Tours of Passport Worlds
Figure 11.19 ch2c.jpg
Float
around the Octagon.
The Octagon is a floating pavilion, which is a gateway to many
other worlds. I visited it in search of a guide to take me around
the Black Sun universe.
Kerri takes me to PointWorld
Kerri, a medieval damsel avatar, turned out to be my guide
for the day. As I was dressed as a dashing medieval bard, we were
a great match!
Figure 11.20 ch3b.jpg
I
Establish a good connection with Kerri.
Kerri is from Illinois, and is an old hand at the Black Sun landscape.
I wanted to know where the most action was, and she said it was
in PointWorld, the oldest and still the most frequented spot hosted
by Black Sun.
Figure 11.21 ch3c.jpg
Kerri
shows me the door to the old PointWorld.
Kerri helped me navigate down into the center of the Octagon,
where there were doors to many worlds. Navigation in Passport
is based on the VRML plug-in browsers, which were not originally
built with virtual worlds in mind. Getting around can be awkward,
and I found it very hard to follow Kerri. I even shot past her
and outside of the Octagon once. I hope that the navigation will
improve, and become as easy as it is in game worlds such as Doom
or the original Worlds Chat.
We found a doorway to PointWorld (actually a brick wall), and
by holding my mouse over it, I saw that I could enter PointWorld
here. Clicking on this wall started to load PointWorld, and we
soon found ourselves there.
Figure 11.22 ch3e.jpg
I'm
here with Kerri in PointWorld.
PointWorld is a cool digital plain with a lot of objects that
link to other worlds. I thanked Kerri, and she left me to tour
around on my own. I invited her to join the friends list in my
Home Chat line so that I could chat with her if I ever found her
online again.
Emperor P'ter and his New Year's bash
The true power of Black Sun's approach is apparent when
you see the large number of worlds built by users. This open approach
even allows users to design their own avatars. One example is
a 13-year-old called Emperor P'ter, who I met in
his world on New Year's Eve of 1996. Since I was pretty
much stuck writing this book (even on New Year's Eve!),
I decided to see what was going on online. Emperor P'ter
had been wandering in the heavily populated Entry Plaza recruiting
people to come to his world for the stroke of midnight (in various
time zones). Emperor P'ter had built his own world out
of VRML 1.0, and had made his own avatar (which looked like a
flaming king about to run you through). In the world, he had set
a table with champagne and glasses and a clock that actually told
real time. You can see it all in the following figure. He attracted
a whole stream of guests, offering them champagne, and pointing
them to the clock. As he was explaining, someone had come in disguised
as a table…ìhis av is a table thing.î If you
want to be a spy in a virtual world, just come in looking like
the furniture!
Figure 11.23 ch5g.jpg
Emperor
P'ter holds court in his own castle.