| From: | Alfredo B Alves <dghost@****.COM> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: VR 2.0 |
| Date: | Thu, 28 May 1998 23:15:48 -0500 |
>Something tells me that this was discussed a long time ago, but I'd like
>to hear the thoughts of the present denizens of the list.
>
>In my opinion, Virtual Realities 2.0 is an excellent book; the rules and
>systems described are robust and detailed, and the wealth of information
>provided allows for campaigns set entirely within the Matrix, in which
>every character is a decker.
Agreed, VR 2.0 is my favorite SB, but then I'm a Comp Sci major so it
kinda follows ;)
>One aspect of the book bothers me, however: the methods by which deckers
>obtain their programs. Either they buy them, or they write them. Writing
>them takes excessive amounts of time: the example given of a decker with
a
>computer skill of 8 (damn good) taking a base time of 128 days to write
an
>Attack-8S program. Buying them is extremely expensive: Hacker House
sells
>computer programs for three million nuyen. That Attack-8S could be sold
>for 128,000 nuyen. That's a pretty amazing living, 1000 nuyen a day.
Well, check the difference in time in the timestamps on the posts in the
SBs, the difference is usually a few hundredths of a second ... if you
can read a post that on average (OTTOMH) runs 2-4 sentences, ponder, and
reply with another average post in .04 seconds, how much code can you
sling? If Shadowland was like IRC, I'd guess that SR deckers are
"typing" 100 times faster than we are in RL. However, Shadowland is a BBS
so that multiple (IMO) should skyrocket ... that's how the deckers (when
jacked into the matrix) can sling so much code.
>Both of these systems seem at odds with one of the aspects of deckers
>which I have always thought to be important: the idea that deckers write
>their own programs on a regular basis, indeed, use their own programs
>almost exclusively.
>
>Given good programming techniques, it seems reasonable to me that one
>should be able to 'upgrade' existing programs that you own. For example,
>one might buy an Attack-6M utility from some software house, hack it for
a
>while, upgrading it to Attack-8M, use it a bit, then hack it some more
to
>add DINAB capability. Eventually, the program will need an overhaul as
the
>additions begin to tax the design of the original program, but it I find
>it quite reasonable that competent deckers should be able to write
>programs which are not utterly from scratch.
I'm just starting in programming (kinda) and haven't gotten into OOP
(Object Oriented Programming) but I thought one point of OOP was that
it'd be easy to upgrade ...
<SNIP>
>
>Thoughts?
>
>Phil
Uhm ... hmmm... yeah, the VR system is good but like everything else in
SR, it sacrifices realism for ease/speed of play (though SR does this
much better than any other game sys, IMO) so yeah, you could muck around
with the sys but can ya do it without hampering game play? (It's usually
a bad sign if every player brings their own graphing calculator to the
game sessions ... ;)
D.Ghost
(aka Pixel, Tantrum, and RuPixel)
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