Talk:HorizonVirtual:Places

I wonder whether it's worth developing the idea of a mirrored web site as a sort of "alternate plane" to an existing server. It might not be feasible, as I imagine the back-end would probably make the actual System itself different enough that it's still easily identifiable as somewhere else, but it might meet the criteria for a spell/rewrite that shifts players to "alternate" planes.

--IMAGinES 18:58, 10 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Conditions

Terrain

NOTE: As even PCs can be maintained, upgraded or even reformatted, Program Space is to a degree mutable. The overall theme is unlikely to change, but individual buildings may suddenly move (reboot after upgrade). Then again, if a User minute equals a Program day, and a de-fragmentation or antivirus scan often takes half an hour to run, a borough or town may be undergoing a slow shuffling process while the players are present. Any maps they have will probably stay constant, as the File Allocation Table updates itself.

It’s also worth noting that a User’s scheduled weekly virus scan happens just over once a Program year.

• Broken Terrain or Hills indicates disorganised, fragmented data. (Earthquakes as de-fragmentation, overclocked PC or virus attacks?)
• Steep, thin valleys through hilly regions – low-bandwidth connections, i.e. dialup?

Weather

Rain and fog: system effects like defragmentation, or perhaps a result of system congestion.

Timekeeping

Personal Time

No real day or night. Anywhere from ten to twenty-four Program hours to shut a given computer down; an evening’s use of a home PC can equal up to eight Program months of up-time.

Lifespans

No real upper limit on a program’s lifespan; a mobile waker could live for centuries of Program Time.

No time passes for programs on a shut down computer. Not dead; effectively deep hibernation.