Greetings, Twisted folks, As Chris mentioned, Reality is about to undergo some refactoring. If you are interested in this process, drop a line. Perhaps a new reality-dev list at twistedmatrix.com is in order. For those of you I haven't met yet, I'm a game developer and serious Python addict. I've committed a large portion of my adult life working toward the growth and development of virtual worlds. My current project is the culmination of many years of work. The specific game design I'm working on is called "Netsu" (which is Japanese for "heat" or "fever"). It's an anime-inspired world which incorporates multiple perspectives of play and a reputation network for players to self-organize. It's going to be fun. :-) As I develop use cases and other design documentation for Netsu, I intend to keep them as portable as possible between gaming systems, so that they can benefit the most people. I anticipate this work feeding back into Twisted Reality, expanding it to be a more general simulation framework. And now a little history... The genesis of the project began with my work on virtual reality systems in the early 90's. I developed virtual building walkthroughs for architects, VR games, and created the first hardware accelerated PC-based virtual actor system for Compaq. This work was all done with C and C++, and it was during this period that I realized the need for a dynamic and interactive way to "reach inside" the simulation and manipulate it. And that's how I first became acquainted with Python. :-) The next major phase was to build a 3D client engine with Python embedded as a control language. The fruits of that effort are described in the paper I presented at Python 7, "Beyond: A Portable Virtual World Simulation Framework". (This was also the first mention of 'Netsu'.) In 1998, the next phase of development took a turn when I was recruited into Origin Systems to work on developing the Python foundation for the Ultima Online 2 project. The focus during the period was on innovation on the server side and on client-server communication. The results of that labor are described in another paper presented at Python 9, "Python for Massively Multiplayer Virtual Worlds". [ Both papers at: http://www.asbahr.com/papers.html ] To this point, the software developed was all closed source. The desire for an open source virtual world system was lurking in my head, but it wasn't until the O'Reilly Open Source conference in 2000 that my plan for the open source virtual world crystallized. [ The notes made during that period have evolved into the Linux Journal article which I'll share with you shortly. ] At the 2001 O'Reilly conference, while presenting on the UO2 design work, I took the opportunity to discuss my plans for the future open source virtual world system. The response was extremely positive, which included the invitation to write the LJ article on the subject. :-) Currently, I'm working on combining a number of existing open source technologies to build the new virtual world system. These include the 'Nebula Device' 3D engine from Germany on the client side, the Twisted framework for server-side and client-server communication, and the OpenCyc knowledge base as server-side archetype repository and artificial intelligence server. Glyph and I have been meeting periodically over the last few months to discuss these issues, which intersect nicely with his long term plans for gaming. I've also been meeting with the Cycorp folks (who happen to be just down the road from me) to discuss integrating Cyc and driving Python class generation from Cyc. I'm in the process of integrating Python into the Nebula Device, which will be quickly followed by integrating PB and making Nebula one of the first 3D clients for Twisted. (Yay!) Recently, Chris and I began to share some thoughts. As I mentioned to him, after I wrap up my current consulting project (porting Python to the Playstation 2 and developing a GUI for designers to build Python logic), I'm devoting 100% of my time to Netsu and open source development. I am committed to delivering the next generation open source virtual world framework for gaming, education, simulation, and training. It is my hope that this collaborative approach for virtual world simulation grows, spreading the Twisted word and providing a foundation to help other developers achieve their own goals. Join us! :-) Cheers, Jason