The Planet X Project -- Task List

First, an email message sent to the Planet X crew from Brian Slator:

This document is intended to capture the assignments and implementation details that will lead to the creation of the Geologer game on the surface of Planet X.

  • Descriptions

    1. Need 1 or 2 Geologists and 1 or 2 other volunteers to review and revise the room, rock, mineral, instrument, object and exit messages. There are lots of these, a couple of hundred, easily.
    2. This task requires good English skills, good writing skills, accurate information, and consistency.

    3. Rock and Mineral Management

      1. Need 5-7 volunteers to each take responsibility for a handful of the rocks and minerals
      2. Rocks need to be divided into a taxonomy of sizes, in a property .size_state just as was done with Granodiorite(#610): one of boulder, block, stone, gravel, pebble, sand, powder, in order of strictly decreasing size
      3. Rocks each need a 3-4 word description that fits with their .size_state property
      4. Each rock and mineral needs to be fertile and locked in the Rock Museum with (what I'm calling) nominative names: i.e. Slate, Granite, etc.
      5. Each rock and mineral needs to produce children with (what I'm calling) descriptive names; i.e. Smooth Grey Slab, Grey Speckled Outcrop, etc.;
      6. Each of these children needs to be created, transported to the appropriate rooms, and locked in place
      7. Each of these children needs to produce grandchildren that are sized and have descriptive names, and are moveable
      8. Each Rock and Mineral needs to have an encrypted .secret_name property so players can "guess" at an identity and the system can check the answer (this might not be necessary, the inheritance mechanism might do just as well).
      9. Need each rock to have a .minerals property that contains a list of proportion/mineral pairs, where the minerals are not string, as now, but are mineral objects.
      10. Need further specialization of rocks and minerals for authenticity (i.e. Granite is not enough, we need different kinds/colors of Granite)

      11. Testing

        1. Need volunteers now to find problems and report them, via email, so a big task (To Do) list can be started and maintained
        2. Need volunteers in August to play the game and report problems and give suggestions.

        3. Property Management

          1. Need a comprehensive plan so properties and verbs can be stored at the RIGHT level in the object hierarchy.
          2. Need a routine to fix the existing hierarchy
            (Progress Report: THIS IS DONE, AS OF 18JUN97).

          3. Instrument Management

            1. Need all the instruments collected in the Laboratory, some should be fertile, some should not be
              (Progress Report: (I have created some new rooms around the Laboratory, the field instruments have been moved to a new room I called the Equipment Locker -- players SHOULD be able to @create new instruments for themselves, even now, although I haven't tested this yet).
            2. Instead of the present Equipment Locker solution, the instruments need a set of verbs defined on them that allow copies to be given to players in a controlled fashion and players could/should be charged for them.
              (Progress Report: I have moved all the instruments into the Laboratory (#487). They are all locked there. We need an equipment cabinet, or some such, so players can get their field instruments and take them away. The field instruments should be fertile, the laboratory instruments should not. I've added a .dollar_value field to the instruments. Maybe the players should get charged virtual money for their stuff.
              Progress Report I have created a .dollar_value property on instruments because one way to keep score is to see whether a player's findings exceed the value of their tools -- it's a thought).
              The field instruments should have a verb like "buy" or "issue" or some such, that creates a child of the intrument, changes ownership to the player, charges them the purchase price, and so forth. ( see               purchasing instruments in the design document for further detail).
            3. Need some more instruments
              1. a flashlight so that objects can be hidden in "dark" places and revealed by the presence of the light. (Mr. Haugen?).
              2. a First Aid kit

            4. Game Design and Implementation

              Many of the items in this section are open to discussion. What, exactly, should the Planet X game BE? Some of these items are long range, and I've marked them with a (LR).

              1. Need a new login routine that will take a list of names and NAID (for password) and will create a player that has at least a note in their contents (and possibly a standard issue of field instruments).
                (see                 Login Issues)
              2. Need to write a plausible list of player goal notes to distribute at login (see Goals)
              3. Need a way to track player activity, and a way to calculate "usage" (so that brute force approaches will not for a winning strategy); i.e. a combination of time and moves that will cause a player to "starve" or some such. (see Tracking)
              4. (LR)Need to develop a rock/mineral identification scheme, either tied to a course textbook, or to an online handbook. The problem here is to detect when a player has correctly/incorrectly "guessed" at a rock/mineral identification.
              5. Need to develop a set of verbs so that players can report their findings and thus achieve their goals (see Reporting)
              6. Need to develop an evaluation function so players can get a score and compete with others and themselves. (see Scoring)
              7. Need to develop a "help" system so players can ask about Geology, and the conventions of Planet X
              8. (LR)Need an "advice" system so players can learn "how to play the Geology game". The advice system really ought to be developed on the model of software agents that guide and tutor in the course of game play.
              9. Need a transcript function so player moves can be analyzed in order to improve later designs (see Tracking)
              10. (LR)Need a set of evaluation forms to get user feedback and assess whether they have profited by their experience on Planet X.

              11. Planet Design and Implementation

                Most of the items in this section are open to discussion. This section reflects the design questions that determine the focus of the Planet. Some of these items are long range, and I've marked them with a (LR).

                1. Need volunteer Geologists to inspect the planet and compile lists of corrections.
                2. Need to design more active phenomena: geysers, volcanos, others
                3. Need to design the planet for effects like variations in gravity and so forth
                4. Need to continue the work on (what I'm calling) "atmosphere agents". These are animated artifacts, like dogs, squirrels and cave bats, and vegetation, and perhaps other entities like whirlwinds and rock slides that add to the richness and authenticity of the virtual world.
                5. (LR)Need to consider the design of Planet X substrate (right now Planet X is only about 30 feet "deep").
                6. (LR)Need to design a coherent system of hydrology, so the rivers, lakes etc. act in the proper way.
                7. (LR)Need to design a system of weather, so that Planet X actually has a great outdoors sense to it.

                  Send comments to:                   slator@badlands.nodak.edu