[MUD-Dev2] [Design]Characters moving between worlds[wasPersonalvirtual worlds]

[Michael Sellers]

> Does Hawkins' patent define a specific implementation or is it another of
> these "business patents" that encompass general concepts? (usually to the
> detriment of public interest :P )

It's been more than a decade since I worked on a game implementation of the
patent, so I don't recall entirely.  It was more than a vague "business
patent" though -- there was a definite product implementation in mind.  

> I understand the issues.  I also think this is the inevitable next step of
> massive online games.  Obviously the initial baby steps will be with
> commercial proprietary clients from vendors with the resources (e.g.
> Blizzard, Sony) to make life difficult for Battle.Net-like cheaters.

It's a possible future; partly this depends on how strong the patent proves
to be, and also, as I pointed out earlier, to what degree anyone is able to
solve the issue of unknown people and assets entering a simulation.  Imagine
if, to view a webpage, someone had to run a process with unknown payload on
the web server.  How many web pages do you think we'd have today, and how
open would they be?

Mike Sellers