Volity news: further friend-trolling.

(Posting this here instead of mailing it to the handful who expressed interest earlier, since maybe some of you actually are interested and don't know it yet.)

As noted on the project homepage, Volity is now ready for Perl-hacking pioneers to start making simple[1] "third-party" game modules. While plenty of details remain to be worked out, the core of the platform -- and its Perl implementation -- is stable enough to support basic play. I hope that people who are not me trying to use the software, documentation, and network resources that the core team has prepared will make it clear (to us as much as anyone else) why Volity is such a mightily cool system, even as it draws out inadequacies and errors I'd never find by myself, ha ha.

If you're interested in using Perl to quickly and joyfully create Internet-based multiple-player games, I can point you at the developer's guide, and the software to download. You should feel free to ask me anything about Volity, from general questions about the system to detailed help with programming. Aye, you would have my full support and attention if you choose to undertake a Volity game project, because you'd be helping to validate something I've spent a whole year's worth of free time obsessing over, and this is very important to me.

Note that reality is lagging behind the guide in a few respects, particularly where references to volity.net are concerned. I hope to correct that this week. Until then, you can understand any mention of "Go to volity.net and do such-and-such" to mean "Ask jmac to do such-and-such for you."

[1] "Simple" here meaning "able to be played through a text interface", as that's the only usuable client UI-type we have now, though work continues apace on our GUI client.

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Ooops, I let the stay-at-home phase of my vacation last a day too long. Melancholy due to inactivity -- or at least monotony -- setting in. Not to worry; tomorrow I'll spend about the town (dude, I've barely left my house), and then I think I'll end my break with a long weekend on the road. That will be nice.

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Off to the Diesel now for dinner, tra la. If I can find a place to sit I'm going to do some further scheming about you-know-what. I feel bad mentioning all the work I still put into it, because it sounds like I'm trying to elicit sympathy, as with the books, but this is an entirely different sort of project: self-motivated. Working on it, my mood ranges from joyful at best, to cheerfully doubtful at worst. You're free to worry about me if you'd like, but know that I'm not asking you to this time, ha ha.

But I will confess: if it seems that I'm pushing harder at it lately, it's half because of the time I have during this break, and half because I really want to see the project get over some as-yet-unknowable conceptual hump and prove its worth, show that the whole idea isn't folly and a waste of my time. Making the project open for my friends is one way to get there, and another popped into my head while I was napping a little earlier. Just chatted with daerr about it, and he told me about some salient Perl modules. So, yes, off for sammich + manpages.

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I've been using the word salient too often, lately.

Other krep.

I have the kickingest assingest idea for a D&D campaign seed. I didn't ask for this; I haven't played D&D in many years, and haven't really wanted to. But it popped into my head anyway, univited, and I'm like, yeah, OK, I admit, that's pretty cool. Can't say if it will develop further or not, but I'll be watching.

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Hooray, hooray, the 19th of May, wireless speakers came today. (Via eBay.) By Advent, operating at 900MHz, and they work really well, actually. Now music and other noises from Stilton can reach me while I work or play in the living or dining room. I can be interrupted from my reading when my IM client three rooms away goes CLANGG because jtroutman wishes to laugh at me for thinking about expensive chairs. And rightly so.

While I'm thinking of more interesting uses for a ubiquitous sound system, they all pretty much boil down to that, at heart.

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Chemical compounds (and protiens) with silly names. Learn all about arsole, cummingtonite, and Tiggy-Winkle hedgedog.