Re: [Ainulindale-devel] Scavenged resources: CPU

[Federico 'Derfel' Stella]

* domenica 25 maggio 2003, alle 14:57, Andrea Negro scrive:

[...]

> I see three uses of cpu resources donated to Ainulindale by now:

> 1) to run NPC remotely, thus not having to use gaming site resources to 
> handle 
> complex AI of particular NPC. This is quite simple to think about, as a NPC 
> is actually the same as a PC, so why do not use the same physical location af 
> a regular user? The only raised concern is about the security, or techniques 
> to avoid hacking code which is running on your machine to have advantages in 
> the game. Ideas about that?
Of course, letting a lone pc controlling a NPC it's a BAD IDEA (TM), but
submitting jobs related to one NPC to more user's computers could be an idea
to make cheater's life harder.

> 2) to perform world's simulations. Derfel and me are thinking about use of 
> particular algorithms which should perform an autonomic simulation of the 
> world. Fro example, algorithms could provide means to create a wheather in a 
> more realistic way than just having random weather, or to manage the number 
For this task I could contact a physicist, however I don't promise anything.

> and change by itself. For example, and area builder could simply put seeds of 
> trees, and the world takes care on run to have the trees to grow. Of course, 
If pidgeons/robins/etc. don't eat them... :)

> 3) to perform accurte renderings via povray. To perform complex scene 
> rendering in povray over a grid could be rahter simple, because povray is 
> already able to parallelize the work. This could be useful in some 
> situations. For example: your group achieved a very difficult quest, and they 
> are standing on a dragon's corpse, with blood and tresaures everywhere... why 
> don't take a 'picture' of that? It could be possible for the quest's leader, 
Cool! In a framework you should not think at user's roles, but at user's
priviledges. In some games quest leaders could be useless.

> for example, to request such a picture, and the grid could perform an 
> accurate rendering of the scene, and have it sent to all quest's 
> partecipants. This is very useless, but again: we have scavenged cpu cycles, 
> and taking such a picture is not a realtime job. So, the grid will schedule 

> Could you think other uses of scavenged cpu cycles?
Yeah! We could bring this idea to a higher level. We could make movies of
the last minute of the battle. Using povray generated images to do the
movies could let us reach high quality levels.

I already see PowerPlayer goes crazy for this features :)