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<article lang="en">
<articleinfo>
<title>The Metacosm glossary</title>
<corpauthor>&author;</corpauthor>
<revhistory>
<revision>
<revnumber></revnumber>
<date>2001-07-15 22:25:09 GMT</date>
<revremark>Automatically generated by vocab.pl</revremark>
</revision>
</revhistory>
</articleinfo>
&license;
&project;
<glossary>
<!-- Interactions-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="action">
<glossterm>Action</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<simpara>
Actions are the basic piece in the Interaction model. They
define at the smallest level how Entities
interact with their surroundings. They encapsulate what
the Entity does and how it does it. Entity influence their
environment via Actions.</simpara>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Vocabulary-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="action-controller"><glossterm>Action Controller</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>An action controller translates commands from a player or from
an AI into actions of the controlled entity.</para>
<glossseealso otherterm="ai">
<glossseealso otherterm="controller">
<glossseealso>Entity</glossseealso>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Vocabulary-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="ai"><glossterm>Artificial Intelligence</glossterm><acronym>AI</acronym>
<glossdef>
<para>In a broad sense, all that allows to provide an illusion of intelligence.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="attribute">
<glossterm>Attribute</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Attributes define the inherent qualities of an entity. They describe
Entities using Properties thus providing an objective description of an
Entity. Attributes are basic descriptive elements of Entities. This
description is not targeted at Players but at the simulation engine.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Predicate-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="predicate-attribute">
<glossterm>Attribute (for a Predicate)</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>An inherent characteristic. (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary)</para>
</glossdef>
<glossdef>
<para><emphasis>In Metacosm:</emphasis> An attribute is a
characteristic associated to a
<glossterm linkend="predicate">Predicate</glossterm>
against which the particular aspect of the
<glossterm linkend="predicate">Predicable</glossterm>
tested by this Predicate, is evaluated.
</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Vocabulary-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="bot"><glossterm>Bot</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Entity which is controlled by a non player (AI, script).
Generally, a bot stands for a creature rather than for an entity of another kind.</para>
<glossseealso otherterm="creature">
<glossseealso>Entity</glossseealso>
<glossseealso otherterm="ai">
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="capability">
<glossterm>Capability</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Capabilities are derived Attributes. Capabilities are Properties that
are calculated instead of being fixed and then modified. They are based on
combinations of Attributes. They reflect an Entity's natural ability to
perform certain types of actions, regardless of skills.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="characteristic">
<glossterm>Characteristic</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Characteristics describe an Entity from an objective point of
view. They gather parameters that can be manipulated via a set of rules.
Characteristics represent the core of the information manipulated by the
framework when a world is simulated in Metacosm. Characteristic is a generic
term for Description, Identity, Attributes, Capabilities and Skills.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="charisma">
<glossterm>Charisma</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Charisma represents how an Entity appears to
others. the charisma of an Entity is not merely based on its
appearance but reflects the capacity that an Entity has to attract
positive reactions. For a living creature, charisma represents all
that makes the Entity appealing: its beauty, its charm, its animal
magic. The same applies also for inert Entities for which charisma can
be considered as the way they can appeal to other Entities even when
they aren't good looking. The charisma attribute of an Item can be
thought as its potential artistic value and as something that will
influence its commercial value. Characters will feel more comfortable
with Entities with high charisma whereas they could feel that
something is wrong with an Entity that has a low charisma. Spells can
influence the charisma of Item (curse, "beautifiers"...).</para>
<para>From Merriam-Webster dictionary: A special magnetic charm or
appeal.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="community">
<glossterm>Community</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Community is an abstract concept introduced to talk about a group
of Entities. The word "community" is to be interpreted in a very general,
abstract way since it doesn't imply anything else on member Entities than
commonality between them.</para
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Vocabulary-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="controller"><glossterm>Controller</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>A controller is an object (in an object oriented meaning) associated to an entity;
it is entrusted by the entity to realize complex behaviours.
By analogy, the controller would be the brains of a creature whereas the entity
would be its corpse. However, an entity can possess several controllers and change
controllers.</para>
</glossdef>
<glossdef>
<para>A controller is a player, an AI, a script...</para>
<glossseealso otherterm="creature">
<glossseealso>Entity</glossseealso>
<glossseealso otherterm="ai">
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="coordination">
<glossterm>Coordination</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Coordination represents an Entity's
capacity to act efficiently and harmoniously. For a living creature,
coordination represents its agility, its suppleness. It represents
just how efficiently it is able to move or perform complex moves. For
an inert Entity, coordination represents how well it is built or how
well its part fits together. Obviously, a one-part Item will have a
null coordination. Only Entities with a specific coordination level
would be able to react appropriately to orders given by
Controllers. Coordination will be used when Item are animated by
spells and affect what the Item can do once animated.</para>
<para>From Merriam-Webster dictionary: Harmonious functioning of parts
for effective results.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Vocabulary-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="creature"><glossterm>Creature</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>A creature is an entity.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para> creature possesses members which it uses in order to move and to act upon
other entities.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A creature possesses skills which can evolve.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A creature is born, lives and dies.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A creature has needs: to feed, to sleep, to assuage its impulses.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A creature is able to breed. Characteristics of a species evolve.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A creature possesses unique identity and description which allow to distinguish it</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<glossseealso>Entity</glossseealso>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="endurance">
<glossterm>Endurance</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Endurance represents an Entity's resistance to
outside forces. The greater the endurance, the better an Entity will
resist to anything that can affect its physical state. For a living
creature, changes in physical state involve injuries, fatigue or
illness. For an inert Entity, its endurance represents its solidity
(an Item with a high endurance will be harder to break), its
resistance to external elements (rain, acid, fire...).</para>
<para>From Merriam-Webster dictionary: Ability to withstand hardship or
adversity; especially: the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful
effort or activity.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="entities"><glossterm>Entities</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Entities = Places + Creatures + Items</para>
<glossseealso><glossterm>Place</glossterm><glossterm>Creature</glossterm><glossterm>Item</glossterm></glossseealso>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="entity">
<glossterm>Entity</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>An Entity is an element of the framework that can be manipulated
or interacted with during a game session.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="essence">
<glossterm>Essence</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Essence represents an Entity's life energy or
inherent magical energy. Essence is what separates inert Entities from
living creatures. Inert entities have a null essence attribute whereas
it is positive for living creatures. When a living creature loses
essence to the point of having a null essence attribute, it becomes an
inert Entity with different effects depending on what caused the loss
of essence. It can mean death, reification (transformation into an
Item as an example due to over-cybernetization), destruction of the
Entity, transformation into a living-dead, etc. Essence is the most
important attribute for living creatures since processes such as
aging, diseases, poisoning, etc. can be modelled via the variation of
this attribute. The life cycle can can also be simulated via this
attribute by ensuring that constantly decreases, thus forcing living
creatures to eat to regenerate their essence by getting a sufficient
amount of essence back from the food they eat.</para>
<para>From Merriam-Webster dictionary: The individual, real, or
ultimate nature of a thing especially as opposed to its
existence</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="influence">
<glossterm>Influence</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>An Influence defines a Community of similar Entities and how being
part this Community "influences" Entities that belongs to it. An Influence
gathers Characteristics and other game constructs that are common to the
Community of Entities it defines, thus modifying Entities it influences.
We use the term "influenced" when referring to game constructs that are
modified ("influenced") by Influences and "influenceable" for game constructs
that can be "influenced".</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="intelligence">
<glossterm>Intelligence</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Intelligence represents an Entity's ability
to take into account its surroundings and react to it in a sensible
way, capacity to solve problems. The intelligence concept is pretty
obvious for living creatures. It is a little bit more complex for inert
Entities. Obviously, common Items will have a null
intelligence. However, technology or magic can make Items more able
to handle their surrounding effectively given them a kind of
intelligence.</para>
<para>From Merriam-Webster dictionary: Ability to learn or understand or to
deal with new or trying situations.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Interactions-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="interaction">
<glossterm>Interaction</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Interactions are the modality through which Entities
modify (or at least try to...) their surrounding
(including themselves). Everything that has an observable
result in the game domain, is the result of an Interaction
between one (an Entity interacting with itself) or several
Entities.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Vocabulary-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="karma"><glossterm>Karma</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<blockquote><para>What constitutes the essence of a being.</para></blockquote>
</glossdef>
<glossdef>
<blockquote><para>Fundamental principle of Hindu religions which is based on
conception of human life as a link in a chain of lives (samsara),
each life determined by the acts accomplished in the previous life.</para></blockquote>
</glossdef>
<glossdef>
<para>Points awarded to a player in order to reward her for her role-play.
If a player does not respect by her acts the objectives that she fixed in her life,
she does not earn Karma and she can even lose some.
A player can use Karma points to resuscitate, to reincarnate into a new
creature...</para>
<glossseealso otherterm="creature">
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Perceptions-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="lowleveldescription"><glossterm>LowLevelDescription</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Table containing all the necessary info to build a description of an Entity
(description properties with intensity, for each Medium)</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="magic">
<glossterm>Magic</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Magic represents an Entity's "understanding" of
magical energies and capacity to control them. Magic is similar for
both inert Entities and living creatures. This attribute represents just
how good a medium an Entity is for magical energies. It represents the
magical intensity that an Entity can put in spells or in resisting
magic. An Entity with a null Magic attribute is consider as
magically inactive. See the (yet to come) Magic-RFC for more
information.</para>
<para>From Merriam-Webster dictionary: The use of means (as charms or
spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces.
(Note that this definition is slightly different from the one given here
only as a reference.)</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Perceptions-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="medium"><glossterm>Medium</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>a means of effecting or conveying something (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary)</para>
<para>channel for the transmission of some Stimuli: only Stimuli corresponding
to the medium can be transmitted by this medium.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Vocabulary-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="model-controller"><glossterm>Model Controller</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>A Model controller maintains the controlled Entity state and
updates the attributes of the Entity when needed.</para>
<glossseealso>entity</glossseealso>
<glossseealso otherterm="controller">
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Predicate-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="operator">
<glossterm>Operator</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para><emphasis>In Metacosm:</emphasis> An object able to
manipulate
<glossterm linkend="predicate">Predicates</glossterm>.
In particular, an object able to combine several
Predicates into one.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Perceptions-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="perceptionstate"><glossterm>PerceptionState</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>The PerceptionState is a cache containing state Stimuli emitted by an Entity
(one Stimulus per Medium). Each Entity should have a PerceptionState.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="power">
<glossterm>Power</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Power represents an Entity's power to physically
interact with other Entities. Basically, power represents what is
physically acting in the essence of an Entity. It is against what
endurance of an Entity has to resist when two Entities are in opposing
physical interaction. For a living creature, power represents its
physical power, its strength, just how strong it is. For an inert
Entity, power represent how potent it is in modifying other Entities
physical structure.</para>
<para>From Merriam-Webster dictionary: Ability to act or produce an
effect.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Predicate-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="predicable">
<glossterm>Predicable</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Something that may be predicated. (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary)</para>
</glossdef>
<glossdef>
<para><emphasis>In Metacosm:</emphasis> An object on which
<glossterm linkend="predicate">Predicates</glossterm>
can operate.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Predicate-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="predicate">
<glossterm>Predicate</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Something that is affirmed or denied of the subject in
a proposition in logic. (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary)</para>
</glossdef>
<glossdef>
<para><emphasis>In Metacosm:</emphasis> An object evaluating
a predicate on a set of Entities before to determine if
manipulation on them are allowed. If an Entity manipulation
(Action) is guarded by a Predicate, it can only be executed
if and only if the guarding Predicate is validated (i.e., it
is evaluated as true). A Predicate defines conditions to be
verified on a set of Entities. Predicates are implemented as
Command (design pattern) objects. As such, they can be
serialized and reused in lots of different contexts without
needed to be described again.
</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Perceptions-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="sense"><glossterm>Sense</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>a medium</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>a sensibility (power)</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>a dazzle control</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>a memory of the last received Stimuli</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Perceptions-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="stimuli"><glossterm>Stimuli</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Stimuli = Action Stimuli + Description Stimuli</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Perceptions-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="stimulidispatcher"><glossterm>StimuliDispatcher</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>A StimuliDispatcher is an intermediary between Entities emitting
Stimuli and Entities receiving them. There is a StimuliDispatcher associated
to each Place.</para>
<!-- duplicated def - don't know how to do it properly -->
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>a set of source Entities.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>a set of receiving Senses per different Medium.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Perceptions-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="stimulus"><glossterm>Stimulus</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>a source Entity</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>an intrinsic intensity</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>a Medium</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>an action if need be</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>some attributes to describe the source or the action</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="type">
<glossterm>Type</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>A Type is a special kind of Influence. It is an Influence in the
sense that it gathers Characteristics and modify Entities. It differs
from simple Influences by its focus. While simple Influences modify already
created Entities, the purpose of Type is to create new Entities.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
<!-- Entity-RFC.sgml -->
<glossentry id="will">
<glossterm>Will</glossterm>
<glossdef>
<para>Will represents an Entity's self-control and power
of sticking to its goal. For a living creature, will represents its
strength of mind, the way it resists to adverse circumstances,
seduction or mental manipulation. It is, once again, more complex for
inert Entities. We can consider that an Item will is its inertia,
its resistance to resist manipulation. It seems close to endurance but
an Item's will is more oriented toward tricks (spells or playing
with a mechanism for appropriate Items). Endurance deals more with
resistance to destruction.</para>
<para>From Merriam-Webster dictionary: The power of control over one's own
actions or emotions.</para>
</glossdef>
</glossentry>
</glossary>
</article>