I got a suggestion

I think linded lab should make a second copy of SL that is a little smaller so computers that arent good enough can still play. That would be great. But I dont think it is possible.

This made me think of something I saw a while back: text-mode Quake. See http://www.jfedor.org/aaquake2/

Short of something like that, it could be possible to make some SL functionality available through the web site. I think I saw Instant Messaging and/or Inventory management suggested.

It's a lot more work to support an environment like SL at multiple levels of hardware capability though, so if anything it's likely that overall, the hardware requirements for SL will go up, rather than down.

Still, eventually it would be nice to see SL supported on a wider range of systems, and at least a wider range of video cards. I had to buy a new video card just to use SL, and I think it was worth it, but there are a lot of people out there with non-supported video cards or other hardware who'd probably use SL if they could.

As /111/43/37575/1.html shows, some less-than-supported configurations, specifically Windows ME, look like they will be completely incompatible with 1.6.

I'd actually like to see a *really* stripped down text-only version that would work like a MUD/MUSH, let you connect, navigate, get descriptions of avs and objects, etc.

1 - It would really help open up access for lesser computers and low bandwidth users
2 - It would (I think) put less strain on the servers
3 - It would make SL more accessable to the vision-impaired.

I don't think it would be that hard to do, either.

Guess I'll post this in the Hotline.

neko

where would the descriptions of things come from? would it rely on people to write descriptions for every object they make and their av and all their clothes? would people in the real SL be seeing text only players wandering around and interacting with them? seems like that would be unlikely.

not trying to be rude or anything but why not just play a MUSH? they're basically SL only just text aren't they?

Zuzi,

I don't think these are rude questions. They all seem reasonable to me.

It's true that in a lot of cases you'd just get "object" as the name of something, because that's all people enter (which I think is too bad even for those of us playing the regular way). But you can actually get quite a lot more detail than that even without anyone manually entering things. You can, for example, get someone's position, height, gender, hair color, the names of the clothes they're wearing, and the names of any animations they are playing. You could be told if someone has a long ponytail, or spiky hair, or bald, which are probably more interesting to a blind person than hair color anyway. You can get the size of objects, what they're made of, their color, the name of the texture used on them (if any), etc. If someone *has* actually given an object a name and description, of course, it would be a lot more interesting. And of course, you get all the chat.

The thing I may not have made clear is that the text login should still be represented in-world by an avatar, so other players wouldn't know it was a text login, they would interact normally with the avatar. The person logging in would be able to move around, play gestures and animations, execute scripts, etc., but would be doing it by using typed commands, rather than mouse commands.

As far as why a blind person would play SL instead of a MUSH, I would guess it would be because SL is where their friends are, or because they heard some really cool things about SL or something happening in SL, and wanted to experience it. I haven't done a survey of vision-impaired people to find out if they want to do this, and that should probably be done before a lot of effort is invested. But generally speaking, people with disabilities like being able to access the same services as everyone else. And if LL wants to promote SL as "the" place to meet on-line, making it more accessable to different types of users seems like a really good idea to me.

And again, those with ordinary vision but older computers or slower network connections (or restrictive firewalls) could use this interface, too.

neko

"You just touched 'Object'"

"Object says, 'Hello, Avatar'".

> Griefer Moonflower shot you with "Push Gun"
> You are flying through Ahern.
> You are flying through Morris.
> You are flying through Oak Grove.
> You have landed in Oak Grove. Splat.
>



interesting idea tho. the weird thing about it would be that text games i think are usually set up in little rooms so you get quick descriptions of what's near by but in SL the closest to a "room" is a sim which is way way bigger than on a MUSH. so trying to get continuous descriptions of things around you as you flew or walked would be weird. i pity any text user who got stuck in somebody's house and had to find the way out. i mean since on a MUSH you don't really move around in a room you just see generally what's around you then go north or south or whatever to the next "room" without actually having to go around furniture or find doorways.

Lol, yeah.

I think what you'd want to do is provide a nesting description of location, e.g. "You are inside object X, inside plot Y, inside sim Z". You'd need to indicate which way to go to move through unoccupied space or phantom objects, or at least indicate "you can't go that way" if the player tried to move through something. A normal move would take you 5 m, unless you wanted to say, for example, "go 2 meters north" (or shorthand "go 2 m n". You should automatically "see" (get a list of) everything within, say, 10 m, and beyond that just say "In the distance you see [plot P]," or list objects bigger than a certain size within 100 m, or some other strategy analogous to the draw distance with the regular client, probably settable by the user.

You'd sort of be quantizing the grid, which would give less flexibility, but would make navigation a lot easier. One aspect that would be inherently easier than MU* games is that the geometry is Euclidian by default -- you don't go north and arrive on the west side of a room, etc.

An alternative would be a rendering option on the regular client that makes bas-relief versions of everything without worrying about color -- I think there are some pin-raising output devices that could use this. Would be nice if you could substitute a braille font for the default system font, and still use mouse-hover tooltips. But I still like the text-based idea.

neko

I believe LL is working on a linux client. Maybe that will mean you could play with PC's that are not supported right now. But probably very very slow....

As an aside, I feel LL should implement backend IRC to Second Life by sim, then pipe that in and out of the world in some form. That would solve the community gap, in my opinion.

After all, we can do that now as residents! People are just too lazy to do so.

Say...

That could be VERY usefull when trying to manuver on a laggy simm for ALL players, not just disabled individuals...

Rather than flailing about at random in a vain attempt to manuver your AV to the specific spot you want, you could just type in where you want to go and actualy go there before you are old and grey and have pissed everyone else in the area off by body slamming them multiple times accidentaly (instant pinball style mosh pit ).

Racer P.