant': "DON'T JUST READ THE NEWS, BE THE NEWS!" Note: there sould be an article on good 'manners' including 'Identifying' other Avatars. |------------------------------| | We pay Top Token! | | Write an article for the | | WEELKY RANT! | | | | all submissions should be 1 | | page or less. | | Mail all articles to: | | Editor, Weekly Rant | | | | We reserve the right to print| |whatever we want. All | |submissions become property of| |WRI. | |------------------------------| |------------------------------| | Want new customers? | | Want to announce something? | | Try advertising in the | | WEELKY RANT! | | Rates: | | 1t per line per issue | | 50t to have or graphics dept | | layout an add for you | | | | Mail ads to: | | Ads, Weekly Rant | | charges will be deducted from| | your trust fund account. | |------------------------------| |------------------------------| | for all your questing needs: | | | | Randy's Adventure Emporium | | 1234 Glory Way | | | | "We ain't got it, | | you can't use it!" | |------------------------------| |------------------------------| |A public service announcement:| | | |Visit the Populopolis Library | | 5555 City Plaza | | | |------------------------------| |------------------------------| | Lose your keys? | | Want security? | | Feel overburdened? | | Come to Lefty's Locksmithery | | 1919 Shady Lane | |------------------------------| Article: AMULET OF SALESH STILL MISSING! There has been a major development in the famous Great Amulet Caper today: the thieves were found guilty of grand theft magic, and sentenced to 5 years in The Void. As you will remember, the Great Not-So-Wise man, Daden Salesh, had his Great Amulet of Wonderous Worth stolen last week. Salesh, being a powerful but clumsy wizard tried to activate a homing-return spell to attempt to retrieve his valuable trinket. The result was the accidental porting of the thieves to his home, somewhere in the Back-Forty. The Amulet is still missing, and all attempts by the law to extract information from the evil doers were in vain. It seems that the Amulet will remain forever lost. ----------------------------------------------------- At the not-so-wise man's house, somewhere in the back-40: A Sign: "Not in right now. Buy Notes & Map." A vending machine containing: A Map (see attached) price: 10t A piece of paper price: 1t Optional: Daden Salesh himself (whenever I'm logged in) Text of the note: I am the POWERFUL WIZARD 'SALESH'! (really I am!) I'll start with the good stuff: My estate will pay the sum of NNNNN tokens to each member of the first team to find my amulet and return it to me. In my interrigations of the thief-scum that I ported back here with my WONDEROUS powers, I extracted several pieces of information you may find helpful: 1) They had a map of D'nalsi Island with them. (I have taken the liberty of making copies of the map for you, availible for a small fee...) 2) As I snatched the map away, the uglier of the two of them said "You'll never find it!HA HA HA!" and flashed a sign of some sort: He formed a triangle with the thumbs and index fingers of each hand, palms forward. The only thing I can think of to get you on your way is: there is no form of water transportation in the world, so they must have ported there. Equip well & Good Luck Daden Salesh, Big Bucks Wizard for hire -------------------------------------------------------- Library: Sign: 'QUIET' Sign: 'Please do NOT remove books from the library!' Sign: 'Penalty: 100t' Library Books: History of Avatars History of History History of Teleport History of Organized Crime History of The Oracle Head Fever Avatar Life Atlas of the World Avatars I Have Known Tuff Turf Text of appropriate books: History of Teleport: Page 1 The teleport was invented by the great tinkerer avatar Foontrafian Subtrax. It took many years to perfect the technique, and many a test animal was lost to the void. It is still rumored to this day that, when the conditions are JUST RIGHT when teleporting, an avatar may end up with animal parts in place of his normal limbs and/or head. Rest assured that this is ONLY a rumor. Reguardless of the rumored risks, the teleport has become the single most valued addition to the universe, opening whole vista's of places to explore. Socially the 'Port', as it is called by most everyone, was to restructure the world forever. THANK YOU Foontrafian! Page 2 How a Port address is chosen: Most often, all teleport booths are registered in the Teleport-Book, published in every major city. There are some standards loosly adheared to when generating a port address: Where Style ------------ --------------- Streets Cityname Streetname Intersection Cityname Streetname & Streetname Downtown CItyname 'Downtown' or 'Plaza' Forests Nickname Islands Ilename Deserts Noone goes here anyway! (If Cityname is ommitted, the local city will be assumed.) People have been known to spend large amounts of money to buy personal booths and NOT register them. These booths useally have customized addresses that have personal meaning to the owner (so the address is not forgotten) History of Organized Crime: Organized crime has never really been a big problem. There is only one gang, and it is now almost extinct. If it has a name, none of it's members have ever spoken it publicly. The only way they can identify each other is by some secret signal. The gang (as we'll call them) was formed by a few avatars bent on self-destruction. All but a few members have been caught, (easily) tried, and sent into the void. The crimes are always mis-handled or bungled in some major way. One good example of thier foolhardiness is reflected in thier choice of security control: They used only 2 styles of locks & keys... Styles #xxxxx and #yyyyy. Needless to say these are the two most common locks in the known world, and you can see why they would have financial problems..... ------------------------------------------------------ At Randy's Adventure Emporium: Kaki walls (should look like either a cave or a battle zone) Vendos selling: Shovels Torches Knives ? (maybe these should be elsewhere or not included -means scratching monster-) Club ? (safe as knife) Bags (Backpack?) Books (survival tips booklet ALSO AVAIL AT LIBRARY) Bottles Escape Devices Matchbook Kaki Shirt & Pants Teddy Bear (good for laughs) Towel ------------------------------------------------------ At Lefty's Locksmithery: 'Looks': Grimy Dirty place. Vendos (each has a sign): "Replacement Keys #1000 & #2000" (two keys) "Replacement Keys #32767 & #255" (two keys) "Lock Boxes" (whatever box styles we have - NO CHEST) Inside each box is it's key. ------------------------------------------------------ On D'nalsi Island: The grass regions are oriented so the player can see the mountains rising in the distance as they get closer. The beach regions ALL face the water. There are no mountain regions, the are considered to be impassible. ALL regions contain rocks of variaing sizes lying about randomly. One of the cave entrances can be seen from grassland region 62. If possible this release, the caves should be dark, requiring a light source. SPECIAL REGIONS: The grassland region 2A contains a teleport, there should be no rock in the region & no mountains in the background. (If fact regions 19, 29-C, 39-C should have no mountains in the backdrop, but face that direction) The Beach region 92 contains a paritally completed Oracle (no cherebum) and a Sign 'ASK, and if I'm not busy..." The Beach region 4C is the 'W' region from it's a mad mad mad mad world. (Besides rocks, there is nothing here.) The caves are connected normally but the orentation changes almost every cave, so that withou a compass It could be hard to find your way around. At cave2_20, there are a few things of note: Besides some small rocks, there are 3 rocks (two large, one meduim) that form a triangle, with it's apex against the back wall. If the center of the trangle is a hole. It conatains a note: "WRONG". The back wall has an invisible cave (small sheet of glass?) just above the apex of the triangle. 'Go' here and you will enter the Secret Chamber! At cave2_30 is the secret chamber. No rocks. Just a hole, containing A chesk with lock #2000. In the Chest is the Amulet Of Salesh ------------------------------------------------------
September 1986
September 5th
Taken from statusReport.Sept5.
From chip Fri Sep 5 22:30:06 1986 Received: by moth; 05 SEP 86 22:30:06 PDT From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: sda Cc: chip Subject: Status report Status: R We had the interview with the Japanese TV folk. It went well, I think, though they were pretty loose in their shooting, so I'm not sure what the result will look like. (In general the Japanese media seems to prefer to produce a lot of material quickly and with less polish, whereas their American counterparts are more conscious of style and produce a smaller volume of more carefully crafted stuff -- I've noticed this about the Japanese magazines and the TV people seemed the same way. Comparative sociology at work!) Randy got a call from Janet early this morning, just before she disappeared off to wherever she's going. She said that she was finally able to login to our system (she'd been having problems yesterday) and transfer the stuff over that we wanted them to have (more regions for Populopolis and the data tables for the memory capacity handler). (I asked her to leave me a message on their system telling me where all the material relating to this component is so that I can work on it myself if necessary. She does not appear to have done this.) Randy mentioned to Janet that we had been thinking about a scheme to allow more objects to occupy memory at the same time by selectively not loading their imagery and behavior code under certain circumstances (this is the thing we mentioned to you Thursday) but that it would cost a week or two to implement. In spite of the inherent delay, she was intrigued. Randy suspects he knows what he's going to be doing next week. She called back a short while later, said she had talked to Marc, and that he was entertaining the notion of delaying beta to put this in, and that you and I should call him to discuss it! Unfortunately, you weren't here. I could have called him on my own, but I felt very strongly that I should consult with you before undertaking discussion of this with Quantum, since it seems rather drastic, possibly threatening getting the product out for Christmas -- frankly I felt that I would be a little over my head to call Marc on my own and start discussing this, since I am unclear, in particular, on the specifics of the timing constraints we are under. In other words, I didn't call Marc back and take it up with him by myself because you weren't here and I was afraid to make any kind of commitments one way or the other on my own initiative. This may have been a mistake, since it *is* Friday (thus the decision gets delayed over the weekend instead of just overnight), but I suspect not, since Randy won't really be able to begin work on the thing in earnest until Monday anyhow. Nevertheless, you and I need to talk about this ASAP, then contact Marc. I will be in the office Saturday afternoon for sure and either Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon also (probably both...).
From chip Fri Sep 5 23:04:13 1986 Received: by moth; 05 SEP 86 23:04:13 PDT From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: sda Cc: chip Subject: Status report addenda Status: R One thing I forgot to include in the previous message: I met this morning with Jamie Williams. I gave her the latest draft of the manual to look over, and told her the things that I thought needed adding that I'd like to have her work on. I also asked her to proof the thing for stylistic consistency, since I have rewritten large chunks of it in the time between when she last worked on it and now. I want to make sure that the clear and direct style which she adopted is also reflected in the parts I have added or substantially changed. I showed her the promo tape (do we have a name for that thing, by the way?) and gave her a live demo of the system. We then talked about the press conference and about the sort of demonstration/presentation I should be giving and how it should be structured to cover the items on the agenda that I am supposed to talk about (suitably modified by our own idea of appropriateness by adding some things to and removing one or two things from the list that Quantum sent us). We roughed out a basic demo structure which she is going to take as a starting point. I also gave her copies of the "Funativity" and "Machiavelli" documents to give her some general idea of the various kinds of activities we are thinking of having in Habitat, beyond the rather vague notion of "adventuring". She is going to work on these things and send (by messenger service) the manual revisions and a first draft demo/presentation on Monday or Tuesday. I'll give her feedback by phone (she has some job she has to be at those days) and she'll then work on whatever adjustments to the presentation we deem necessary. She will come back in person on Wednesday or Thursday to start finalizing the presentation. It all looks good to me. Jamie's a real pro. I had gotten the feeling from our earlier conversations that you had some things that *you* wanted her to work on for the press conference also, but I had no idea what, if anything, these might be, so we obviously didn't cover them. If I am mistaken, great. If not, you'd best contact her. By the way, did you notice that the proposed press conference agenda that Quantum sent us allocates 5 minutes for our 8 minute tape? Oh, also: I got a call today from Rob Fulop. He wants to come up and visit us Tuesday. He's interested in various things, including mutual support developing software for Quantum, development tools for 6502 machines, and of course various Habitat tie-in things (creative and/or technological). I think he will contact you directly to arrange something official.
September 10th
Taken from mailarchive.
From chip Wed Sep 10 15:04:50 1986 Received: by moth; 10 SEP 86 15:04:50 PDT From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: sda Cc: chip Subject: Re: status of planning Status: RO I spoke with Marc and Anne right after lunch. Got my questions answered ok and went over my current setup plan with them. We agree on most everything. Marc wants to stress to the demonstrators what they are allowed to do rather than what they are not allowed to do -- i.e., prescribe rather than proscribe. I will be changing the tone of the plan document a little bit to reflect this idea. Physical setup is as we expected, 8 stations grouped into 4 pairs. Anne says they can put the 2 pairs that are out on the dance floor back-to-back but that this will be problem for the other two stations. I suggested that we should have a Stratus terminal or a voice line to Virginia in a back room somewhere. Anne said this was a problem because we only have 8 phone lines, which had to be set up special. Marc, however, saw the value in this suggestion and recommends that we keep one of demo stations near a curtain where we can pull it down and use its phone line to call Virginia if we have to. They are planning on having 4 people online from Virginia, not the 8 that I had guessed, though Marc said they could add more if we wanted them to. It's no big deal to me (my choice of 8 was arbitrary) so we are going to plan on the basis of 4. One of the 4 will be Ken Huntsman, who will be standing by in Virginia as the experienced hand in case of problems. Anne stressed that their years of experience giving demos has taught them to expect glitches and crashes due to telephone problems, so we should just be cool and not worry too much if something dies -- we should just be prepared to drop back and restart. They agreed that they are responsible for technical logistics but that we are responsible for the content of the demo.
September 11th
Taken from burmashave.
From nf Thu Sep 11 20:47:55 1986 Received: from shem by moth; 11 SEP 86 20:47:55 PDT From: nf (Noah Falstein - Boat specialist, Arks to Patrol Hydrofoils) To: chip Cc: farmer Received: by shem; 11 SEP 86 20:47:55 PDT Subject: Burma Shave Status: RO This is what I sent to Aric: Henry the Avatar / Six wives he weds / Divorcing them all / But keeping their heads / Habitat Heads in a suitcase / Heads on a chair / Still he persists / "I've got nothing to wear!" / Habitat She rests in the sun / She plays in the surf / But all things considered / There's no place like Turf / Habitat This way / That way / all around town / these teleport fees / are getting me down! / Habitat Repaint your torso / Take off your head / If this were Kansas / Then you would be dead! / Habitat He's got a vampire's head / He's got King Tut's / If this isn't Habitat / I must be nuts! / Habitat Head of a dragon / Head of a duck / If this isn't Habitat / I'm out of luck / Habitat There once was an avatar / Named Ferderous Snodd / His dog is named Fido / Now isn't that odd? / Habitat You talk in balloons / You use ESP / Isn't it great / Just how strange this can be! / Habitat Some guns are muderous / Some are quite tame / It helps to remember / It's only a game / Habitat Identification / Can be indiscreet / If the guy you identify / Stomps on your feet! / Habitat Although personal movements / Have quite a wide range / Have you ever noticed / You walk kind of strange? / Habitat Thousands of Avatars / Inhabit the realms / All talking at once? / The thought overwhelms! / Habitat Crowding a public place / Can be rather rude / If it happened to you / Then you'd really be / In trouble / Habitat
September 29th
Taken from mailarchive.
From chip Mon Sep 29 17:17:42 1986 Received: from moth by kessel; 29 SEP 86 17:17:42 PDT From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: sda Cc: aric, farmer Received: by moth; 29 SEP 86 17:17:45 PDT Subject: OK, here's the plan The Habitat gang all got together today and spent a few hours discussing world development and so on. Here's what we worked out: We are going on the expectation that I am going to continue to be preoccupied with design and concept work for the next phases of the project, if there are to be any, and that I will also be responsible for overseeing the Beta-test (the assumption being that the Beta test will result in sudden, massive feedback that will require some action on our part). This means that the work of world generation is going to fall primarily to Randy and Aric, though I will supervise. On the basis of these assumptions, came up with the following division of task responsibilities for the next couple of weeks: Randy -- Install materials for D'nalsi Island treasure hunt (books, clues, wizard's house furnishings, etc.). Implement "Quest for the Jewelled Horn of the Green Bleem" (an ongoing treasure hunt based on Hal Barwood's revolving-owner artifact idea). Set up a stock-market game. Set up a capture-the-flag game. Set up a road-rally game. Aric -- Develop King Game into a complete entity (possibly based on "Chicago Kingpin", at his option). Add new regions to Populopolis and polish what's already there. In particular, add back alley, library (library is needed for D'nalsi Island adventure, among other things), and theater. Finish the Road Through The Woods realm. Install Burma Shave signs. Set up an Assassin game. Create one new adventure/game of his own devising. Chip -- Provide host software support for above projects, as needed. Work on concept development and planning for extensions/follow-on projects/ support tools. Update and finish manual. Develop operations plans. Oversee Beta-test.
October 1986
October 6th
Taken from farmerAdvs.t.
From farmer Mon Oct 6 15:46:33 1986
Received: by moth; 06 OCT 86 15:46:33 PDT
From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.)
To: chip
Subject: Tablets & Rigion Rally
Status: RO
'The quest for the Great Horn of the Green Bleem' is now called:
'The quest for the Tome of Wealth and Fame'
The tome is the graphic style #7 of book.
100% of the special case code is on the host.
The Oracle will arbitrate prize awards.
It works like this:
If you are holding the tome and 'do' it, you will recieve
several pages of text (congratulations, instructions & a list of names.)
The beahviour code will check to see if your name is on the list,
if it IS NOT, it will add you name TO the list. One of the instructions
is to inform the Oracle that you found the tablet. The Oracle/super-user
must then make certain that the rules have been adhered to, then will
award the cash bonus (and mail WEEKLYRANT with username?).
>>>>> The Tome of Wealth and Fame <<<<<
IMPORTANT: Please read ALL of the
stones in this tablet.
CONGRATULATIONS! You have completed the
first step in the Quest for:
>>>>> The Tome of Wealth and Fame <<<<<
Upon successful completion of the
quest, you will receive $5000. Also,
for NO EXTRA CHARGE, you will have your
name engraved in these tablets for all
ETERNITY so treasure seekers will know
that YOU have joined the ranks of:
Master Adventurers.
To collect your prize you must:
1) READ ALL of this tablet
2) HIDE them in a place that will make
them hard to find.
3) SHOW them to NO ONE.
4) HIDE them NOT in a turf.
5) When they are hidden, seek an Oracle
and say "Willy Willy Nilly Billy".
The Oracle will decide how well you
obeyed the rules & how well you hid the
tome. To collect your prize you MUST
hide it well enough that no one ELSE
finds it before the Oracle can respond.
$$$ The list of MASTER ADVENTURERS: $$$
Need on host:
behaviour for class 97, magic type ?, WIN ROAD RALLY
also class 97, immobile magic item
also add 32bits of flags to avatar record.
Need on C64:
class 97.
Ideas for the Habitat Road Rally:
'night' sign
footprints
library book
sign
rocks forming arrow
arrow prompt on floor
'X' marks he spot
Riddle leading to burma shave sign
burma shave clue
special tport address
'I did it button'
------------------------------------
Part 1:
Oracle speaketh:
Attention!
Attention!
Ahem-----
Welcome to:
The First Habitat Region Rally!
First find the tracks of a silly YikYak.
It lives in the 40,
that we call 'The Back'.
It wears pointy shoes,
and walks very strange.
Not forward or sideways,
when it roams on it's range.
To find The Back-40,
(If you are new),
find Randy Rd cross.
Walk into the blue.
The first part of the clue
to the answer, you'll find,
If you read off the digits
and divide it by nine.
Good Luck
------------------------------------
part 2:
False clue At 36 Wrong Way (how appropriate):
A vending machine: for 1 token a piece
of paper (class_book)
Welcome to my humble home,
Want some clues? I'll give you some:
The street you are now give you a clue,
Where to go next,and what you should do.
You you feel glad?
Should you rejoice?
Does it help you to know?
That others made this choice?
*************************
Real clue At 47 Foon Ave:
A vedning machine:
Paper (book), for 1 token
How about a picnic at 'The Beach'?
It'll put those riches in your reach.
'The Beach' can be found This Way...
Look for the place where stars shine.
and go to a star, just yours, not mine.
Find the Hut of the Yabba-Dabba-Flit
Once for each rock in it's pit,
Count to the Left as you flee.
Write this down, its confusing you see.
Down then, and Right for each blade
Count them, don't rest in their shade.
Number the trees, both dead & alive.
The Sign in the sky is really no jive.
------------------------------------
PART 3:
At the desert heart: (RQCD)
A vendo:
1 token ; warning book
; clue book
Warning book:
Welcome to the Really Quite Confusing Desert.
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.
No known maps exist.
Avatars that have weak hearts or get
disoriented easily should not enter
without proper equipment.
STARE WARS: act IV page 99
LUNK: "In the name of all thats RIGHT,
the rebellion will win"
DIRTH: "I will put DOWN your puny
'rebellion' with the wave of my hand!"
(DIRTH gestures, and LUNK starts grasping
his throat with his RIGHT hand then falls
DOWN to the ground writhing in pain.)
LUNK, gestures with his LEFT hand and
sends a sofa flying into DIRTH, thus
releasing LUNK.
LUNK:"UP with the rebellion!" and
LUNK escapes by using his laser-
chainsaw to cut the power.
note to the scriptwriter: is this
the RIGHT way to get out of this
scene? Fondly: the producers.
---------------------------------------
Part 4:
at region 5020:
a large sign:
D i g i t s A r e
a T e l e p o r t
N u m b e r
A lamp (switched on, if switched off:
anothe sign superimposed on the other:
.T.W.O...M.O.R.E.:.
.........2.3
TOTAL.#...9.....digits
------------------------------------------
part 5:
False Endgame region : Port # 4765499
Teleport:
Sign (Shingle):
"Abandon Hope.
^
<?>
v"
this region points to itself in *ALL*
directions.
***************************************
Real Endgame region : Port # 476549923
Teleport,
Button,
Sign on wall:
"Push button!
v
v
v
v"
Button sends message to host, text
balloon comes back:
"Congratulations, you have won
$xxxxx tokens!"
"Contest limited to one member per disk."
I think the token amount should be
$1000 and be decreased by $100
tokens/finder (minimum $100).
if you 'do' it again:
"Sorry, you can only win once."
November 1986
November 3rd
Taken from downtown.t.
From farmer Mon Nov 3 16:37:49 1986
Received: by moth; 03 NOV 86 16:37:49 PST
From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.)
To: chip
Status: R
Word-map of new dowtown:
a b c e f g
| | | | | |
h - MAIN--------T--------MAIN - i
4 R A S
j -2 k -O D- l K- m
N D M I
n -D o -E I- p D- q
S O N R
r -T s -D A- t O- u
R V W
v - BROADWAY----T----BROADWAY - w
| | | | | |
x y z aa bb cc
a For Rent h Port+add o Knick Knacks v Stock Mkt/Newstand
b Fine Furnit i Newstand p Hall of Recs w port+add
c Bobs UBank j Randys Empor q Kellys Bar x Quizshows Inc.
k New You r "Costellos" y "Hamlets Place"
e General Store l Meeting Hall s Oil Brbs Pnts z Theatre/Auditorim
f For Rent m Pawn Shop t City Hall aa The Arcade
g MachutasMagic n Tivollis bar u Leftys Locks bb Broadway Bank
cc Library
November 5th
Taken from qmeeting.t.
From sda Wed Nov 5 08:23:16 1986 Received: from kessel by moth; 05 NOV 86 08:23:16 PST From: sda (Steve Arnold - Games Division) To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy Received: by kessel; 05 NOV 86 08:23:11 PST Subject: Habitat meetings at Quantum, 11/3 Status: R Here is a summary of our conversations: 1. In addition to the elevator, we need to specify other objects that will be part of the field update test. What else will be installed and/or deleted? 2. Quantum does not want to buy a C compiler. Marc does not think it is necessary. He sees our trying to require such a thing as engineering interference. 3. We need to define the Basic Turf Set to facilitate the clearing of inactive users. What is in the default Turf Environment? 4. We agreed to turn all logged out users to ghosts for the time being, rather than leave them turned to stone. We need to revise the manual accordingly. This is subject to change (easily) during beta test. 5. Several issues about the Oracle and/or Mail: a. How do answers get to users? In the Mail system? Do you have to go home to your Turf to get your response? b. Can you use ESP from the Oracle? c. Can we make a special login-in disk that allows a player to login as a particular incarnation of the Oracle, for real-time Oracle communications? d. Can we make a mailbox in someone's pocket? (Quantum believes that Turfs are not going to be used much at all.... that since there is virtually nothing you can do there, once people leave they will rarely come back, except maybe to store things. Therefore, it is cumbersome and counter to the design intent to make them go back just to get the mail....). Can we make a "book of letters" in someone's pocket, where mail gets delivered to? 6. The Avatar Directory, if it exists, should probably not be an object you carry, but rather something in a particular location. Perhaps they exist at TelePort booths? In any case, this is a low priority at this point, and we should not worry about it overmuch. We will defer a decision until later. Maybe a "Who's Who" of Avatars in the Hall of Records? 7. Tom Canaday is going to the Habitat SysOp. 8. QL has finished the Oracle software, but is unsure about the powers of the Oracle. There is currently no way for an Oracle to affect an avatar (like give him/her a Goathead.... They need specification on this. 9. Janet says she has said to us that GHU is clearly not acceptable as it currently is proposed, because the powers are too pervasive. We need to define and specify! What can the Oracle do? (The fact that she had said that was news to me. Does anyone know about this?) 10. Regarding Avatar death: What happens when people die? Since we don't have exit interviews at the moment, do they just go back to PC? Are they sent to their Turf? This is an important design decision. Also, apparently due to the existence of ghosting, it is likely no one will ever die? You can always "go ghost" when you are in a threatening situation? QL reports that there are virtually no guns in the world now anyway. Is this being fixed? We need to specify death and exit interviews. 11. There seems to be a problem with the revised downtown. First, apparently they did not know we were undertaking such a massive revision. Did we tell them? Also, Janet reports some difficulty in uploading part of a region, or a region revision where you are supposed to keep some stuff, and replace some other stuff. 12. The question was raised as to whether we had over-designed the existing Turfs. (Apparently there are some that don't work right because there is too much stuff, or foregrounds and backgrounds are set up right.... Do we know about this?) Do we need to replace all the existing Turfs with a simpler model? 13. The RANT: Marc wonders if we and they have a completely different idea of what it is. Marc says it can't be a long, linear, text thing in Habitat. You can have such a thing in the Just For Fun listing of the Rant, but due to text transmission problems and heirarchical menu problems, the Rant in the world will be nothing more than a page of one-liners. Does this match what we are thinking? (Apparently not....) Can we make the Rant a container, and use the contents as objects? Or can we change the user interface on the book object to allow for menu-level inquiry, so that people can select from a table of contents? If the Rant is expected to be dynamic, then it should be delivered to pockets as an object. If it is dynamic, they people only buy it once. If it is not, then we have a huge garbage collection problem for all the old Rants.... 14. We have discussed a "world status" screen that greets everyone each time they log in.... telling them what's new in the world, and other essential information. I thought we had agreed to do this. Janet had apparently not heard of such a thing. We need to clear this up. 15. There are too few ATM's, too few pieces of paper, and too few mailboxes, according to QL reports. Mail seems to be a big problem for them. The don't think it is useful. (This is partly a design issue--they see the essential design elements of Habitat to be communication between people. They think we are designing unneccessary limits on communication into the world, and that may cause us big problems. Use of mail and paper are examples. They think that finding and sending mail are sufficiently cumbersome as to be almost useless in game play.) 16. The Head shop is still blocked up. No one knows how bad it will be when we actually get it running. Do we know why it is not working now? 17. Regarding Coming Attractions: They need to know what is required for each of the items on the Coming Attractions document. Every time we say "special programming required," they need to know who is going to do it, and by when.... They question whether some of that stuff is needed for beta, because some of it is so new to them.... 18. Regarding Adventure Master powers. We need some special doors that only Adventure Masters can enter, to allow us to limit access to certain areas. 19. There is need to clarify how objects are cloned or copied, both for vendos and for adventures that are object-based. For example, if someone finds a clue to an adventure, does it get replaced for someone else, or is it only one person's game? 20. Home decoration, jukeboxes, and keys were elements that there seemed to be confusion about. We should make sure the organizations have the same understanding. 21. The intelligent counter in the Pawnshop apparently does not work. When will it? 22. Theatres vs. Auditorium. They seemed surprised by all of our theatre-based additions. Marc pointed out that we can't have any interactions with the audience using the current ghost system, so we can do auditorium functions. I told them I thought that what you were thinking was more theatre-like. People could watch, but were not expected to actively participate. Queueing people to appear in person on a game show or talk show needs to be addressed however. 23. Where does the Arcade fit? This was another "surprise" to them. When will it work? What will it do? What about the Stock Exchange? When will it work? What kinds of books are in the Library? Who is doing the book management program (or whatever)? 24. They need specifics on the functioning of City Hall. Who is doing it, by when? Is it a beta function? Who runs scheduling to rent a storefront? 25. Marc reports apparently major crashes of the C-64, with screen garbage, during the last weekend test. This he says indicates problem with C-64, not with host. (This is probably old news, but I am reporting because we discussed it.) Janet says we don't have enough (any?) error messages, that they have complained about this before, and we have said we can't do it. Therefore, the user does not know what is going on when it crashes. Marc said he had to re-boot four times in thirty minutes. 26. Marc says we should have a rental dataline monitor to see if we are sending garbage out. I have never heard of such a thing. Do we need it? 27. Janet says she thinks the easiest way to get capacity handling fixed is for Chip to write it, rather than for Chip to try to explain it to her. She is at this point suspicious of how much time it will take to explain and re-explain and de-bug it if she does it. Has this been discussed? Summary: They think the project is sufficiently far from release-state that February is the earliest we could be done, and that is if everything goes right (which it never has to this point). They are concerned that there are big areas of unknowns, that we won't discover until we get the thing working, and that some big re-design may be possible. For instance, they think that if we can't get the region transition thing speeded up, we will have a significant game play problem. The communication channel from now on is going to be with Cathy Anderson on their side, and Nancy on our side. That of course does not substitute for direct technical discussions between any of us and Janet, Marc, or whomever regarding development and debugging. But the design discussions need to be focused on Cathy. Communication is essential. There are too many ambiguities to ensure that we are using our time efficiently at this point. Please review this and then let's discuss anything that is not clear and/or resolved.
November 7th
Taken from nancymemo.
Date: November 7, 1986
To: Cathy Anderson
>From: Nancy Mohler
Subject: HABITAT STATUS
Here is today's updated Habitat Task List, including time to complete tasks,
target completions, categorization of beta prerequisites, and the requested
change to the Effects column. Implementation time for remaining tasks will
be determined with Janet's input. Beta software submission is expected 11/24.
The public release schedule will be determined next week.
Recapping the status conference call today:
1. Resolved to limit the Rant to a condensed version in a Habitat book and
put bulk of text in tree-structure outside.
2. Protocol bug estimated to be 95% fixed, with update made available this
afternoon.
3. Delivery date for the user version (beta testers) map TBD by LFL ASAP.
4. Open issue for discussion is how the home vendo will be used.
5. Tabled until Monday how to make mail more accessible. LFL to prepare
alternative proposal.
6. Agreed on 100 as the number of tokens in pocket of Avatars being hatched,
pending completion of economic plan.
The 11/10 Habitat status conference call will be at 4:00 QL-time, 1:00 Marin.
Suggested agenda: protocol bug status, mail resolution, Task List.
cc: Steve Arnold
Steve Case
Randy Farmer
Janet Hunter
Chip Morningstar
Marc Seriff
Aric Wilmunder
November 11th
Taken from janetEst.
From quantum Tue Nov 11 09:16:37 1986
Received: from shem by moth; 11 NOV 86 09:16:37 PST
From: quantum (Janet Hunter, Quantum Computer Services)
To: chip
Received: by shem; 11 NOV 86 09:16:36 PST
Subject: Time estimates
Status: RO
Chip,
Here are my time estimates for the
Beta Test Prequisite Tasks:
6 Capacity Monitor - 2 days
target 11/14
7 Rebuild Regionproc - done 11/11
15 Oracle response - 1 day
target 11/17
16 Bank acct utility - 1 day
target 11/16
18 Text input utility - 1 day
target 11/19
67 Avatar to ghost - done
68 Online-only ghosts - done
69 Exclude non-beta testers - done
40 Msg of the day - 1 day
target 11/20 (?)
72 create avatar w/ token - .5 day
target 11/14
OOPS: Target date for #16 should be
11/18, not 11/16.
Note: Question mark on target date for
#40 is because it is assigned to
both you and me.
Taken from palindromes.t.
From nf Tue Nov 11 15:11:29 1986 Subject: Burma Shave Palindromes Shave Burma Here's a couple. It seemed impossible until I realized what was needed was something that was commutative like 2 + 2 = 4 or 4 = 2 + 2. Leaving your turf in your natural colors Is almost as embarrassing as Wandering around without your head Habitat A refuge for those who can't handle Reality This sign is a lie The last sign you saw is true The next sign you will see is a lie The last sign you saw is a lie This sign is true (sort of a reality defined by your direction of travel)
February 1987
February 19th
Taken from disk.t.
From farmer Thu Feb 19 14:21:08 1987
Received: by moth; 19 FEB 87 14:21:08 PST
From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.)
To: chip
Status: R
Habitat Generic Object Disk Map:
(TRACK)
1 2 3
12345678901234567890123456789012345
0 cccaaasssiiiiiiii*iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
S 1 cccaaasssiiiiiiii*iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
E 2 cccaaasssiiiiiiii*iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
C 3 cccaaasssiiiiiiii*iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
T 4 cccaaasssiiiiiiii*iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
O 5 cccaaasssiiiiiiii*iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
R 6 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
7 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
8 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
9 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
10 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
11 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
12 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
13 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
14 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
15 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhhhhhhh
16 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiiihhhhhh
17 cccaaasssiiiiiiii?iiiiii
18 cccaaasssiiiiiiii
19 cccaaasssiiiiiiii
max size current size
c=class file 15360 3252 (21%)
a=action file 15360 11876 (77%)
s=sound file 15360 3302 (21%)
i=images file 68608 42234 (61%)
h=head file 46592 36132 (77%)
*=required directory files
?=free? (current dos will not read)
April 1987
April 19th
Taken from newprocedure.t.
From nancy Sun Apr 19 19:02:01 1987 Subject: Friday meeting outcome file notes 4/17/87 Habitat team meeting w/sda In order to achieve release into beta test and to revise project completion plan with better time estimates-- 1. confirmed commitment to daily playtesting w/QL at 5:30 (our time)--Aric, Chip & Randy will let me know of any conflict not allowing them to be on. 2. revised playtest debriefing procedure: a hard copy bug reporting form will be created by Chip for distribution to all playtesters. completed forms will be turned in to Randy asap (next morning fax from Janet) for him to maintain tracking system; Chip will review with him Randy's assignment of disposition daily. so, rather than the on-line PC debriefings immediately following a playtest & conference calls after receipt of the tapes to review the list, Randy will maintain a bug tracking system to, 1) improve efficient use of everyone's time, 2) improve response to reported bugs, and 3) improve communication & confidence between us & QL. I'll discuss this procedure revision w/Janet & Rob during the scheduled 10:00 conference call Monday morning. Assuming their agreement, Cathy & I will review the bug tracking reports via near-daily conference calls & flag ones needing discussion among the team. 3. established daily status reports: Aric & Randy will mail to Chip (copying each other & sda & me) at the end of each day a brief list of their accomplishments for the day, notes explaining significant delays in any tasks, and a list of tasks expected to be undertaken the next day, including time estimated to complete. Chip, including his own tasks, will issue a Habitat daily status summary of accomplishments relative to start of alpha, start of beta, & estimated time to release. 4. reduced frequency of entire team QL conference calls: to be scheduled by Cathy & me as needed, usually at 1:00 our time. We'll discuss this process with her on Thursday when she's here. 5. established weekly Habitat team meetings on Friday afternoons, to review accomplishments of the week & goals for the next.
April 20th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Mon Apr 20 14:54:08 1987 Subject: Testing I will be available for testing per the following schedule: Monday & Tuesday : till 7pm either night Wednesday: till 7ish (here at lfl) Thrusday & Friday : till 7pm either night Saturday: Anytime Sunday: N/A Total : 4 out of 7 days Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday are as required.
From farmer Mon Apr 20 15:12:43 1987 Subject: 1st status report Did today: Tried to release 4.8..a poor descision fixed problems with 4.8. spent 1/2 hr trying to get the keyboard routine to echo on interrupt (failed) Made disks to test 4.8 Merged some changes with aric. Found out why gosts could not pass thru doors (Chip needs to fix) On the slate tomarrow: Start new bug traking system. REALLY release 4.8. one more hour tring to get the keys to echo right-away. (not mandatory) Internal test fix bugs found last night (tonight)
April 21st
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Tue Apr 21 15:13:24 1987 Subject: Status Report Done today: Started new Bug tracking system Made 4.8 available for upload (Janet was unable to complete beacuse she got hung-up several times) Merged Charlies new kb routine, it works VERY nicely. Coded multi-object fiddle on C64 Coded region_play_sfx on C64 so host can issue sfx on C64 Testing tonight (Not sure how many qlinkers will be on since 4.8 is not out) did NOT happen: keys echo right away (spent the time putting Charlies routines in instead) Tomarrow: Test Multi Object Fiddle & region_play_sfx with host. What if an avatar dies while waiting for reply? Book interface fix. Review new video tape and generate bug reports.
April 23rd
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Thu Apr 23 00:52:13 1987 Received: by moth; 23 APR 87 00:52:13 PST From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.) To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda Subject: Habistatus Status: R Done Wed: new keyboard routine, settling in adjustments. Book interface fix (goes to T) Fortune machine now has 89 messages (goes to T) Staff meeting Helped Chip clean up buglist Tested for 2+ hours. NOT done: Test Multi Object Fiddle & region_play_sfx with host. What if an avatar dies while waiting for reply? Review new video tape and generate bug reports. (tape came late) For Thursday: Test Multi Object Fiddle & region_play_sfx with host. What if an avatar dies while waiting for reply? Review new video tape and generate bug reports. (tape came late) Try to get keys to echo right away.
April 27th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Mon Apr 27 08:28:30 1987 Received: by moth; 27 APR 87 08:28:30 PDT From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.) To: aric, chip, nancy, sda Subject: status Status: R I am VERY sorry that I did not send status on Thursday And Friday. I will try to make this a regular habit-at. Done region_play_sfx working (#x42 done & installed) Book interface final adjustments Attended Habitat team meeting Generated first pass at Populopolis Downtown map. Discovered that generic_switch was TOTALLY screwed,trashing memory Reviewed new video tape and generated bug reports. Started the procedure for processing ARFs. Next: Analyze 4.9 results (ARFs) and report disposition of version 4.9 1A r j c #x37 People having problems with login 2A r #107 Still able to steal paper from an avatar (HOST) Make switches wait for reply. 2B r #x46 what if an avatar dies while waiting for a reply? 3B r #x18 make clone recurse ?B j r #x38 Check mailer with full sheet 2B r #x46 what if an avatar dies while waiting for a reply? 2B r #23 Bahia put head on 'BAR'/backgammon, did not go where specified. 2B r #110 Shift-Restore not working reliably, implement alternate Re Item #113: Janet sent me a log where we THINK tha the C64 sould have recovered from a bad packet xmission a bit FASTER than it actualy did. This is not a fatal error, but a desireable performance improvement. Re Item #112: I am only certain that the fix to #112 will mark #29 off of the list.. it MAY be that it takes care of #14 and/or #111. Still uncertain there.
April 28th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Tue Apr 28 06:20:06 1987
Received: by moth; 28 APR 87 06:20:06 PDT
From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.)
To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda
Subject: stat
Status: R
Done:
Analyze 4.9 results (ARFs) and report disposition of version 4.9
Make switches wait for reply.
found & fixed grandson of grandfather of all bugs.
2A r #107 Still able to steal paper from an avatar (HOST)
?B j r #x38 Check mailer with full sheet (OK)
2B r #110 Shift-Restore not working reliably, implement alternate
alternate Shift-Runstop (BOTH are operational)
Did NOT happen:
2B r #x46 what if an avatar dies while waiting for a reply?
3B r #x18 make clone recurse
2B r #23 Bahia put head on 'BAR'/backgammon, did not go where specified.
(Can not duplicate will review tape again)
Next:
I will spend all of today trying to:
1) Figure out WHAT happend at last nights playtest
2) Fix it, and have 5.0 ready for Tomarrow.
From farmer Tue Apr 28 09:10:07 1987 Received: by moth; 28 APR 87 09:10:07 PDT From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.) To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda Subject: midday status Status: R Mid-Day status (well, MY midday!) ARFS update: -- #128 Nancy got confused after reading mail, *you have mail* didnt go away 3- I r #129 book interface:BACK beep on page 0, Limit cursor to bottom line? 1A T j #130 Cathy melted down when someone entered backgammon (me) [j fixed 1] 3B r c #131 Using Choke and Fortune machines: async chore. 1A T r #133 Users able to put items in closed containers! [fixed] 2A T j #134 Janet will presently truncate excessive text messages [1] 2B c #135 Vendo help not working right (check out machutas, left vendo) 2B r c #136 Spray Cans on heads: Janet used stripes, and for translucent! 1A T r #137 Aric put a box down, and the x coord was way wrong [Fixed 2] 2A c r #138 De-ghosting, ghosting is not handling flashlights correctly [1]: There were MANY meltdowns and mem-faults, all caused by a problem introduced by Janet, in her attempts to deal with message balloons that spanned more than one packet. For the short run, she says she will just truncate the messages, and return the system to it's originall state (working). [2]: Found this bug, it moves items #19, #23, #137 to Test status.
From farmer Tue Apr 28 11:44:01 1987 Received: by moth; 28 APR 87 11:44:01 PDT From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.) To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda Subject: ARFS Status: R Quantums ARFS arrvived: ARFS update QLINK arfs arrived: dd d #140 Dup #130 dd d #141 Dup #136 dd d #144 Dup #135 dd d #145 Dup #133 dd d #146 Dup #127 (In test) dd d #148 Dup #139 dd d #149 Dup #130 Cathy stuck in text interface during mem-fault dd d #150 Dup #138 dd d #151 Dup #130 Nothing that was not already on the list, or on the list as of this morning!
From farmer Tue Apr 28 14:10:48 1987 Received: by moth; 28 APR 87 14:10:48 PDT From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.) To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda Subject: More Status Status: R More stuff I did: Fixed minor problems with book & plaque on host. Took another swing at init problems (#x37) 3B T r c #121 Escape devices: 1) should start with 10 chgs PLUS the other stuff I sent out as my midday status. Tomarrow: Release version 5.0! Document 5.0 Internal test 5.0 Have 5.0 disposition meeting. Staff meeting. Process last bathch of 4.9 ARFS
April 29th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Wed Apr 29 11:10:08 1987
Received: by moth; 29 APR 87 11:10:08 PDT
From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.)
To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda
Subject: Habitat status
Status: R
new ARFS (all reportsed with version 4.9):
dd d #152 Dup #138
?? ? #153 insufficient information, Janet will get back to me
3B c #154 newstand sign help message wrong "How did you do that?"
2B r #155 took cathy 30 secs to appear in a region with 3 avatars.
dd d #156 Dup #138
dd d #157 Cathy had a failed init, Dup #37
#158 Cathy had lockup after 'f7' news sign. [awaiting tape]
#159 Repeat delete not working (user error?) [awaiting tape]
#160 Janet took a long time to appear Dup #155...Tune Throttle back up!
#161 It took a long time to load region [bandwidth reduction will reduce]
2A D a #162 Closed a door, part of it was flashing FIXED 5.0
2B r #163 Cathy and bahia had problems opening a box in Machutas[await tape]
#164 Translucent hair flashes after mail read (NOT a bug,TRANSLUCENT hair
is bug #136, and THAT is Fixed in 5.0)
1A r j #165 Flashing go trying to enter Bobs Bank (aric & janet)
dd d #166 Dup #162
2A r j #167 Janet had problems picking up martini glass after purchasing.
4R r #168 ']' and '[' are mapped to '(' and ')'.
2B r #169 Book interface not handling next page correctly [Fixed 5.0]
3B r a #170 Flowerbox outside tivolli's flickers.
Based on this data, I have high
confidence that the remaining Alpha tasks (except INIT failure)
are HOST problems. More data on this as it becomes available.
May 1987
May 18th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Mon May 18 16:17:53 1987 Received: by moth; 18 MAY 87 16:17:53 PDT From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.) To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda Subject: Stats Status: R Today: Attended efficient Habistatus Meeting ;) Installed Error/Warning handler (Warnings seem to work) replaced Disk/Rs232 gateway with better system. (works great) Merged Rons disk routines with ours (now can handle disk errors!) Removed RESTORE key processing. Moved code that was causeing interrupt tear (potential crash) Tomarrow: LRCs for Images, Actions, Sounds, and Classes Merge Latest Graphic stuff (both are diagnostics stuff) Maybe: install Sector LRC checking.
May 19th
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Tue May 19 08:43:06 1987 Received: by moth; 19 MAY 87 08:43:06 PDT From: farmer (Define the Universe. Give three examples.) To: aric, chip, nancy, quantum, sda Subject: trip notes Status: RO To Do List generated by My visit to Q May 11-13: Bugs: RESTORE key did not re-enable NMIS. RESTORE KEY PROCESSING REMOVED Minor problem in rs232.m (moveb #1,dd0d should be move #x10,dd0e).DONE. In cursor.m, the selfmod code could cause crash/interrupts tears.DONE. got_HB should clear NAKSNT. DONE. Make sure indirect jumps can not cross page boundries. generic_on/off on the host are not replying properly. ASYNC message for security device seems to cause problems Design: Improve disk error detection. DONE Implement Error Handler (see ERRORS). DONE Need to limit number of heads on host. (settled on 32, any style) Add LRC checking, and do it often! Keep a command history incl noid,class,function (I am not sure this is needed) ERRORs: (Things we need to trap) Mem Fault - heap full Mem Fault - corrupt header LRC failure indirect addr error graphic state of image is out of range user requested dump. Disk error warning
May 20th
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Wed May 20 09:28:23 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 20 MAY 87 09:28:23 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: chip, farmer Received: by kessel; 20 MAY 87 09:28:19 PDT Subject: VA visit #2 Status: RO just talked to Cathy. told her, as Chip had said yesterday afternoon, that we're shooting for getting a rev w/diagnostics available to them in the morning to allow testing before the 3-day weekend. for sure will have it there before the weekend. tentatively planning for you two to go there during the 1st week of June--maybe the 1st & 2nd to work w/Janet & Mike, & debrief the 3rd? do you think that's a reasonable schedule to be able to review info from the diagnostic tools? things to schedule around: --their move to the building next door = pack Thursday the 4th, start moving furniture on Friday, & move the machines between 1:00am Sunday & 6pm Monday. to be back up at 6:00 Monday night the 8th. --our all-employee meeting 6/8 at 4:00. --our Mad Scientist Lecture 6/12. --access to the stratus for Chip is easiest the week of 6/1. why don't the two of you stop by about 10 & let me know what you think. thanks.
From farmer Wed May 20 20:05:33 1987 Received: by moth; 20 MAY 87 20:05:33 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: aric, chip, nancy, sda Subject: version status Status: RO 5.2t (test) got tested tonight. It needs a little more work (hey! alot of new stuffs in dair!:) Release will be slated for Friday. ,
May 21st
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Thu May 21 08:35:04 1987 Received: by moth; 21 MAY 87 08:35:04 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: VA Trip II Status: RO Just got off the phone with Janet re: 'VA#2' 1) Agreed with me that June 1st is way too soon for ME to meet with them. (Said that the only reason she gave OK to June 1 trip is because Cathy said it was what WE wanted, also date was picked by Nancy.(realizing that Chip can only get Stratus access thru June 3) 2) Agreed that 'to review diagnostic information' is NOT a good agenda. (This info will be reviewed as it is reported, not saved up for later.) Here is the scoop as Janet and I now understand it: We agree, that if 1) a number of UNKNOWN (mystery) problems appear (i.e. still getting unexplained meltdowns) and/or 2) Mikey needs to consult with us re:hardware problems, that we will get together SOMEWHERE. This trip would take place AFTER these steps are taken: 1) a: Randy looks at ARFS/TAPES/DISKS, and cant figure out what is going on. (includes a discussion with Janet) b: Aric & Chip look at same problem, and do the same. c: There is a phone call (perhaps conference) to discuss the problem(s) 2) a: Mike and I can't work it out on the phone.
From nancy Thu May 21 10:29:40 1987
Received: from kessel by moth; 21 MAY 87 10:29:40 PDT
From: nancy (Nancy Mohler)
To: chip
Received: by kessel; 21 MAY 87 10:29:33 PDT
Subject: alpha
Status: RO
Cathy is checking w/Janet for current task summary to review our understanding
of bug fixes required for starting alpha. The last list I have is 5/7--please
send the most current so we're all looking at the same thing.
The time frame Cathy has in mind is:
week of 5/25 team testing of version 5.2 (w/diagnostics)--back to 6 people
(3 from there & 3 from here) on Tuesday & Wednesday nights.
week of 6/1 analyze diagnostic results & debugging
week of 6/8 team testing of new rev, possibly w/larger group
week of 6/15 start alpha if that rev did not fail consistently
Need the daily status report, please!
From nancy Thu May 21 10:31:34 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 21 MAY 87 10:31:34 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: chip Received: by kessel; 21 MAY 87 10:31:27 PDT Subject: 5/7 summary report Status: RO a couple of notes--#105 is 1B, and #113 is 1A, I think.
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Thu May 21 16:06:26 1987 Received: by moth; 21 MAY 87 16:06:26 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Version 5.2 Status: R Version 5.2 will be released in the morning for small-scale testing. The Un-Dump tool is operational, ready for disks to come (This is my status report) Tomarrow: fix lights fix generic on/off object investigate heads problem (when limit of 31 is reached)
May 22nd
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Fri May 22 08:26:52 1987 Received: by moth; 22 MAY 87 08:26:52 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer Cc: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda, quantum Subject: 5.2 Status: RO Habitat Version 5.2 This is an internal release copy of Habitat. With the addition of diagnostics, there have been significant changes and they require a new round of 'internal' testing (aw,rf,cm,jh,rm,ca) Changes include: We lost 256 byts of heap, please adjust on host. Fixed interrupt tear stuff HBs always NAKed Indirect JMP Never on page boundry RESTORE key processing removed (shift-restore now disabled) The graphic system has been made more robust (non-crashing) NOTE!!!: There is a new file on the Imagery Disk: on_disk_charset.dat lives at Track 0x12 Sector 0x8 (This is so that Imagery disks can have different character sets) Diagnostics: When an error occurrs (or the user presses CTRL-C=) a word balloon will appear with an error/warning message. If the error is Fatal, the user will be requested to insert a blank formatted disk. This 'DUMP TO DISK' may be aborted with shift-runstop. Fatal errors user_requested_dump = 0 ; no TRAPPED error occurred memory_full = 1 memory_fault = 2 memory_corrupt = 3 ; lrc got corrupted indirect_address_error = 4 bad_image_state = 5 no_room_for_head = 6 indirect_address_jmp = 7 indirect_address_rts = 8 Warnings simple_disk_error = 128 ; returned by rom disk_write_error = 129 ; write protect(?) sector_lrc_error = 130 ; transmission problem
From nancy Fri May 22 13:37:22 1987
Received: from kessel by moth; 22 MAY 87 13:37:22 PDT
From: nancy (Nancy Mohler)
To: aric, chip, farmer
Cc: sda
Received: by kessel; 22 MAY 87 13:37:17 PDT
Subject: alpha requirements
Status: RO
from conference call Chip & I had w/Cathy & Janet this morning, these are
pre-alpha bugs:
#x39
#113
#115 + note concentrate on testing, since it has turned out to be a little
trickier than we thought
#165
#167
#173
#176
#184
#tbd flashlight problem
#tbd ESP not sending when point @ teleport booth
we agree that 1 week of testing will be done on the beta lock down version
before starting beta. max one disk release per week during alpha.
mystery bugs #14, 111, and 124 are being addressed by diagnostics over the next
week or so.
chip will copy quantum on arf list updates frequently. the 5/7 report is
being updated today.
questions? thanks.
May 27th
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Wed May 27 19:18:09 1987 Received: by moth; 27 MAY 87 19:18:09 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda Subject: status. Status: RO Ok there were a few fatal errors last night: #1 (memory full) HOST problem, will work with Janet on this tomarrow #3 (LRC error) Nancy had pilot error. A patch has been inserted to prevent this. #4 (missing image) Still working on this. I inserted lrc checking at the sector level, and discovered that we are getting errors! Worked to determine cause for 5+hrs. effect: If a sector lrc error ocurrs (differing freq with different machines), we will retry to load that sector.
May 28th
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Thu May 28 08:39:47 1987
Received: by moth; 28 MAY 87 08:39:47 PDT
From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?)
To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda, quantum
Subject: latest ARFS
Status: RO
ARFs thru 5/28: (version 5.2/5.2a tested)
2B cr #190 ESP does not work when pointing to oracle (same for BBox)
1A jcr #191 FE#1 (mem full) avatars being allowed to dghost in full regions
-- D #192 Nancy have FE#3 (LRC). User error. Dumped to Object Disk.
(routines patched to prevent recurrence)
-- D #193 Super trap patterns corrupted. FIXED 5.2b.
#194 dup #191
2A r #195 Camera, Lights, Stereo, Sec Dev cause problems async.
1A T j #196 Could not return to PC after FE#1. FIXED
#197 dup #191
#198 Long time to initialize (Habitat logo screen)
2A T r #199 Bahia was unable to return to PC. (disk routines improved)
#200 dup #191
#201 dup #196
#202 dup #195
#203 dup #195
?? r #204 Janet had strange meltdown (awaiting tape)
#205 dup #196
#206 dup #191
#207 dup #193
#208 dup #193
June 1987
June 1st
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Mon Jun 1 15:48:10 1987 Received: by moth; 01 JUN 87 15:48:10 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Status Status: RO Today: Finished and tested Habitat 5.3. This Version has ALL pre-Alpha tasks complete on it, subject to testing. Tomarrow: Organize Phase 1 Playtest. Do 5.3 release notes Look at Beta Tasks and Prioritize.
June 2nd
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Tue Jun 2 08:17:42 1987 Received: by moth; 02 JUN 87 08:17:42 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda, quantum, wendy Subject: Habitat 5.3 Status: RO Habitat version 5.3: SMALL SCALE TEST TONIGHT. The good news: According to our list 5.3 has all Alpha items complete (some in test) Exaustive list of changes: Keyboard echos under interrupt (need through testing:messages/mail) Problems with generic_broadcast fixed (accounts for #173 Janets meldown) Stereo, Camera, Flashlights should all be working properly now The C64 will no longer issue 'unexpected' commands because of throttle delays. Disk routines now internally check LRC, and retry if bad. 'to:user' works when pointing to teleport if not adj or not active Corrupted wall/pillar patterns fixed. Host: actions_switch fixed. AskOracle changed to cope with 'to:'
June 4th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Thu Jun 4 10:16:16 1987 Received: by moth; 04 JUN 87 10:16:16 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Habistat Status: R Thru Today: #104 in test #122 in test Fixed problems with new KB stuff & text interface (test tonight) #172 in test #46 designing solution. Distribute 5.3a for test tonight. Talk to Mikey/Commedore re:hardware problems (we are on it's trail!) see nifty 3d demo Tomarrow: meet with Telenet re:X.25 Fix #46. (Note: Last duplicateable pre-Beta Bug) review test Arfs (if any). Fix important broken stuff on ARFs. report of Hardware progress.
June 5th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Fri Jun 5 14:17:51 1987 Received: by moth; 05 JUN 87 14:17:51 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda Subject: Re: Habistat Status: RO Today: met with telenet people fixed (first pass..in test) #46. posted test results & fixed only reported C64 bug. Not Done: hardware report: I still havn't heard from the guy at Commedore. (2 calls in...) Monday: fix whatever bugs found over the weekend. try Commedore again. Review tasklist and find whatever there is to do.
Taken from notes.t
From chip Fri Jun 5 14:54:36 1987 Received: by moth; 05 JUN 87 14:54:36 PDT From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda Subject: The scoop on Telenet Status: R As y'all know, we were visited this morning by Carol Brown and Tom Cramer from Telenet. They gave Randy and I the detailed scoop on their service and they left me with a bunch of literature. The bottom line is that it's pretty expensive, but there are a lot of options to explore. The price comes in several pieces: I. Accounting charge $140/month independent of the number of connections or volume of use. II. "DAF" (Dedicated Access Facility). This is the physical connection to their system. Included in this is a dedicated leased line to their San Francisco node, all the wiring into our plant, modems on both ends of the line, and dedicated access to a port on their node. The price varies somewhat with the bandwidth of the connection. For our purposes the best price/performance tradeoff seems to be at around 9600 baud. Cost for this is a one-time installation charge of $1200 plus $1524/month. III. Traffic charges These are billed in units that they call "segments". A segment is a chunk of up to 64 bytes of transmitted data. These cost $1.40 per thousand (i.e., $1.40 for each 64K bytes of data sent). There is a 50% discount for use during non-prime-time hours (ie., after 6pm). This cost is distance-independent -- i.e., it doesn't matter how far you are sending the data. IV. Dial-in charges If we choose to allow dial-in to our system through Telenet, there is a per-minute charge that varies according to the type of node that you are connected to. They classify their nodes 'A', 'B' or 'C' depending on the level of traffic. 'A' nodes are found in big cities like San Francisco or Washington, D.C.. 'B' nodes are places like Palo Alto or Buffalo. 'C' nodes are places like San Rafael or Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Charge varies from around $5.25/hour for an 'A' node to around $12.50/hour for a 'C' node. As with traffic charges, there is a 50% rakeoff for off-hours use. In addition, we would need to have an X.25 interface on one of our Suns or Vaxes here. I'm not sure about the cost, but my guess is that it would be in the $1000 to $3000 range. Also, we would still need to obtain some sort of file transfer protocol software to communicate data with Quanum, since our computers and theirs have incompatible operating systems. A call to Sun is probably in order if we want to pursue this further. These prices appear to be prohibitive if we were to install such a connection exclusively for the benefit of Habitat (at least until Habitat becomes a MUCH bigger deal). However, there may be additional ways to justify the cost. For example, it appears that the company could save about 80% on Telex costs by hooking to CCI through Telenet rather than by phone. This is certainly not enough by itself to recover the cost of the Telenet connection, but it's an example of the sort of thing we can look for. The Telenet sales people were real gung-ho on other uses of their services, such as connecting directly to OAG to save money on travel arrangements or providing E-mail services to communicate with productions in remote locations (since Telenet is international). I dunno about these, but it probably couldn't hurt to nose around the company and see what folks could use. My feeling is that Habitat really, REALLY wants this, but can't justify it on the basis of current cost.
June 8th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Mon Jun 8 08:34:28 1987 Received: by moth; 08 JUN 87 08:34:28 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Today. Status: RO Since the Stratus is down today, while it is being moved to a new building: I have implemented (C64 side only) the Habitat Kernal Commands CHANGE_CONTAINERS and PROMPT_USER. These should greatly expand the future power of Habitat, and online utilities. Detailed specs mailed seperately. I will be leaving at 3:00 today.
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Mon Jun 8 08:46:01 1987 Received: by moth; 08 JUN 87 08:46:01 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: aric, chip Cc: farmer Subject: New Habitat Commands Status: RO Change Containers is an asynchronous command (19) addressed at the region Parameters: Noid, New Container Noid, New X Position, New Y Position. (Note a CHANGE containers call WILL re-render the screen) (Note this should NEVER be used to remove a living avatars contents from his head/hands/pocket as that avatar may be trying to manipulate that object himself.) Prompt User is an asynchronous command (20) addressed at the region Parameters: Prompt string (will appear on command line). This function will cause the C64 to send the user response to the region, using a PROMPT_REPLY message (7). This should do exacly what we want in regaurds to sending arbitrary text commands to the host. The commands will be sent by whatever (magic?) class, and the results will be interpreted in class_region. I suggest that EACH Prompt User call use completely unique text to keep intepretation as simple as possible (the text should conatin a std delimiter ':' would be nice).
June 9th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Tue Jun 9 07:30:42 1987 Received: by moth; 09 JUN 87 07:30:42 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) Cc: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Status Status: RO Monday: learned plex & statred definition for QuantumGrad (6000turf city) worked on Telecom space game concept document. implemented 2 new habitat kernal commands was unable to test program because Stratus was down durin move. (Also, attempted to test at night, but Stratus was SICKLY slow.) Tuesday: Test an release 5.4 (if possible) Test new features. Polish off concept document with Noah, and submit to some others. Work more on QuantumGrad Bug Commendore AGAIN re: hardware.
June 10th
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Wed Jun 10 10:16:15 1987 Received: by moth; 10 JUN 87 10:16:15 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda, quantum Subject: Habitat 5.4 Status: RO Habitat version 5.4 6-10-87: The good news: According to our list,5.4 has all Beta C64 items complete or in test Exaustive list of changes: C64 can now cope with the 'death-while-awaiting-reply' condition. Two new REGION kernal commands have been added (in test): CHANGE_CONTAINERS 19, an arbitrary change of containership PROMPT_USER 20, command promts user on text line Host: No Changes. (but some of the grabthese files were not grabbed last release)
June 11th
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Thu Jun 11 09:22:08 1987 Received: by moth; 11 JUN 87 09:22:08 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda, quantum Subject: Habitat Hardware Status: R Here is the latest status (as of Tuesday) re: C64 hardware problems. I (thru Janet) have been in contact with Jim Gracely at commedore about the problems Habitat is having on some C64s. He listed 3 problems he 'knew' about (i.e. people had reported.). Jim was/is affiliated with a C64 magazine, and is NOT a C64 tech proper. 1) There were 2 versions of the VIC-II chip, there is a inconsistency on how the MSB of the raster Interrupt is handled. (Habitat accounts for this. No Problem for us.) 2) It is possible to overload the on-chip interrupt stack. This has actually happend to other applications. Symtom: The screen interrupts would die (meltdown). (I told jim what interrupt sources we have, he is investigating with C64 techs whether SOME machines might have a problem with all our interrupt sources.) 3) 'Ram under BASIC might could get corrupted.' To his knowledge, this has only happened to 'Jumpman'. IF this can happen AND we can't program around it, it would be a problem. (We need that 8k Under Basic! read:a 64k machine with only 56k working is DEFECTIVE.) (I have Jumpman's designer's name and phone#. Will call him ASAP.)
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Thu Jun 11 09:27:23 1987 Received: by moth; 11 JUN 87 09:27:23 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: status Status: R Yesterday: released 5.4 Worked on quantumgrad designed and uploaded a New Capture The Flag entry region (DONE!) kbitzed about plex with chip today: more quantumgrad more plex kbitzing prepare for tonights playtest look into #x29 with aric
June 15th
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Mon Jun 15 14:34:32 1987 Received: by moth; 15 JUN 87 14:34:32 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: 5.4 tes Status: RO There will be a playtest of version 5.5 tomarrow. What will make version 5.5 different? 1) People will be able to dump to disk EVEN if comminucations is hung. (to help debug this problem that showed with 5.4) 2) In our ommunications with C64, an ex-techie thinks he knows why Habitat ,ay be creashing..it has to to with mixed modes & sprites. Anyway, I will install a patch per his instructions. 3) A minor problem with the head hack (causing FE#4s) has been fixed 4) Some new images will be availible. Nothing, just getting the data we need to decide if we are ready for Alpha.
From nancy Mon Jun 15 20:16:48 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 15 JUN 87 20:16:48 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: aric, chip, farmer Cc: nancy, sda Received: by kessel; 15 JUN 87 20:16:45 PDT Subject: HabiTeam 6/12 Status: RO 6/12 Habitat team meeting notes-- 5.4 was playtested Thursday night, still evaluating results. --animation glitch tape coming (Janet saw flashing s, have to do w/tokens?) --communications problem tape coming (Rob survived when the other 5 went into a communications loop) --lights being fixed (Jo's flishlight in sewer, probably host-based--checkpoint region for light level changes?) --2 minor arf's from Chip 1) improve paper help 2) don't remember, bringing in notes from home --sound glitch noted but likely to be left as is (lose one voice of the three during one in 256 region transitions) Only known remaining pre-alpha bug is the communications problem. Will determine Monday from the tape how serious it is. Organization of playtests to be clarified (Cathy & Nancy noted apparent lack of leadership). Randy & Janet will pre-plan. Plan for next week: Chip--Plex (pretty much done, adding features as Randy uses it) plus more Ghu. Integrate Plex, Riddle & host database. Work with Gary on new artwork. Randy--evaluate tapes from 5.4 playtest & debug communications problem. Continue generating Quantumgrad. Continue seeking info on hardware compatibility. Aric--evaluate tape & debug animation glitch. Mostly on Blackhawk. Remaining pre-release world generation: (Chip will distribute updated old-format task list, reviewing those during beta & pre-release tasks.) --need 7 cities to handle 20,000 accounts. Pop. done. Quantumgrad expected to take 2 more weeks (6/26). Given tools developed during generation of Quantumgrad, then expect need about 2 days per city or 2 more weeks (7/10). --also expect to complete the stock market, Capture-The-Flag, and arcades. --"below the line" world generation that will likely be completed prior to release is a magic castle and more board games. Next steps: 1. Randy evaluate communications problem--may require another "technical test". 2. Given comm bug fix, Randy & Janet will organize 16 person pre-alpha test. Next team meeting will be 9:30 Friday morning, 6/19.
June 17th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Wed Jun 17 17:44:54 1987 Received: by moth; 17 JUN 87 17:44:54 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Status Status: R Thru Today: Worked on Habitat 5.6: Re balanced interrupts to attempt to cope with BAD VIC chips. Finish work (testing tonight) that gets us 1024byte more heap! Attended Robots Meeting Tomarrow: Summarize test results (BOTH tests) Provide 'large-scale-test-confidence-factor' agrreed with Janet. Release 5.6 Use Ghu's new region=> rdl facility to get fixed regions back on moth. Design apt building generic hallways
June 19th
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Fri Jun 19 11:50:53 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 19 JUN 87 11:50:53 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: aric, chip, farmer Cc: nancy, sda Received: by kessel; 19 JUN 87 11:50:48 PDT Subject: HabiTeam meeting notes Status: RO 6/19 Habitat team meeting notes-- (Chip & Randy) *Hardware problem exploration top priority the past week for Janet & us. Kimsey meeting with Commodore next week, and QL position on the issue being put together. --The problem may be isolated to VIC chip, rev. 1--that's what Janet's seen on a machine there, and Randy is checking the one that he's been able to reproduce problems on, and Chip will bring in and check the SX64 portable. --Randy & Janet will talk today, and set up conference call to include Mike Ficco & the ex-Commodore tech guy (he thinks it has to do with mixed graphics modes & sprites). --We need to: 1) demonstrate that there is a hardware problem and try to isolate it, 2) understand exactly what's happening to see if software work around is possible, 3) determine, via beta test, if it would be worth major software change. *Communications problem still needs testing. May get data on it from 5.5 playtest tape where Bahia hung (he could not dump). *Avatar in 2 regions at once problem, Janet looking into a change she had made on the host that may have introduced it. Randy's diagnostics made it understandable. Accomplishments of past week: Chip--Plex needs only to have output form decided on for it to be finished. Continued work on integrating the tools (Ghu now outputs in Riddle form). Made some cosmetic changes to guns, etc., and improved paper help. Randy--explored hardware problem & debugged. Quantumgrad waiting for tools and region design. Found 1K heap space w/Aric. Aric--helped Randy w/hardware diagnostics. Integrated some new art? Plan for next week: Chip--Continue work on database tools--expects 2 more days needed to finish integration, and needs to decide output form for Plex. Test the cosmetic changes (guns) and paper help. Randy--Quantumgrad region design. Release 5.6. Aric--tbd Next steps: 1. Playtest 5.6 Monday night, then likely ramp up to 16 testers on Tuesday night, to learn about the communications problem & hopefully isolate hardware. Next team meeting will be 1:00 Friday afternoon, 6/26 (changed from usual 9:30 due to 10:00 Intel meeting).
June 25th
Taken from notes.t
From chip Thu Jun 25 17:03:25 1987 Received: by moth; 25 JUN 87 17:03:25 PDT From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: aric, farmer Cc: chip Subject: Griddle Status: R Griddle is now working. It can read "griddle", "raw" or contents vector files as input and produce any or all of these as output. It reads 'define' statements in exactly the same format as that read by Ghu, so class definitions at least have a common representation across systems. One problem did become apparent, however, as I got the code to read contents vectors working: translations between "griddle" format and "raw" format can be made in either direction with no loss of information. The important difference between the two forms is in the use to which they are put. Conversion into contents vector form also causes few problems, though we did discover the funny with capacity count today. Conversion FROM contents vector form, however, presents us with a significant difficulty: information is simply LOST, since the C64 does not keep all the state information that the host keeps. Furthermore, once the divergence between the host-form and the C64-form has happened, there is no way, given the present system, to get back the lost information and merge it with any changes that might have been made using Reno (we can and do set the lost field values to their defaults, but this is often incorrect). What we need is something analagous to the the Sun frontend for FACE -- a program that would keep track of what you are editing and hold the host-only information until you are done. This program would represent everything on the Sun end in griddle or raw format. The contents vector format would become exclusively a data transmission format. Whaddya think? Meanwhile, I am now modifying Ghu to be able to output "raw" files and to both read and write "raw" and "griddle" files. Also, the Ghu 'riddle' command will turn into the 'griddle' command, of course :-)
June 30th
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Tue Jun 30 14:02:28 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 30 JUN 87 14:02:28 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: sda Cc: aric, chip, farmer Received: by kessel; 30 JUN 87 14:02:24 PDT Subject: Habitat update Status: RO as you requested as the project leader meeting this morning. Randy just said that playtesting is ramping up, starting tomorrow evening. He'll mail info. Jack Daggett said that a guy they talked to at Epyx thought that split screen was our problem, and that with all of their development efforts they'd found no solution (except to bit-map screen). Jack has not looked at Maniac, and will confirm with Janet that, even though it uses split screen, it doesn't crash on her bad machines. Quantum continues to talk to Commodore to try to find solution to the problem of VIC chip going off & trashing its own memory. Their (Quantum's) feeling, per Jack, is that it's in millions of machines.
From nancy Tue Jun 30 14:07:15 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 30 JUN 87 14:07:15 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: chip Received: by kessel; 30 JUN 87 14:07:12 PDT Subject: the H word Status: RO as in Hardware. Are you expecting Quantum to find out something more specific than, "VIC chip going off & trashing its own memory?" Is there anything els --else that we should be hearing from them to help find work around? (other than MORE testing) thanks.
From nancy Tue Jun 30 15:16:27 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 30 JUN 87 15:16:27 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: chip Received: by kessel; 30 JUN 87 15:16:22 PDT Subject: Re: the H word Status: RO for grins, let's assume that there are so many "bad" Commodores out there that we can't ship Habitat as currently designed. If there's not technical solution to work around the bad vic chips, is there a design solution? thanks.
From nancy Tue Jun 30 15:50:02 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 30 JUN 87 15:50:02 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: chip Received: by kessel; 30 JUN 87 15:49:56 PDT Subject: Re: the H word Status: RO hum. your previous message said there didn't seem to be a technical work around, and this message makes the design work around seem to be ruled out as well. In order to understand the problem well enough, what do we need (other than to know how many bad Commodores there are)? do we know? or is the plan to patiently hang in there while Jack, et. al., looks for a technical work around to the vic chip, unlikely as it may be? what am I missing? thanks.
From nancy Tue Jun 30 20:59:03 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 30 JUN 87 20:59:03 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: chip Received: by kessel; 30 JUN 87 20:58:59 PDT Subject: friendly reminder Status: RO to see if Rob Fulop can give us any insight into the hardware issue. if you think it makes sense for the two of us to discuss on a conference call wi/him, let me know. thanks.
July 1987
July 1st
Taken from notes.t
From sda Wed Jul 1 08:45:45 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 01 JUL 87 08:45:45 PDT From: sda (Steve Arnold - Games Division) To: chip Cc: nancy Received: by kessel; 01 JUL 87 08:45:42 PDT Subject: more info on gs and amiga Status: RO what would we need to do to get more detailed information on the difficulties and risks of converting habitat to the GS and Amiga? is this something you and randy can explore with others in the group? or do we need to get outside information? i'd like to get enough information to be able to estimate manmonths of work to get a version working on each of the machines. please rsvp.
From nancy Wed Jul 1 10:13:39 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 01 JUL 87 10:13:39 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: chip Received: by kessel; 01 JUL 87 10:13:36 PDT Subject: Re: friendly reminder Status: RO try (415)323-1916 for Fulop. I'm not sure if it's current--let me know please if it doesn't work.
From nancy Wed Jul 1 13:32:34 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 01 JUL 87 13:32:34 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: sda Cc: chip, nancy, ron Received: by kessel; 01 JUL 87 13:32:28 PDT Subject: Maniac & QL Status: RO Ron, Chip & I talked to Janet (Jack tied up in a meeting). Maniac is not an example of the suspect split screen w/sprites problem. There's no bit map in it at all--entire screen is character set. So...Janet's still looking for info on the split screen w/sprites crossing interrupt boundaries--still suspect that Habitat's problem is related to switching the modes and sprites crossing character boundaries. Since we can't think of examples of any programs doing that, Janet plans to program test cases tomorrow (using Ron's Programmer's Basic toolkit that we're fedXing to her). Chip & Ron, please add to this if there's more info that you think would help. Thanks.
July 2nd
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Thu Jul 2 08:42:59 1987 Received: by moth; 02 JUL 87 08:42:59 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Last nights playtest Status: RO Here's the results: 1) The host was confused about Vendo, Paper, Atms, etc... This was Janets fault and has been fixed 2) dv Had a get/put wars hang (host) 3) auto-teleport to a region you are already in can kill any async avatars (host) 4) Janet had problems picking something up from the left side. 5) 1 person had problems returning to People connection. The effects: Another playtest tonight! Janet is in full agreement that we should continue larger-scale testing. Alpha next week look REAL good. (the remaining C64 problems, we agree, will NOT hold up alpha. Just the BIG host ones.) Who's gonna play tonight? ;)
From farmer Thu Jul 2 08:46:00 1987 Received: by moth; 02 JUL 87 08:46:00 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: 2 week summary Status: RO OK the list of new problems discovered in the last 2 weeks: *=host (total 13) +=C64 Behaviour (total 1) -=C64 code (total 1+3?) <---- note the host/c64 ratio! *+ Guns don't work on avatars heads * Guns don't work on avatars if they ghost/leave region * If a region transition fails, the light level is wrong and the avatar 'on-hold' bit wrong * Regionproc crash (null pointer) * Avatar in two regions at the same time *?-? Communications hang. Seems to be related to boxes/bags * Vendos/Atms/Token merge/PaperPad all broken (Fixed) * dv hung when he PUT down a head when someone else had grabbed it. * Auto-teleport (escape device) causes crash in asynch case. * two people open a box at the same time (Fixed) * book/plaque changed so that it gets last-page-number from text db. -? Bahia got an 'impossible' heap overrun. A diagnositic has been inserted (Fatal Error 9) * Gr state of heads in containers is not properly set. (check head-get code on host) *?-? Grab from left hand side sometimes doesn't work. - Return to people connection failed?
July 3rd
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Fri Jul 3 07:44:30 1987 Received: by moth; 03 JUL 87 07:44:30 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: gdiv, quantum Subject: Thusrday Habitat Test Status: RO The results of the Thursday Habitat Test: (Drum roll please!) NO PROBLEMS. About a dozen people were on in several small groups. What this means (agreed with Janet at Quantum): We (and Janet) will fix the remaining problems reported in the last 4 playtests (95% on host, and minor). Then, on Tuesday will be a Habitat Pizza Playtest Orgy. If Habitat passes that test, THAT version (5.7) will be the ALPHA test version of HABITAT! (Yea!) (Alpha test consists of 50 avatars, most of whom have never been in Habitat Before)
From farmer Fri Jul 3 07:59:08 1987 Received: by moth; 03 JUL 87 07:59:08 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: aric, chip, ron Cc: nancy, sda Subject: Good (?) News Status: RO Janet recived Graphics Basic, and had no problems creating a textmode/bitmap screen and running sprites all over the screen. This WORKED on the 'bad' machines. On Monday, she will work with Doug to add NMI timers to the program, and see if that has any affect (I bet it does!) I told her about the vblank-less version, and will release it as version 5.7 fpr upload Monday.
July 7th
Taken from notes.t
From chip Tue Jul 7 20:22:43 1987 Received: by moth; 07 JUL 87 20:22:43 PDT From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: nancy, sda Cc: aric, chip, farmer Subject: Playtest report Status: R Quick summary: Major though not ultimate success. In more detail: We had a large enough group of people on that I couldn't keep track of how many there were. My guess is that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 or 12. The major result is that we convinced ourselves of what we always suspected: playing habitat with three or four people has a funativity coefficient of 3.7, while playing with a large number of people has a funativity coefficient of 11.2. People played for a good solid couple of hours and were still going at it when I signed off. There were a few problems, though their significance is unclear. Rasputin had a fatal error #3. Noah had a fatal error #4. Janet saw some messed up color RAM. We got dump disks on all of these. It looks like we are in pretty good shape, though we don't have an unqualified green light for Alpha just yet. Janet indicated that she would like to set up a systematic test of all the object classes. The logistics of this will have to be worked out, but we can probably do it during the daytime with three people, rather than requiring a formal evening playtest. I will work on a plan for this. Randy will no doubt be on the phone with Janet tomorrow morning with the verbose feedback from Virginia.
July 15th
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Wed Jul 15 09:37:14 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 15 JUL 87 09:37:14 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: aric, chip, farmer, sda Received: by kessel; 15 JUL 87 09:37:10 PDT Subject: Cathy Status: RO called w/congrats! Janet ran the new Habitat rev. for 20 minutes on the bad machine (only 20 because the system was brought down). she said Randy & Janet were planning playtest of it tonight, & Cathy will call Friday about alpha test organization. and, we'll schedule meeting w/her here next week when Cathy is back out this way. whew! good work.
From farmer Wed Jul 15 10:30:54 1987
Received: by moth; 15 JUL 87 10:30:54 PDT
From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?)
To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda
Status: RO
>From MAILER-DAEMON Tue Jul 14 18:20:33 1987
Received: from shem by moth; 14 JUL 87 18:20:33 PDT
>From: MAILER-DAEMON
Status: R
7 1987
To: farmer
Subject: error in mail
send-mail: user gang unknown
Mail on shem not delivered to:
gang
--------------returned mail-----------
Received: by shem; 14 JUL 87 18:20:34 PDT
>From: farmer
To: gang, quantum
Subject: Version 5.8
Habitat 5.8 has been released and is ready for upload (Qlink mail sent)
Two differences:
1) So that Habitat will run on machines with bad VIC chips, the text line
has been moved to the TOP of the screen
2) We lose a page of memory (Actualy we GAIN about 5-6 pages, I have just
not have had time to do the memory shuffle)
We should have a small scale test (with no changes to the host).
There will be a 5.9, with increased heap & whatever the test reveals
are bugs with the new text-line positioning
Yeah!
From farmer Wed Jul 15 14:38:01 1987 Received: by moth; 15 JUL 87 14:38:01 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Heap Status: RO Old New Gain 14848 16704 1856 bytes! ;)
From farmer Wed Jul 15 14:44:41 1987 Received: by moth; 15 JUL 87 14:44:41 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: aric, chip Subject: Rev II Status: RO Habitat Memory Map As Of July 14, 1987 0000-00ff Zero Page (shared with behaviors) 0100-01ff Stack 0200-0816 Variables (shared with behaviors) 0816-4000 Program Code 4000-43ff Sprite Images <-start VIC Bank 4400-47ff Text/Color Map & Sprite Pointers 4800-49ff Variables 4a00-4b3f Bounce Buffer 4b40-5f3f Bitmap Page 1 5f40-5fff Program Code 6000-63ff Character Set (128 characters) 6400-67ff Tables 6800-69ff Variables 6a00-6b3f Bounce Buffer 6a00-77ff Init/Loader 6b40-7f3f Bitmap Page 2 7800- 7f40-7fff Variables <-end VIC Bank -7fff Customizer 8000-809e Jump Vectors (shared with behaviors) 809f- Program Code Variables aa00-eb3f Heap e340-eb3f Relocated Customize eb40-ff3f Background Buffer ff40-fff9 Program Code fffa-ffff Interrupt Vectors
July 16th
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Thu Jul 16 18:34:44 1987 Received: by moth; 16 JUL 87 18:34:44 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda, quantum Status: RO Released: Habitat 5.9 includes: 1) Cursor clipping adjustment 2) Cleanup of 'exit-paper' 3) A fix to the animation engine 4) Bigger Heap (New size on host 16500 bytes!) Lets Do It!
July 17th
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Fri Jul 17 14:33:20 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 17 JUL 87 14:33:20 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: aric, chip, farmer Received: by kessel; 17 JUL 87 14:33:16 PDT Subject: Cathy Status: RO will be here Friday morning, about 9:30, to discuss test plan & release requirements. she & Rob have talked about putting together logistics for beta test. He plans to have message boards up by Friday. Their new QC person will be getting involved starting Monday. for release requirements, Rob's putting together a list of things like publications needed & tools to support the world. we'll review that on Friday. told Cathy that Chip was posting today an update to the bug & task list status, as we discussed this morning (group bugs by ones that may have been fixed by the hardware fix so need to be replicated, ones that are on the host for us to fix, on the host for Chip & Janet to follow up on, etc.). Cathy confirmed that Janet plans to keep the packet trace on the host. the time frame they have in mind for testing: week of 7/20--heavy test w/regulars + a few (16-20 people total, with about 12 on each night, including 4 from here--we'll both recruit as many people as we can) week of 7/27--slow down for vacation time. Randy's scheduled to be out that week, & Cathy anticipates many of their testers to take time off (post Apple push slump, to recover before Apple & Habitat beta test). week of 8/3--"limited alpha", w/20-30 in-house Quantum people testing for a solid week week of 8/10--add "friendlies" for another week week of 8/17--official beta start all for discussion on Friday. Chip, please remember to send the updated list and to mail gdiv about Wednesday afternoon Habitat presentation.
July 21st
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Tue Jul 21 07:26:44 1987 Received: by moth; 21 JUL 87 07:26:44 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Status Status: RO Thru Monday: Helped ron with Maniac (1/2 day) Geared up for a 14+ player playtest! Fixed two problems with 5.9: Sounds & Paper-pointer-offscreen Started Apartment Generation Today: Make sure Maniac (Apple) works Lay our more Quantumgrad regions (Kebitz with Chip)
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Tue Jul 21 07:30:18 1987 Received: by moth; 21 JUL 87 07:30:18 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Playtest Status: RO Last night we had a 14+ user playtest...Results: Only 2 'cosmetic' problems reported: The text area sometimes 'flashes' <--- non-fatal, possibly unfixable With the new pointer system, it can be VERY hard to point at animating juggling balls. Janet agreed that niether of these are high priority, and even if we CAN'T fix them, it is no big deal. The test was a MAJOR success. Alpha Here We Come!
From crock Tue Jul 21 07:52:02 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 21 JUL 87 07:52:02 PDT From: crock (Douglas Crockford - The happiest man in the vast wasteland) To: aric, chip, farmer Cc: nancy, sda Received: by kessel; 21 JUL 87 07:51:37 PDT Subject: Habitat Status: RO Last night I took my first step into a smaller world. These are some of my reactions to that first experience: JOYSTICK. There are four iconic commands which are overloaded onto the joystick. Three of the four have a strong directional component: pick UP, put DOWN, go RIGHT there. Currently, the joystick assignments are pick LEFT, put RIGHT, and go UP there. It's not a big deal, you quickly learn how to generate the correct command, but I think you could have a really nice mnemonic aid built right in. MAPS. In my two hours in Habitat, I was unable to get oriented. I bought a map and found it to be incomprehensible. I think the big WEST convention is at best confusing. Even worse, on the map I bought, SOUTH is at the top. Map reading skills are generally poor in our society. If you are deliberately violating one of the few well understood cartographic conventions, I hope you have a really good reason. GUIDES. The thing I did that I found the most rewarding was following people around, like following the blue tenticle into the hottub, or following a couple of guys through the sewer. The thing Habitat most needs is people. I think that if you get it finished, then they'll be there. MUSIC. It is really important to have scene transition music. You need much more variety. The little 8 note ditty you have now gets tiresome real fast. If we could get rights to the Final Jeopardy tune, it would be best. PIECES OF PAPER. I hate the convention of dropping paper on the ground in order to get rid of it. I find that morally and environmentally irresponsible. I would rather that I could make my mail disappear Like Magic than to symbolically litter. TYPING. On a number of occasions, when typing my second line of dialog, the first few characters of the second line got lost. BIG FINISH. I think you guys are onto something really neat. I think it is worth taking to completion. Wrap it up. Ship it.
From farmer Tue Jul 21 08:09:36 1987 Received: by moth; 21 JUL 87 08:09:36 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: aric, chip Subject: Sex Changer Status: RO It seems the sex changer is broken.... Writes memory in BAD ways (LRC error, In one case 'warped' an avatar to another place on the screen)
From farmer Tue Jul 21 08:45:50 1987 Received: by moth; 21 JUL 87 08:45:50 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: aric, chip Subject: Iamges Status: RO Is someone keeping a list of images we want? I have another one: Domestic Pottery (for Plants) 1 large pot 1 small pot 1 'window' planter
From nancy Tue Jul 21 09:13:59 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 21 JUL 87 09:13:59 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: sda Cc: aric, chip, farmer Received: by kessel; 21 JUL 87 09:13:53 PDT Subject: Re: test plan Status: RO that "test plan" was the time frame that Quantum has in mind, per Cathy. Chip, Randy, Aric & I will be discussing it this week, and meet w/Cathy this Friday to agree upon a complete test plan--including release requirements & target date.
From aric Tue Jul 21 11:07:07 1987 Received: from shem by moth; 21 JUL 87 11:07:07 PDT From: aric (Aric Wilmunder)(esruoc fo ,esrouc fo ,esroh a si esroh a) To: chip, farmer Received: by shem; 21 JUL 87 11:07:05 PDT Subject: a couple o' tings Status: RO On exhaustive testing.... it would be nice to add sound effects to sync and async die roll Two things on the host.... first, avatars really should deghost on login. If they don't, we should have a good explanation in the manual for novice users. Second, having the host send a text message to the user if the region he is trying to enter is too full would be nice and easy to do. I am going to look at the new pointer system with the special cases of juggling balls constantly moving and the amulet with the clear area in the middle.
From aric Tue Jul 21 11:21:19 1987 Received: from shem by moth; 21 JUL 87 11:21:19 PDT From: aric (Aric Wilmunder)(esruoc fo ,esrouc fo ,esroh a si esroh a) To: chip, farmer Received: by shem; 21 JUL 87 11:21:17 PDT Status: RO >From fanny Tue Jul 21 09:35:18 1987 Received: from hoth by shem; 21 JUL 87 09:35:18 PDT >From: fanny To: aric Received: by hoth; 21 JUL 87 09:35:12 PDT Subject: playtest Status: RO well it was interesting. I found it very difficult to type, move, read and make sure no one gave me or took anything away from me. I had a problem with the money I took out of your account though, I would get some, put it in my pocket and then when I went to spend some it wouldn't be there. One time I think someone took it from me and another time it just dissapeared. If it did because I didn't have room in my pocket I think the game/oracle should tell you that. Anyways I was glad to help out. How was your game?
From farmer Tue Jul 21 13:47:46 1987 Received: by moth; 21 JUL 87 13:47:46 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: dv, farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Cc: charlie Subject: Habitat Status: RO For Your Convenience: Habitat will be down tonight for Bandwidth Reduction tests. Only persons with Bandwidth Reduction ON will be able to enter the system. (This is a limited scope test. Things will return to normal tomarrow) See you on the other side (tomarrow ;) ) Randy .
July 23rd
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Thu Jul 23 15:03:46 1987 Received: by moth; 23 JUL 87 15:03:46 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: aric, chip Subject: Prioritized: Status: R The 1st Habitat All Class Test Results: S = Stratus 64= Commedore C = Causes crash (hang) I = Important + = Not so important - = CBB SC Boomerang DO Hangs the C64 SC Matchbook crashes the host (DO) SI Pawn machine dispenses a BAD token, value 1, restriction bit set. SI Knick_knack (and others) need style based help. SI When PUTing paper to dropbox, restriction bit gets set (!?) SI Drugs: effects? Help gives effect, remaining #. Bottle not getting deleted on host. S+ ATM needs ASYNC chore for Deposit/Withdrawal S+ game_piece HELP need 'kingme' instructions S+ bag/box help needs to give KEY number S+ Door help CBB S+ Elevator 'Bad address' msg not appropriate. S+ Grenade doesn't work. S+ TALK to hand of god is illegal (!?) S- If you put a blank sheet of paper on a countertop, you can take items S- Cant we fold the frisbee into another class? S- Hole help should match ground help S- Fortune Machine async chore CBB S64C Ticket DO hangs the 64. 64C async Sex_change hangs 64. 64I Keys DON'T WORK. 64+ Bottle DO ground beeps. 64- Add sfx to Die object 64- The ring image looks like a pill. 64- Club Image is all black, should it be all blue? We should delete these classes: instant object pill hat security device jukebox river roof stereo (tape play image become either knick-knack or two-state-object) tape
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Thu Jul 23 15:26:58 1987 Received: by moth; 23 JUL 87 15:26:58 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Status Status: R Today: Did all Class test Tomarrow: Fix all the C64 bugs. Release rev 6.0
July 24th
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Fri Jul 24 14:34:42 1987 Received: by moth; 24 JUL 87 14:34:42 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Habistatus Status: R OK, there is a new version of the Habitat Program, 6.0 but, since Janet is also going on vacation, it will not be released until 8-3. In the program itself, there was only one change: shft-home will clear the text line. (Oh yeah, aric also fixed a problem with pointing to juggling balls) The following items have been fixed as a result of the All Class Test: Club image is now blue DIE do makes noise (sync AND async) Keys work Async sex changer fixed The folloing have been coded, but not tested: Pawn_machine dispensing bad tokens. Drug bottle doesn't disappear. ATM needs async chores Foretune Machine (same) Ticket DO doesn't work. The following classes have been deleted fromthe host & test system & the C64 databases: hat, security_device, jukebox, river, roof, stereo, tape The following things are NOT problems with the class, and should be removed from the task list: fold frisbee into another class Bottle DO ground beeps blank sheet of paper re:countertop TALK to hand of god is ILLEGAL. Need to be done (while I'm Gone): Test system needs to move over to BANDWIDTH reduction. Chip needs to test/fix the remaining items on the Class Test Results list. The Alpha Test-Plan should be in place. 6.0 is gonna be it, so lets be sure ;)! In case you are wondering, I will be available tonight and tomarrow if you MUST call me for an emergency (707-585-9803) I will be incommunicado Sunday thru Friday. You can reach me NEXT Saturday (all day) or Sunday (1pm-5pm or 8pm-). Hold down the fort folks! (I am REALLY nervous about leaving the baby all this time, you take REAL GOOD Care of her, OK Guys?) I will read my mail when I arrive Saturday.
August 1987
August 3rd
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Mon Aug 3 10:34:29 1987 Received: by moth; 03 AUG 87 10:34:29 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda, quantum Cc: wendy Subject: Release 6.0 Status: RO Habitat version 6.0 8-3-87: Alpha Test, Phase II version. Starting this release, there will be a C64 program release NOT MORE THAN once per week. C64 main-program changes: SHIFT-HOME (clr) now clears the/one text line. The pointer system can now cope with Juggling balls, bottles, and the like. C64/Host Changes (classes): The following classes have bee deleted from the Test, Production and C64 Databases: 11 boomerang 39 hat 40 instant object 63 security device 70 stereo 71 tape 145 jukebox 148 river 149 roof Note: The C64 will CRASH if the host provides one of these in a contents vector. There were several items turned up during the all class test, these are in various states of test, 90% of them are host only. (See summary.t for details)
From chip Mon Aug 3 15:46:30 1987 Received: by moth; 03 AUG 87 15:46:30 PDT From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: nancy, sda Cc: aric, chip, farmer Subject: Status summary for the week Status: R We are, more or less, in Alpha test. We are proceding according to the plan proposed by Cathy Anderson in her memo of July 21. The major implications of this right now are that we will have more people on in the evenings and we won't be releasing new revs of the C64 software as frequently. Randy did the exhaustive all-class test during the week before his vacation. He and I have fixed almost all the things that turned up as a result of that (most of them were on the host). The latest rev of the C64 code is version 6.0. Janet is uploading it tonight and will be distributing it to everyone on the East coast tomorrow (she would be doing this today but technical difficulties on their end messed her up). The name of the game from here on out is testing, bug fixing and world generation, rather than new features! I spent most of the past week working on tools (after taking care of the stuff from the all-class test). Ghu is now a very flexible and powerful tool, and Randy and I have both been using it extensively. We can now do with at 3 line command what used to require a PL/1 program and half a day's effort. There are still a few more features we want to have in Ghu (notably: commands for manipulating the book/text database) but it is now usable in a major way. Randy and I will likely start in on finishing Quantumgrad this week. However, among other things, we decided in our meeting here with Cathy a week ago Friday that we will put an apartment building into Populopolis first. This will enable us to 1) work through the process of apartment generation (and make sure all the tools are working the way we want), 2) test the apartment building concept itself for players and 3) provide a larger supportable population base for Beta, thus killing three birds with one stone.
August 18th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Tue Aug 18 10:06:55 1987 Received: by moth; 18 AUG 87 10:06:55 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: more arfs Status: RO AFS recived 08-17, for playtesting 8/12 and 8/13 Beren: D T 0812-1 Auto teleport 1/2s tokens (fixed) 2B c r 0812-2 If you hand an object to a sitting avatar, it stands. 1B W r 0812-3 On/off lights does not work right in paper interface. Cathleen: C 0812-4 Had a long (over 1 min) initial region load. 1B r 0812-5 immobile magic DO should do implied GO. 1A r 0812-6 still able to leave Backgammon #2 with game piece. ? 0812-7 PE? says whe lost a token during teleport (?) ? 0812-8 PE. A user 'winked' (left and came back fast) ? 0812-9 PE? Cathy couldn't GO to the pond. (collision with tree?) ? 0812-10 PE. Had problem putting token in pocket (cathy) ? 0812-11 PE. Tried to walk to the 'ground' above horizon"No way to go" C 0812-12 Text window flashes. C 0812-13 All multy page texts should signify (in text) "The End" Chris: 1A j r 0812-14 FE #7 (there were 3 of these,2 dumped,and both caused by host) Ariana1: 2B r a 0813-1 Some turfs have flowers on top of dresser (move/remove them) 2B r a 0813-2 The New You needs a "MORE ->" sign 1A j 0813-3 Regionproc Crash. Bahia: 1A T c 0813-4 It is possible to 'get' an open box! (fixed) 0813-5 dup 0813-3 C 0813-6 Colorblind people have problems with word balloons. C 0813-7 Had problems putting token in pocket Janet: 1B j r 0813-8/9 Had problems grabbing objects (had something in hand,I bet) 1A j 0813-10 FE#7 (Host send talk message from non-exist noid!) 0813-11 dup 0813-3
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Tue Aug 18 10:18:57 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 18 AUG 87 10:18:57 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: aric, chip, farmer Cc: sda Received: by kessel; 18 AUG 87 10:18:50 PDT Subject: HabiSchedule Status: RO just left message w/Rob for him to confirm or advise on this proposed schedule update, as soon as he can cover w/Janet & Cathy (Cathy's out here this week): 8/20 start alpha III w/version 6.2 8/31 pre-beta analysis week 9/7 start beta 10/5 final code 10/12 ship to QL subscribers He was aware of region proc crash last night, but didn't know if it was caused by something that would delay alpha III. Randy, please let me know as soon as you hear anything from Janet. thanks.
August 19th
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Wed Aug 19 10:01:17 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 19 AUG 87 10:01:17 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: farmer Cc: aric, chip, sda Received: by kessel; 19 AUG 87 10:01:12 PDT Subject: HabiStatus Status: RO per Rob, start of alpha III is on hold pending Janet diagnosing Pointers bug. that's probably what's caused region proc crashes &/or meltdowns. She's putting in diagnostics to confirm that region proc crashes/meltdowns are being caused by host, & figure out how to fix. They don't know if there are any problems w/the 6.2 disk, but it is not being duplicated for alpha III until Janet has fixed the host-based pointers bug, & they're confident that region proc crashes are stopped. Rob promised to rattle cages & get more people on testing tonight. He knew of 2 meltdowns & no region proc crashes last night. what's you're understanding of the pointers bug delaying alpha III? thanks.
From farmer Wed Aug 19 10:23:24 1987 Received: by moth; 19 AUG 87 10:23:24 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: nancy Cc: aric, chip, sda Subject: Re: HabiStatus Status: RO My understanding: The problem is pretty serious, and Janet is hard at work on it. In a nutshell, the host gets confused about what object is where in the Stratus' memory, and feeds the Commedore bad message packets. This accounts for the last three FE#7s, and is supposed to account for the meltdowns (not confirmed, but likely). Note: Rob seems to be good at getting accurate descriptions to you, I am glad that communications are getting clearer. ;)
From nancy Wed Aug 19 17:55:40 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 19 AUG 87 17:55:40 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: farmer Cc: aric, chip, sda Received: by kessel; 19 AUG 87 17:55:34 PDT Subject: Cathy Status: RO said she'd talk to Janet in the morning about getting 6.2 dup'd to send out Friday. from her point of view, more testers are needed to replicate 2 non- host related meltdowns that may be caused by hardware--one suspected new vic chip and one suspected disk drive. certainly hope Janet is able to trap the host pointer bug tonight.
August 20th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Thu Aug 20 14:50:08 1987 Received: by moth; 20 AUG 87 14:50:08 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Announcing Status: RO The Amulet Of Wonderous Worth (Dnalsi Island) The Tome of Wealth and Fame (the game begins TODAY!) The 1st Habitat Region Rally are all functional and ready to install (10 seconds installation each.) Comming tomarrow: The Plaque of Cooties! Comming in the following weeks: The Habitat Stock Exchange Capture the Flag
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Thu Aug 20 17:09:16 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 20 AUG 87 17:09:16 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: farmer Cc: aric, chip, sda Received: by kessel; 20 AUG 87 17:09:12 PDT Subject: Alpha III Status: RO per Cathy, 6.2 will be sent next day delivery on Monday to alpha phase III testers, assuming that the FE#2 you're researching doesn't require a disk change. you & I need to talk to Rob & Janet in the morning, as soon as you know if the FE#2 should delay us. Janet is sorting through the info who has on the pointer bug--it does not delay start of alpha III. whew! good luck tracking down the FE#2.
August 21st
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Fri Aug 21 08:21:44 1987 Received: by moth; 21 AUG 87 08:21:44 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: nancy Cc: aric, chip, sda Subject: Re: Alpha III Status: RO The fatal error will NOT delay us. Error finding is what Alpha is for! We ship Monday. (Period)
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Fri Aug 21 10:47:31 1987 Received: by moth; 21 AUG 87 10:47:31 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Now operational Status: RO The Cooties Plague is now available for testing in Habitat, (I replaced the Capture the Flag region with "DON'T PRESS THIS BUTTON!") heh heh
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Fri Aug 21 15:39:39 1987 Received: by moth; 21 AUG 87 15:39:39 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: And they said Status: RO that it would never happen: Alpha test III, Ships from Quantum Monday, overnight mail to 60 users! (The dump they were holding WILL NOT hold us up!) ---- and there was much rejoicing ----
August 24th
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Mon Aug 24 07:51:49 1987 Received: by moth; 24 AUG 87 07:51:49 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: aric Cc: chip Subject: Need Status: RO Need help... (Today, top prio.) Do you know the region # ranges of the turfs you added to habitat? It seems the Turf file was never updated, and there are only 6 turves left! Lets talk Thanks.
August 25th
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Tue Aug 25 14:13:00 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 25 AUG 87 14:13:00 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: chip, farmer Cc: sda Received: by kessel; 25 AUG 87 14:12:56 PDT Subject: alpha III Status: RO cathy said 35 went out today, & 35 going tomorrow. 2-day delivery guaranteed, so should see many new testers on Thursday night. re: cooties game, she thought exciting, but concerned that it'd lose appeal fast if remains in so obvious a place or isn't limited somehow (like "Don't press this button during a full moon"). your thoughts? best case beta start they're thinking is 3 weeks away: major alpha testing week of 8/31 (next week), time for evaluation & disk rev week of 9/7, send out beta disk week of 9/14. Cathy will be out here week of 9/14 for AppleFest that Friday, Sat & Sun.
August 26th
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Wed Aug 26 20:13:19 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 26 AUG 87 20:13:19 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: chip Cc: aric, wendy Received: by kessel; 26 AUG 87 20:13:16 PDT Subject: Habitat boot screen Status: RO this goes back a few weeks--not sure if Aric was ever answered about approval of copyright notice. (c) 1987 LFL. All rights reserved. at the top of the screen if fine. if there's room, write out Lucasfilm, Ltd. thanks.
August 27th
Taken from notes.t
From nancy Thu Aug 27 09:57:14 1987 Received: from kessel by moth; 27 AUG 87 09:57:14 PDT From: nancy (Nancy Mohler) To: farmer Cc: aric, chip, sda Received: by kessel; 27 AUG 87 09:57:08 PDT Subject: Cathy Status: RO will talk w/you next Friday to review how the week of alpha3 testing went, & then decide whether to buy tickets for Janet, Rob & her to come out here the following week. if all goes well next week, they'll plan to meet here Thursday & Friday, 9/10 & 11, to prepare for beta start the following week. they're sounding real positive. Cathy was thrilled to see books in the library, & to buy a copy of the rant. she reminded us to please keep in mind how we take advantage of our new testers' experiences in Habitat--follow, watch, learn how they learn, rather that lead them around. thanks.
August 28th
Taken from randy.t
From farmer Fri Aug 28 13:06:55 1987 Received: by moth; 28 AUG 87 13:06:55 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda, wendy Subject: Day Off Status: RO I will be taking Friday the 4th of September off. I am going to LA for the Holiday Weekend.
August 31st
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Mon Aug 31 09:04:55 1987 Received: by moth; 31 AUG 87 09:04:55 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Habitat Status: RO Habitat is having some pretty heavy problems on the host side: It is 1) using up all available buffers & 2) using more CPU than they think is correct. The users have seen these problems as 5-10 minute region transition times (Often reporting them as hangs). Janet is on top of it. She will call as soon as she knows what is going on. (Habitat was shut down for the latter half of Sunday, beacuse problem #1 above was slowing down (considerably) other parts of Qlink.) I guess it was about time for THEM to drop a shoe, eh? ;) <- Keeping a stiff upper lip, printing out 45 pages of arfs & comments More data as quick as I get it...
From farmer Mon Aug 31 10:52:34 1987 Received: by moth; 31 AUG 87 10:52:34 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: OK Status: RO I printed 45 pages(!) of arfs and comments...the distillation: (in order of number of times reported) This is a summary only, and not comprehensive. #1 The Host delays are really awful #2 The system crashed (at least once) #3 Habitat is VERY finicky about extra hardware being connected. #4 SOME SX64 users have been unable to get in. #5 There were some FEs (most notable, a matching set of corrupt heaps) #6 Thieving is a point of some consternation..Perhaps we should a) have Steal Free Zones (to protect newcommers) b) prevent teft from stoned avatars. #7 Tokens_PUT should do Tokens_DO. Tokens need a way to split #8 And minor spelling and other small things. The signal to noise ratio on these reports is not very high, but the feedback is beginning to show some clear trends: The Host is sick, and needs a continued shakedown (when Janet has atleast the buffers under control) The C64(?) is still getting fatal errors, but they seem to come in clusters (several people, in the same place get an error) which suggests a problem with data (bad object/class descriptor or something).
From chip Mon Aug 31 14:07:45 1987 Received: by moth; 31 AUG 87 14:07:45 PDT From: chip (Chip Morningstar -- "Software Without Moving Parts") To: aric, chip, farmer, nancy, sda Subject: Good news/Bad news Status: R Just got a call from Janet. The GOOD news is that the load problems people were experiencing were a result of a minor system configuration difficulty which is easily corrected. The BAD news is that since the fix involves the running system it needs to be thoroughly tested before they put it on line, so they don't have enough time to fix it today before production comes up (which is about an hour from now), so Habitat is down tonight and we will resume testing tomorrow.
September 1987
September 1st
Taken from notes.t
From farmer Tue Sep 1 08:28:49 1987 Received: from shem by moth; 01 SEP 87 08:28:49 PDT From: farmer To: chip Received: by shem; 01 SEP 87 08:28:47 PDT Subject: Lets talk about Status: RO Steal free zones & removing WFZ from 'out-of-town' areas. Can't we just change the ghu class defines file?
From farmer Tue Sep 1 08:30:24 1987 Received: by moth; 01 SEP 87 08:30:24 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: chip Subject: keepin gyou busy.. Status: RO I would be REAL nice if at least the 'd' function would work from ghu's oracle function.
From farmer Tue Sep 1 08:53:48 1987 Received: by moth; 01 SEP 87 08:53:48 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: farmer,chip,aric,nancy,sda Subject: Habitat Status: RO Is still not quite back up yet. I have some info that I think we should be aware of: The hostheap has been taken care of, but quantum is concerned about the early Habitat statistics on CPU useage. The reason Habitat was messed up a little (when I was on) is that Janet had to recompile everything with profiling in. This introduced some small complications. The message I got was this: 'The CPU usage was so high, that 'extrapolated' out Habitat (in it current state) could not be run at currnt Plus Time rates.' This was Mark's opinion from a 2.5 days of testing Fri-Sun. It is by no means conclusive, and The Profiler will probably tell use of some silly overhead that can be streamlined out of the system. Not time to panic yet, but we all have STRONG interest in the actual figures. (actualy, to us here a LFL, this isn't really a suprise (for once :))
From farmer Tue Sep 1 09:55:50 1987 Received: by moth; 01 SEP 87 09:55:50 PDT From: farmer (Randall Farmer) (What do you mean ARTIFICIAL intelligence?) To: chip Subject: Since Status: RO Since we are moneying with things... I would like to add a type field to the burearcrats. (So each crat can have customized responces)
September 18th
Taken from gregp.
From chip Fri Sep 18 13:12:58 1987 Subject: Greg P Did you see my Stratus mail message from last night? It is clear that Greg is seriously disturbed here. Someone online last night (I think it may have been Becky) said that he had some upset in his personal life that had him really down. Frankly, I'm concerned. Somehow we need to communicate the following points, not just to Greg, although he seems to be the one who needs it most. In order from least important to most important: 1) The major areas of social contact in the world, namely the cities, consist of regions that are both weapons-free and theft-free. The most gross abuses of civilized behavior are therefor eminently avoidable for those who wish to avoid them. 2) This is not reality. This is fantasy. This is a game. Don't lose sight of the idea that the perpose of this place is entertainment. What happens here has little if any bearing on the real world. If one Avatar steals from another, the real-world impact is nil. (It is legitimate to raise the question of what lesson we are teaching, but that is another issue which I believe is covered by the remaining points). 3) I believe in the old idea (common in a lot of Christian thinking) that there is no life without at least the potential for death. In order for existence to be meaningful there needs to be a state of non-existence to contrast it to. Note that "death" in Habitat is a transitory thing and does not really reflect ultimate obliteration in the way that death in the real world does. It does, however, give one cause to value one's person and property. Similarly, a piece of property only has value by virtue of the degree to which it is distinguishable from other pieces of property. Once you have any concept of value, there exists the potential for unethical usurpation of the basis of that value. While we can prevent certain specific infractions (i.e., taking something out of someone else's hands), ultimately there is no way to guard against this. On the other hand, if there was no concept of value, the world would be homogeneous and therefor uninteresting. 4) The very notions of morality and ethics are human concepts. Consider, for a moment, what sort of world we would live in if there was a god that enforced moral standards as natural law. The very idea of right and wrong would not exist in such a universe. Why, then, should people appeal to such a god in Habitat? Because (a) they think it is possible, and (b) they have brought their notions of good and evil with them from the external world. However, the Oracle fundamentally cannot enforce moral codes, even if we could all agree on what code should be the standard, which we cannot. The moral standards must therefor be chosen and enforced by the community itself. Instead of appealing to the Oracle to be the magical omnipotent lawgiver, policeman and judge, people should join together to form a society which is able to establish its own standards of conduct. Since Avatars can effect each another in numerous ways, of which "killing" is but one among many, communities of Avatars can enforce their standards with various sanctions, just as people do in the real world. We encourage everyone to do this, and are interested in suggestions for ways the system can support this process (e.g., the "gate" object). I would also advocate that there should always be some "lawless" territories, both to provide contrast and so that there is a place for the inevitable misfits to go. By the way, isn't Greg P the one who wanted to start the church? Perhaps we can encourage him to be the nucleus around which a community can form. He doesn't have to be the leader, but by promoting a doctrine of tolerance and gentleness he can certainly help push things in the right direction.
December 1987
December 11th
Taken from robreqs.t.
To: Steve Arnold From: Chip Morningstar Date: December 11, 1987 Re: Rob & Janet's item/question memo of 12/7 As you requested, here is an item-by-item status report in response to Rob & Janet's memo of 12/7/87: (I've quoted the memo literally on the lines beginning with ">".) >Here is a list of all outstanding items we have on record, not including >three of the four "meta-problems" (heartbeat/protocol disconnect, PC >loader, memory hits) or manifestations of them as near as we can judge. >The fourth meta-problem, "messages to non-existing noids," we believe to >be a problem with auto-teleport, which we'll continue to test The "messages to non-existing noids" problem was indeed in the auto-teleport routine and is fixed as of 10/30 (version 6.4). Of the other three, the "memory hits" problem turned out to be a bug in the bottle object and was also fixed as of 10/30 in version 6.4. >SYSTEM >Needs testing >------------- >Auto-teleport -- dying, some Choke machines, wands As mentioned above, this is fixed in version 6.4 as of 10/30 (ver 6.4 release notes, 11/10) >GO/F3 collision (next rev) Fixed in version Beta 1.0 as of 12/9 >Error recovery for disk routines (next rev) Installed in version Beta 1.0 as of 12/9 >FE3 (JoeyT1) Since we do not have a dump disk for this problem, we cannot give a 100% assured diagnosis. However, reasoning from the circumstances surrounding it, our hypothesis is that it is the same problem as the GO/F3 collision bug mentioned above and the FE#13 that RJScott had. >FE13 (RJScott) This turned out to be a result of the very same problem as the GO/F3 collision bug, and so is fixed. >Requires disk change (status uncertain) >--------------------------------------- Almost all of these are host problems or changes, not disk based. >PUTing to a sitting Avatar makes it stand (9/10; #62) This is a host only bug, fixed as of 11/11 >New entries to regions don't show the state of an avatar There was a problem with this once upon a time (prior to our keeping the current bug database). We believe it is fixed (was host bug). There have been no reports of this happening for as far back as our database goes. >Lamps are awfully wide (9/10; #94 sorta) We aren't sure what this means. If Quantum wants us to change the collision detection parameters for the streetlamp we can do so easily. If so, it would be a host only change. >Ticket DO hangs 64 (9/10; #85) Our records show this as being fixed as of 9/2 >Grenade doesn't work (9/10; #81) Working as of 11/11 (host only change). >Ring looks like a pill (9/10; #86) We decided that the ring is sufficiently different that we don't need to mess with changing the image. >Cursor turned into PUT icon in text interface (11/4; #500) We wrote this one off as a mystery on 10/12. Lord Bolan (to whom this happened) had a number of odd things happen to only him, leading us to suspect his machine. We have kept our eyes open for recurrences; there haven't been any. >Command lockout turing GO while able to receive ESP, etc. (11/4; #374) Another weird Lord Bolan thing. >Blank paper with written graphic state (9/10; #128) Fixed (on host) as of 10/12 >Random sign appearances (12/2; #696) Operator boo-boo while using Ghu; accidently moved wrong item. >Shrunk to smallest size on 'porting home (12/2; #691) Currently on our working bug list. >Grab from left-hand side doesn't always work (9/10; #26) Confusion resulting from collision detection; not a bug. >Disk questions >-------------- >On DOs that include GO, should avatars face cursor on arrival? (9/10; #64) GO is set up so that avatar is always facing in proper direction on arrival. Sometimes this is facing cursor, sometimes not. >Should all DOs include GOs? (9/10; #95) No. In many cases the semantics of the DO operation makes this impossible. Where it is possible, we do so. >Do chairs work easily (i.e., GO from chair with one push?) Yes. >Does Help work while seated? (9/10; #31) No. The only thing you can do while seated is talk or GO. It would be nice if you could do HELP while seated, but this would require some fairly hairy changes to the command interface routines, so we decided not to, in the interest of moving things forward. >Follow command? (12/2; #190) This has been an on-again/off-again feature. We need to make a final decision as to whether or not to implement this. Our feeling here is that it is probably not needed, and we have the impression that the consensus at Quantum is similar; however, we need to decide. If we do decide to implement this, the changes will be entirely host based. >Does adding the ability to make objects prompt users require disk changes? >(9/10; #9) Yes, but the changes have already been made. They were installed in version 6.4 and have been tested. >Host problems >------------- >Lights (both floor and flash/torch) do not consistently work (12/2, > comments -- 9/2, #96, #109 -- 11/4, #305) They should work now. There were a couple of weird interacting host software problems, the last of which was fixed 11/19, as well as a systematic error in the database which was corrected on 12/4 >Cloning & prices on vendos -- are we sure they're right? We did a thorough check on all vendo prices and they are all correct. >Title page/index for books (12/2; #104) It was the Book of Records in particular that required the index (which needed to be generated by the program that generates that particular document). Janet implemented this as of 12/8. >Finish 'port, town and region help names for regions (10/12; #9) (Actually item #194). Port and town help arrows are in as of 11/19; we currently have the testers hunting for the inevitable mistakes. Names are installed in the residential areas and are being added to the other areas incrementally. >Fix 'port directory We have an all-new teleport directory as of 11/14 >Drugs need to have help effect, pill count (9/10; #79) Done as of 11/11 >Heads have no resale value (9/10; #30) Fixed >Some turfs have flowers on dressers which can be GETed but not PUT (9/10; > #72) Our records show this being fixed as of 9/3. >Should Costello's be hooked to sewers? (9/10; #56) No it shouldn't. Our records show it was disconnected as of 9/2. >Move sewer so de-ghosts don't stand on it (9/10; #101) Our records show this being fixed as of 9/3. >Should we de-ghost on login? (12/2; #29) We think we should, but a decision needs to be made. If we do it, Janet is the one who will have to implement it. >Add a type field to 'crats to allow customized responses (9/10; #202) Upon reflection we concluded that this was unnecessary. >Put apartment tape online and test (10/12; #11) Final rev. of apartement installed on 12/9. Requires Beta 1.0 software to work properly (there was a bug in the elevator). >Change all countertops to...something else (10/12; #82) As of 11/11 all countertops work just like tables. >Two mail in pocket messages for one piece of mail (10/12; #222) Fixed as of 10/30 (host change by Janet). >Manual changes >-------------- >Revise to be current with Beta Release Version of manual sent 12/7 accurately describes Beta 1.0 system. >Include graphic symbols/CTRL keys >Index These can be added. We'll need to redesign the page layout however, since these will add a few pages. >Is there a current map of downtown? Yes, but not in a distributable form. >Should we explain how tables, bookcases and dressers are containers? I don't know. Should we? >Should Jan gather as much as we know about configuration requirements? This would probably be wise. >A little clearer about 'port booths, mebbe We will take a look at it. What in particular needs clarification? >Ghu >--- >QL Rep (Rob) proficient enought to implement basic programming (10/12) Rob is the judge of this. >Are there any docs on the macro language? Yes. The document we sent to Quantum describes the macro features fully. >Make Oracle fully functional & accessible >Can GHU handle Oracle requests? Oracle handling is now implemented in Ghu. We will send a revised edition of the manual that describes the relevent commands. >Can GHU hand Rant publishing? Yes. Text handling features are now implemented. These will also be described in the new edition of the manual. >Is it, in short, fully functional? Yes. However, we would like to consult with Quantum about what protection features are required, if any, to prevent unauthorized mangling of the database or invasions of privacy accomplished via Ghu. >Can (does?) GHU show memory usage in a region? No. >Loops The version of Ghu originally released to Quantum had a looping feature. We have since made this feature somewhat more general and this improvement is described in the latest edition of the manual. >Can I search for items of a specific class? Yes, but it is very inefficient, since it requires iterating through the entire database. If we were to make the class field a database key then we could do this more efficiently. Janet? >Things to do (Definition of Public Release Habitat System Document) >------------- >D'nalsi Island Ready to go on 30 seconds notice. >Capture the Flag We are awaiting a chance to test this on a limited scale before pursuing a larger development effort. Testing it, however, requires more users than we have typically had on. >Cooties Working. >Machiavelli Could use further design work. Does not require any software developement, however. >Stock Market We have a design, but need to set priorities since it will require some host software work. >Talk Shows >Game Shows >Bijou Theatre >Costello's Comedy Corner These are ready to go. We have designed some magic items that will make the operation of theatrical activities a little easier, but they are luxuries. >Items >----- >copy machine (12/2; #11 -- 4/29; #27) >book binder (12/2; #11 -- 4/29; #28) These require host software that does not yet exist. The C64 end is in as of version Beta 1.0 >Customizer: 4-5 selections of heads -- host chooses vector (4/29; #23) Done in hatchery long, long ago. >Determine powers and privileges of Adventure Masters (3/2; #28) >Write Guidebook to the Oracle (3/2; #48) >Design batch transactions (3/2; #71) We need to work out operations plans in order to determine the relevence of these items. >Make region entry smarter (doors, etc.) (3/2; #110) >Add textual error messages (3/2; #117) >Write help messages for magic items (3/2; #118) Ancient history; done. >Implement Apartment Generator (3/2; #55) Done. >Implement Adventure Master support software (3/2; #63) See above comment on Adventure Masters. >Position on compatibility with 1581 (10/12; #2) We need a 1581 and detailed documentation on it.
November 1989
November 28th
Taken from habitat.
From oster%SOE.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu Tue Nov 28 01:13:16 1989
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From: oster%SOE.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Message-Id: <8911280648.AA04939@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu>
To: randy@xanadu.com
Subject: Re: habitat
Status: R
I am an expert Macintosh programmer. You met me at the Hacker's 5. (I was
standing next to Vernor Vinge.) I'd like to get in on cyberspace, if
you are looking for talent.
> The mac is a detour in the inevitable march of mediocre computers.
> drs@bnlux0.bnl.gov (David R. Stampf)
--- David Phillip Oster -master of the ad hoc odd hack.
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu