A Virtual Apostolic Church Campground

• Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

The following may be browsed at:

   http://www.elilabs.com/upc/net/MOO/index.html

I decided to see if I could stir up any interest in this.

----------------------------------------------------------------

BeulahMOO

A Virtual Apostolic Church Campground

This is BeulahMOO, a virtual reality simulation of an imaginary
Apostolic church campground. This is a new campground for saints of
the internet district. It actually had not been built yet. All we have
now is title to the land, and a set of construction tools.

In a real campground, bulldozers and backhoes, hammers and shovels,
wheelbarrows and trowells, etc. are used by the saints on a volunteer
basis to construct the facilities needed for the saints to have camp.

In the virtual world of the internet, our tools are provided by the
software called a MOO, or Multiuser Object Oriented simulated
environment. Although the software is here now, it has no blueprint to
follow yet. The saints need to decide what the campground should be
like, giving due consideration to the fact that there are people
wanting to have camp now, so only absolutely necessary facilities
should be built first. This way we can satrt having camp, and then we
will have more helpers to do the rest of the building.

There are MOOs out on the internet that have existed for years and
have hundreds, or even thousands, of regular users.  They all started
out small -- with only one or a few people doing the initial
construction. Now most of the users just take all the virtual rooms
and buildings and scenery and whatever for granted. Most users of a
mature virtual environment are not builders, but just participants in
a virtual community.

The virtual community that BeulahMOO aims to become is a simulation of
an old-time church camp meeting. Most people only get to go to camp
once a year in the summer. At BeulahMOO, camp will always be in
session. People should be able to come here to commune with other
saints, either in large public gatherings, or to go off to some
private place and talk of God with a friend or two, or maybe even a
famous evangelist (If we can get one interested in coming here!).

Besides deciding how to construct BeulahMOO, what buildings will be
needed, what kind of scenery should be present, where the campgrounds
should be located, etc. the founders will need to decide on a charter,
or a set of operating rules, just like a real campground. To begin, it
is probably a good ides to let anyone come to BuelahMOO, but if
intollerable behaviour is repeatedly exhibited, then the will be
banned.

It is probably also a good idea to require all construction to serve
either some holy or benign purpose, and not allow the construction of
any kind of fantasy world, or antthing with satanic or antichristian
overtones. Basicly, you can build anything you like, but if it
generates too many complaints, the caretaker will tear it down. Other
than that, nothing should be torn down by anyone other than the
original builder, and even if you built it, if it is now in widespread
public use, you should not tear it down without permission from the
caretaker.

If you have read this far, and are interested in helping to build
BeulahMOO, the internet campground, then you should read the LambdaMOO
Programmer's Manual for detailed instructions on how all this works.

The MOO-Cows FAQ explains the mailing list dedicated to MOO. The
mailing list's archives are also available.

The Getting Started document describes the basics of the JHCore
database used by Beulah MOO.

Autoport is a utility for porting MOO code from one MOO to another.

Many additional references and papers are also available.

Lets Have Camp!

-- 
--------  "And there came a writing to him from Elijah"  [2Ch 21:12]  --------
Robert Jay Brown III rj@eli.elilabs.com  http://www.elilabs.com 1 847 705-0424
Elijah Laboratories Inc.;  37 South Greenwood Avenue;  Palatine, IL 60067-6328
-----  M o d e l i n g   t h e   M e t h o d s   o f   t h e   M i n d  ------