This 1986 branching expert system was marketed as a game, and is a precursor to The Sims and other non-violent sociological games. I investigated it after reading about it in my history of computer games (citation needed) and saw especially that it purported to contain material from "Dr" Tim Leary.
it's a multichoice questionnaire which takes you through infancy,m childhood, adolescence etc, asking you how you would behave in certain situations - future situations are dictated by previous choices, thus allowing for statistics to be drawn up which in turn decide whether certain attempts (to chat up boys for an e.g.) are successful or not.
Despite being only text and radio buttons, the situations and responses are entertaining, penetrating and amusing, a sort of grown up Leisure Suit Larry.
you can play an online version here: http://www.playalterego.com/alterego
there's an interview with one of the contributors here: http://www.gnomeslair.com/2007/03/few-gnomish-questions-dr-peter-favaro.html
Wednesday 27 March 2013
Friday 15 March 2013
ANT COLONY SIMULATOR
Watching Planet Ant on the BBC. Have already emailed Andy Hart - will contact Bristol Uni's Ant Lab. Renergised an old idea of mine, inspired by living with Ants, both in India as an 11 year old
(when we were at Dharwad University accommodation visiting family friends working there. I was chased around the 70s open plan living room, and seriously frightened, by a pair of angry hornets , one of whom I later found on the floor next to my bed when I awoke the next day. A trail of ants were slowly dissecting it, and had laid its body parts out like a dismantled toy aeroplane, and I was fascinated by the way they had done this, how they organised themselves, and how I felt that they were my protectors, having clearly fought and killed my tormentor of the previous day)
...and when I've lived in Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam more recently, and realised how destructive they can be, both to crops, and to bags of sugar unwisely left on kitchen surfaces! Oh the flying termites in rainy season!
Main game idea:
On individual machines (including smart phones and tablet devices) mimic the behaviour of ants in a colony, each device modelling the behaviour of one ant. One can take control of one's ant, or transmit identity through pheromone exchange with another user.
Game play would involve negotiating the landscape to find food sources, new colony sites when old areas exhausted or too small, dealing with Acts of God ( or Mod! ) such as flooding, cave ins, attacks by Praying Mantides and eventually inter colony raids.
Aim is to grow the colony to allow more users to join. Different ant types could be modelled, allowing users to take on different tasks. Rock, fire, leaf cutter, etc
It would be a much simplified visual environment, pheromone trails represented as slowly fading coloured lines - green for leaves, red for alert, blue for queen etc. possibly black or white screen, vector edges.
Inspiration
THEM! Communist terror! 1950s giant ant movie and 80s Amiga game...
The ant colony is a computer, used in terry Pratchet's disk World Series, which, along with Tron, inspired my aesthetic ideas.
Empire of the ants, novel by Belgian, read as a late teen.
Travelling Salesperson Problem - ACO ant colony optimisation used to find shortish routes
(when we were at Dharwad University accommodation visiting family friends working there. I was chased around the 70s open plan living room, and seriously frightened, by a pair of angry hornets , one of whom I later found on the floor next to my bed when I awoke the next day. A trail of ants were slowly dissecting it, and had laid its body parts out like a dismantled toy aeroplane, and I was fascinated by the way they had done this, how they organised themselves, and how I felt that they were my protectors, having clearly fought and killed my tormentor of the previous day)
...and when I've lived in Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam more recently, and realised how destructive they can be, both to crops, and to bags of sugar unwisely left on kitchen surfaces! Oh the flying termites in rainy season!
Main game idea:
On individual machines (including smart phones and tablet devices) mimic the behaviour of ants in a colony, each device modelling the behaviour of one ant. One can take control of one's ant, or transmit identity through pheromone exchange with another user.
Game play would involve negotiating the landscape to find food sources, new colony sites when old areas exhausted or too small, dealing with Acts of God ( or Mod! ) such as flooding, cave ins, attacks by Praying Mantides and eventually inter colony raids.
Aim is to grow the colony to allow more users to join. Different ant types could be modelled, allowing users to take on different tasks. Rock, fire, leaf cutter, etc
It would be a much simplified visual environment, pheromone trails represented as slowly fading coloured lines - green for leaves, red for alert, blue for queen etc. possibly black or white screen, vector edges.
Inspiration
THEM! Communist terror! 1950s giant ant movie and 80s Amiga game...
The ant colony is a computer, used in terry Pratchet's disk World Series, which, along with Tron, inspired my aesthetic ideas.
Empire of the ants, novel by Belgian, read as a late teen.
Travelling Salesperson Problem - ACO ant colony optimisation used to find shortish routes
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