Writing.Com General Discussion

Be careful about getting carried away, 'cos that's something I tend to do - OCD strikes again!

I have thirty computers at home, all running Linux (Mint on my desktops). I have an OpenSimulator grid at home with over 566km² of real estate to build on. I'm building a Mars simulation, set in the future. There are five active cities plus one destroyed city and two spaceports - and vast areas of wilderness to explore. There are hundreds of NPCs in each city, each with their own life that can extend up to 2196 days before recycling - they have jobs and work shift patterns, can get promoted or change jobs, have days off, date each other (and break up and don't talk to each other for a month) and have activities in their off-duty hours.

I had to write a backstory for this world to ensure there was consistency throughout, and writing backstory for the actors is fun - each has a profile that can be examined (and changes over time with their circumstances).

I get to combine my three main passions - building virtual worlds, writing and programming. The NPCs are programmed, and I had to devise a way to suck all the oxygen out of the air outside the cities and track health and oxygen for all visiting avatars as they roam across this world. Once I have the first city finished I'll open it to the public. It's such a huge project though, just landscaping such a vast area is daunting. I'm thinking of inviting some local schools to help build the project: learning how to use the tools used in the animation and game industries would be good for them.

When I write a novel, one of the first tasks I do is the world-building, since people are products of the world they inhabit. This project is turning the imaginary into something more physical and tangible, and is a natural evolution of expressing my ideas.