1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke

...I swear I'll clean this stuff up eventually.

the gist of it

See here for everything (newer stuff at the bottom)

General summary of the chaos:
1. AI, where mentioned is comparable to human intelligence
2. The AR stuff is visible with some kind of a headset (glasses, or contact lenses) that almost everyone has
3. It's possible to control an avatar from home that can venture out into the AR world? (VR?)
4. AR aural and touch feedback are limited (in most cases)
5. There are a bunch of separate AR apps/games/servers which appear as various kinds of skins over the world
5.5 Most are distributed over some official network (in which case there are certain rules that have to be adhered to e.g. no masking of traffic roads to ensure the person's safety) but there's a thriving underground scene as well (ranging from stuff that just wasn't accepted into the official store, to stuff that's highly dangerous)
6. Some AI was created that somehow gave sentience to random things (e.g. NPCs in games), possibly through a virus, and eventually causes other things to happen that make it some kind of threat
7. The sentience appears gradually and all over the place, so no one notices it immediately or thinks they're all related
8. It's sunk in by the time anyone realises it
9. Efforts have been made to trace the source of the virus but nothing comes up for long enough for people to get used to sentient NPCs
10. Generally nothing huge, but chaos happens in some parts (event NPCs responding to bribes? lol)

Dump of ideas:
1. (re: the possibility that getting rid of the AI would cause all virus-infected individuals to lose their sentience) Opposing faction that want to protect the AI from being removed, either by violent or peaceful means
2. Some dude with no life who plays/uses several games/apps and first notices the possibility that something is odd
3. Hacker group that looks into the virus and possibly comes up with a bunch of tools that can be used against the AI itself/track the AI's movements/anything that's techy (anti-AI)
3.5 Hacker group that looks into the virus and possibly comes up with things to protect the AI (pro-AI)
3.75 Hacker group that looks into the virus and does things for whoever asks them for help (all anonymously)
4. Gamer pop star idol (does ads for a certain popular game and sometimes shows up in person on the streets, but usually plays under another alias, hides behind an avatar)
5. Guy who pretends to be a girl to get free stuff from other players
6. Virus-infected NPC(s) who don't want to lose sentience
7. Virus-infected NPC(s) who want to lose sentience
8. Virus-infected NPC(s) who don't particularly care
9. Group that takes part in illegal activities, using sentient NPCs to handle dirty work because NPCs don't leave records behind
10. Crabby old lady who refuses to use all these newfangled glasses things and ends up seeing something that no one else does because she's looking at reality
11. NPC(s) that exist(s) across/has access to all official apps/games and certain third-party apps/games due to a law that requires their existence (e.g. traffic cop? information character?)

Dump of ideas (games/apps/servers):
1. World's end (100% unauthorised, buildings where there aren't buildings, roads where there aren't roads, discarded things, real objects skinned to be invisible, generally a junkyard that's dangerous to walk through without constantly looking at reality. Access unobtainable except by special means (e.g. by hacking together a launcher that opens into the app's server))
2. Several other unauthorised ones similar to the above that aren't so hazardous (buildings and roads correspond, but glitchy skins and lots of porn lying around)
3. Popular fantasy game world
4. Battle server (used across all games/apps that have a battle feature, so you can battle anyone who's registered on this server regardless of which game they play, if any; of course this means each game has to balance their equipment stats equally. Battle can only occur between avatars and not between real people?)
5. Other not-so-popular fantasy game worlds

Other thoughts:
1. http://w-shadow.com/blog/2008/09/17/notes-on-emergent-internet-sentience/
2. http://w-shadow.com/blog/2008/01/31/friendship-evolution-and-evil-ai-cliches/
3. http://singinst.org/upload/CFAI.html
4. Would the AI take on a tangible form? (some kind of an information crawler?)
5. http://www.schizophrenic.com/news/schizophrenia-research/scientists-induce-schizophrenia-computerized-brain

thinky thoughts

Visual thinking goooo. Hover over link for my thoughts/commentary. @meta Throw me your ideas in the comments if you want?

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Other things:
1. 'verse needs a proper name (leaning heavily towards World's End)
2. Popular game needs a proper name (fun stuff if it means something like world's beginning)
3. Need to think about other games/apps
4. Need excuses to draw interesting-looking characters

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070612
Revisiting this verse. I guess I last thought about it at the beginning of the year so that wasn't way too long ago, but ehhh it feels like it's been a while.
Better log the stuff that hasn't been logged yet-
Myxi members - ■■■

Ideas I like:
- virtual war - a large-scale war breaks out on the battle server. Giant guilds vs. giant guilds, cross-game, cross-app, cross-everything. Actual RL riots occur maybe a couple of times. Some gangs (guilds) taking to the streets etc. Large-scale virtual vandalism and general chaos everywhere. Anyone not too involved in the V/AR stuff probably don't really know about it/just thinks of it as an inconvenience, but anyone who uses it regularly will have an idea of how virtually dangerous it is (rampant PVP etc.).
No idea about the cause - maybe some people who are really vocal about the whole AI thing (AI PETA??), plus some trolls...some misunderstandings between the most powerful guilds, people who jump onto it because it's totally edgy cool to have archenemies, people who've lost touch with reality and think they're on some kind of crusade...actual crime organizations being involved, something valuable that got lost...I think it'd be fairly interesting to cook up a number of plotlines that would add up to the war breaking out.
- a base on which everything else is built- that is, there's a common base to all the apps/skins/whatever. Something like the Internet in general (things to think of: SOPA/free Internet), vs. particular sites/browsers/add-ons etc. I...guess it might be the new Internet or something (see: Megaman Battle Network series). Actually Megaman is a good example of what I'm thinking of- it's possible to jack into almost everything (Battle Network), it's possible to see virtual things with special glasses (Ryuusei no Rockman).

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230113
So I've been thinking about this recently because I have a few characters that I like but don't have homes at the moment...
The popular MMO is Genesis (as named a long...time...ago...), it's a mainly fantasy setting somewhat similar to RO's (culture-specific areas and occasional modern items like headphones). Conveniently dump all fantasy-themed characters in this game, the end.
cough anyways since the characters I'd still like to use all happen to be dragon kemonomimis with similar features (Frae, Ivette, PFVII siblings...) I want to make them a race...probably with the ability to toggle between human/dragon form if they have a special event item (which Frae once possesses, then it gets stolen from him and he gets stuck in loli form...also Frae's player is an ossan who bought the account with Frae on it, the character's actually pretty high levelled and the account's loaded with rare stuff)

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050513

From twitter

geometric primitives team, pixel line and triangle; pixel is pixel because his thinking is square (so people have told him), line is
v. straightforward I haven't really thought him out, triangle is a girl and kind of thorny, really sharp little sister (not necessarily
blood-related) to pixel

pixel is kind of boke, speaks his mind, probably results in some funnies when he hits the limits of his imagination

idk what he does for the group, probably legwork + some PR? the team's frontline fighter when it comes to VR battles

I suppose he's most worried about losing the things he cares about, given that his first AI companion ran off-- that should have happened
quite a while ago so he's over it but doesn't forget, deals by keeping a closer eye on the people/things he cares about

maybe a bit overprotective? hmmm
/thinks of the connection between square thinking and overprotectiveness

I suppose it's not so much being unimaginative/stupid as going down one line of thought and being trapped by it/blind to other possibilities

I'm kind of extremely tempted to call the team "tetromino" it's such a cute word
that implies a group of 4 though...

physical appearance-wise:
- pixel theme obvs
- psychedelic colour scheme, sort of leaning towards CMY(K) though I'm not sure, possibly interchangeable
- pretty sure I want hair that's at least slightly long, trying to find a womens hairstyle that can actually look pretty cool

---

190713

Just quickly writing up thoughts I've had for these characters

Casper

Tetro's leader, very into the battle scene.
Maybe a little old-fashioned. Tends to cling to old familiar things.
Somewhat enthusiastic, can get pretty high-strung, likes to keep moving around. Also very low tolerance for horror.
He tries to look after everyone, but often feels he doesn't have the ability to protect them and this worries him a lot.

Trin

pic
More saturated version of the one in the collection at the bottom, I think it looks better this way...I was thinking of making Tetro really bright and pop colours anyway so

She bullies Casper whenever possible. Very protective of Alex and Aludra. Good relations with Grey, also is enough of a regular player of the puzzle game to be familiar with Candice. I guess she doesn't really appear to be a human relations person at first impressions since she makes jabs at the people she's familiar with, but she can be really polite.
The strategist of the group. Always strives for elegant solutions but not beyond brute force.

She's also pretty short.

Grey

For some reason I haven't yet decided on she stays at home and never goes out. She's afraid of the outside world - similar to Alex, she's ok with exploring it through VR because it's not real. Maybe something hurt her in the outside world and she doesn't want to go out again.

Within the limits of the areas she can access (since it requires having visited areas IRL to visit in VR) she gathers information for Tetro, she's pretty much up-to-date with everything that's going on and has a bunch of online contacts.
re: area limits it's something that frustrates her because she doesn't want to go out and expand her territory, her family's not willing to do it for her because they'd rather she go out, and she doesn't really have IRL friends who'll do it for her. At this point she hasn't even met the rest of Tetro IRL. She resorts to getting info from contacts who have access instead.

Her familiars are walking teapots/teacups. They're under the same area limits, but they can move freely within.

When she's not monitoring the streets she engages in minor hobbies but she's not skilled enough for these to be of particular note.
Incidentally she defaults to male avatar whenever possible.

Arthur

He keeps to himself a lot, and appears to do things on a whim, so it seems weird that he still bothers to carry out his NPC duties even though he could technically run away and do whatever he wants.

Maybe though, he actually does care about the game he was made for, and wants to make sure it keeps running smoothly.

No one knows though, because he never tells anyone...

Candice

She tries her best.

Alex

pic
white/peach-ish gold/red, original design by Kuro/Milleto I love her lots but can never draw her properly weeps in corner...
Colours made to match with this guy, he'll need some tweaking himself

Theme: courage.
She's very stoic, almost nothing freaks her out (on the other hand, her brother is rather a lot more high-strung)...I think she manages to convince herself that it's not real, so even when she's watching horror movies, or standing before Roy in VR she can keep her cool...until she learns that WE (or rather WE-related things?) can actually physically affect people (Aldric to be specific), and then runs into WE/Rei herself...
I want her to think about how she's distancing herself from everything by telling herself it's not real (sort of) and how to deal when it actually is real and she has to face up to it in order to protect the people she cares about.

pics of most of them, not finalised just what they look like in my head sort of...

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020813

Trying to build up some plot, I definitely want to make games so yeah
Thinking about it from a game perspective, or at least, I can imagine these scenes in 2D pixel format...

Building around Alex as MC. I'm not sure what kind of game I want to make for her for sure (my favourite is obvs horror exploration/survival but I want to save that for a more important part of the plot eventually) but I still want exploration!!

Thinking of a battle system along the lines of Children of Mana/Zelda (fighting is more satisfying in Children of Mana though), real time sword-swinging and all that. It'd be cute if it looked like an MMORPG?? with the character names above their heads and everything...but then there's the problem of making up monsters and everything, I don't really want to go too deep into the battle mechanics/bestiary since it's not quite the point...I want it to be there but not a main feature, more like a thing that supports the game rather than is the game itself? if that makes sense? but I'm not sure how to make that point carry itself over. Limited areas for Genesis exploration (in VR), I guess...

Plot-wise, I have about this much:

A week or so ago
- Aldric was found unconscious and alone in a secluded place, no trace of what happened to him
- He was still online (AR) at the time
- Discovered by Aludra, who went to look for him - she can check up his GPS location ok, this is totally a feature, your friends can see where exactly you are (if you let them + you're online)

Shortly before start of summer
- Aludra talks about it to Trin and Alex, she's obvs upset and wants to look into it
- Stuff above can be flashback
- She had a quick look around at the time but didn't see anything
- Suggests they meet up and have a better look around the place when the holidays start
- ^this would also be Aludra's first IRL meetup with both of them, might as well do it since it's the holidays

Last day of school
- Test of courage activity with Alex/Trin/their classmates. The supposedly haunted school building at night
- Not actually haunted, but has some AR props set up
- WE coincidentally shows up at school that night. Unwitting classmate wanders in thinking it's part of the setup, gets KO'd.
- Alex also wanders in, but only catches sight of Rei escaping. Between the somewhat unnerving environment and an unconscious classmate she logs out of AR, calls for help
- When her classmates catch up, she mentions the AR world being weird, but no one else currently logged in sees anything and it's gone when she logs in to check again.

Start of holidays
- As it happens the meeting's called off because Trin and Aludra both happen to be busy on the scheduled date
- Alex decides to pop down and have a look anyway
- It's an abandoned place that's overrun with wild plants, somewhat well known to urban explorers. See Helensburgh (abandoned train station) for visual reference, I'd love an underground/below ground level station with skylights (for the plants to grow) though...
- She doesn't see anything particuarly weird there, the AR system still works there though
- She runs into Roy there though, he's sniffing out Rei's trail pretty much
- After some discussion (the specific content of which I haven't decided upon) Roy decides to follow Alex because 1. a human who has a clue about what he's looking for; 2. if he keeps wandering around in normal form people are gonna fight him in VR, he can't go into heavily populated areas

After this I have no idea what really happens
A few things though:
- Aldric is not 100% stranger to the more covert side of the internet (for lack of a better term I'll call the hacker network (including WR/BC/etc.) and things involving the inner workings of WE/Eve the undernet)
- No idea as of yet how much connection he should have with the undernet but it led him to the place he was found unconscious
- That was (probably) Rei's doing though
- Also no one knows about this
- Rei is almost always found in WE, she's searching inside it though sometimes it disappears and she has to catch up with it again
- No idea what the final goal is though - stop Rei? Maybe? Perhaps she goes around KOing people or something, idk

Slight concerns:
- One billion characters and maybe another billion more to introduce..................
- Could have a character profiles list I guess
- How long should this even be

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030813

I was getting agitated over this going nowhere because I wanted to dive into it and attack all the things and work out a ton of stuff at one go which is like the fun part and then I realised

that hasn't ever happened before re: plot has...it...

All my universes generally consist of me flopping over the plot details forever and never settling on them _(:'3 I only really enjoy doing the technical bits and thinking of characters...even Thief's wasn't very plot-heavy because I never came up with it...............yeah ok got to break out of the slice-of-life comfort zone thing, gonna do it

So I think it'd be nice to try to come up with something every day, even if it's just a little...at the moment my characters don't have any real established social links with characters that aren't mine so I can continue to work alone, it'd be great if they could get to know others eventually though

So so so because I got RPG Maker VX Ace downloaded and installed today I'm thinking of games, I want to talk about games.

I don't think I've mentioned it in detail in this post or anywhere easily accessible yet so I'll just note it down here:
~5 games with RPG Maker, that is, the 2D format sort of thing
- they'll all be of sort of different genres? format? kind of
- the first 4: zelda-ish exploration adventure?, puzzle platformerish? (can this be done in RPG Maker, I suppose it might but it might be difficult, idk), idk about the rest actually
- the last one is the classic survival horror/exploration...ideally? the others have a few horror elements too (since well that's WE for you) but it's not really the main focus
- the 5th is a hidden unannounced game (it needs to be available beforehand though), the DL link is obtained through playing the games - in other words the entire! plot!! needs to be mostly done by the time I start working on the games
- this 5th game has parts that are unlockable with passwords obtained from the other games, clearing all of them leads to the true ending and solutions to the mysteries that were left unsolved in the other 4 games
- unsolved mysteries are fairly small things though, like coincidences that appear to have happened for no reason - e.g. a door was open at a crucial time even though it was previously locked
- the stories are linked whether by common characters or influence by the other story lines or both.
- they should, however, be playable and complete as standalone games without knowledge of the others...the timeline is fairly fuzzy (it could happen at the same time, or somewhere within a similar period of time - the exact date is probably not specified)

I've never used RPG Maker before but it looks like it'd be interesting, I want to play around with it some more but I've got homework.....I also want to start building but I don't know where to start building since we've got no plot and I've got no art resources.
I think most crucially we need to know specific locations (so I can make the tiles), characters (for character art/sprites) and have some dialogue/events to start scripting from. I can probably recycle tiles between games, so it should...save some energy...but I'll likely have to make new maps, I don't think that's too much trouble though.
It seems like a ton of work so I'm impressed people make these games on their own, wow...

The list of resources I currently need (for each game) is pretty much
- location design
- tiles (follows from above)
- character art (sprites + portraits)
- event/ending CGs (I want to do these ok!!!)
- menu/HUD design and art
- plot
- script
- scripts (code)
- music

I'm always a little twitchy about the licensing issues when using free resources so I'm quite tempted to code up any and all custom scripts we might need, plus it'd help me learn scripting for RPG Maker and satisfy my DIY obsession. The downside is that it might be reinventing the wheel and take more time than it needs. I'll just have to see how it is, though I'm pretty sure it can't be worse than rushing some of my school assignments...

Speaking of DIY I also want to do the music, it's a thing that I've been wanting to do, making music...

Nnnnnnnnn I just want to do everything with my own hands because it's my baby, I want to oversee everything, I want to put in the effort for everything and custom all the things...I don't care if it means doing research on things I've never done before and learning how to do them, that's the fun part too!! Literally cannot sit still thinking there's something I can possibly do that I'm not doing, that's one of the worst kinds of feeling, I must do all the things

actually why I have one billion hobbies

I guess I should dump some more character thoughts too

Aludra

Oldest of the 3 amigos, the only one who hasn't seen the other two yet since she's the online friend. Also the tallest by a little bit.

She's kind of brave but doesn't work up the courage nearly as easily as Alex does (Alex probably doesn't even think about working up the courage...), she's a bit more worried about safety issues and what other people might think and all that. Honest and determined. Senpai.

Aldric's younger sister, she doesn't really know what he does but she loves him lots.

Aldric

Actually he's out cold so it doesn't really matter. Casual glances at Ciaran

Charmer with a fondness for pecs, especially Ciaran's pecs. A bit of a dork sometimes. Fiercely protective of his little sister and owner of said pecs. I guess he kind of resembles Casper, but he's smarter and more able to hide his secrets.

IRL I guess he's a uni student who does ok in one of the top unis? He appears to be the perfect elder brother except with an particular fondness for male chests.

Thinking he has some undernet activity, maybe he's actually a hacker of some sort. Or...something?

Frae

He doesn't actually serve any real purpose at the moment lol.

Real player is an ossan who obvs doesn't go out as Frae in AR. He bought the account off someone (thus why he has a loli avatar) which came loaded with lots of rare stuff, he plays the in-game economy to keep the virtual cash flowing. That's his main purpose in playing the game actually, virtual merchant activities. Secondarily a battler/player, he's pretty good though those are considered hobbies next to trading in virtual items.

As a result he has a bunch of connections with some of the more well-known players. Something of a grump if you haven't got any business.

His merchant business probably extends to IRL money, sells off rare goods/gold for real cash, does well enough to live off it...

Roy

I need to come up with a full name for him ╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯

He's super proud, kind of arrogant, he's like an angry character?? the closest I've got is Togami I think except he's even more of a grump. He's big on the proving-your-worth thing. So if the Alex/Roy and Ashley/Excalibur thing actually happens and he knew Ex before, he'd probably nag Ex about serving Ashley until Ashley manages to prove something lol.
I guess he'd be a talking weapon most of the time. Not fond of being a mount (in VR obvs) so that doesn't happen except in extraordinary cases.





Incidentally, thoughts on infected AIs: they're able to leave their reality if they want to (they're not locked to a single reality any more), though usually they stay in the same one either because they don't know how to (it must feel weird??) or feel more comfortable that way.

I imagine the main difference (how to tell them apart) between infected/normal AIs given that they both have the linguistic ability of an average human is that normal ones obey the tasks they've been assigned without question, while infected ones gain curiosity enough to wonder about the nature of the world they live in?

I think that would be a bit of a shock for some of them, realising that they live in a portion of a world that isn't real, at least to the people they serve...created solely for the purpose they were made for, start feeling hollow, etc. etc.
Then there are some (Candice and Arthur) who decide that that doesn't necessarily mean the world is a terrible place for them.

---

030913

huffs it's been a month

Noting this down before I forget it, some more plot based tangentially on the AI zombies thing...

This happens somewhere in the middle.

- Alex encounters WE again and finds, of all people, Aldric wandering about in it.
- She talks to him and he responds normally, albeit a bit confused.
- He doesn't recall how he got there. Unsure how he should respond if asked about being in a coma. He gives the impression that he got separated from his body but can't seem to wake up.
- Up until now, aside from the initial unfortunate classmate, she hasn't had any particularly upsetting experiences in WE, but for caution's sake she wants to get both of them safely out of WE before deciding how to handle the situation.
- I'm not sure if I want to drag this out over a few days' worth of activity (that is, WE (in its usual fickleness) reappears consistently in the same place over the span of a few days; Alex logs out to exit and comes back to help Aldric find a way out into normal VR space)
- Alex warms up to Aldric a little; as odd as it might seem walking around in a virtual junkyard with a comatose patient he's great to talk to, it's really calming even in such a creepy place
- Then something attacks - possibly Rei or Eve herself, and Aldric's avatar is destroyed, possibly by defending Alex, who manages to escape.
- She didn't have the strength to save him. She thought there was hope of waking him up, but if what she met was Aldric's soul (of some sort), then he's probably never going to wake up again ever, and it was her fault that she couldn't save him. It's more than just a digital problem that can be solved by logging out now.
- Sometime soon she meets up with Aludra to visit Aldric in hospital again and she thinks she should mention that this happened, that Aldric is actually gone now but she doesn't have the heart/courage to.

- Eventually it's revealed that it's some digital Aldric clone (an AI) and not the guy himself. No particular idea why or how that phenomenon occurred, it's probably happened more than once. Maybe it happens to everyone who's been sent into a coma by WE?

---

040913

Just for fun. Birthdays!

I'm going by the dates these characters were created/received, so there's bound to be some skewing of the dates distribution...

Alex: 3rd April

Birthday flower: geranium
Hanakotoba: Determination/resolution, comfort, reminiscence/memory, friendship
A refreshing? personality, with no hidden side. Lives a healthy life with no relation to gloominess or evil.

Casper: earliest mention of concept 4th May

Birthday flower: yamabuki/kerria japonica
Hanakotoba: Noble, anticipation
Gemstone: Peridot (houseki kotoba: great strength)
Dislikes standing out from the crowd, acts in moderation because of high defenses. ...not very accurate

Arthur: 28 August?

Birthday flower: kikyou
Hanakotoba: Unchanging love
As you do not open your heart to others, people sometimes misinterpret and think you're arrogant.

Rei: 24 Jan?

well ok this one totally doesn't make sense

Aludra: 2 Feb
Aldric: 27 Feb

Frae: 2 May?

Ichimonji: 25 March

Trin: 26 June?

Grey: 19 July?

The distribution is surprisingly well spread out across the months, though there's a fairly obvious lack of characters born in the later months...
Candice and mouse dude will probably need a bit of digging in my folders.