[Ar-list] ping

[Carter T Butts]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, msew wrote:

> ping :-)
> 
> 
> is this still functioning  have not received any email in ages wondering if 
> my email address was eaten

No, no, we're still here.  And, actually, it might be a good time to
mention some updates:

1. Isaac is currently working on a friendly, "quick-start" introduction to
the AR system, to be included in the PRG 2.0.  Hopefully he'll be able to
say something about this...

2. Karim, Isaac, and I have are planning some revisions to the current
attribute/skill duality for the new system.  There are still a number of
wrinkles left to iron out, but the idea is that the next version will
technically treat skills as macros rather than as base attributes.  This
will affect less than one might think, because many of the attributes in
question will be synonymous with the skills and never written down (it's a
long story :-)), but it should give us a much better way to resolve
defaults and training than the current system.

3.  In the "odd stuff you're not likely to see outside of AR" department,
I'm planning on putting together some scripts to allow inference of AR
attributes from empirical data on task success.  (After all, the astute
will note that the setup of the system is much like a GLM: the DRF is the
link function, the attributes are linear predictors, and the likelihood is
binomial.  If that doesn't mean anything to you, don't worry about
it.)  AR may be soon be the only roleplaying system for which one can
obtain pseudo-R^2 measures.  ;-)

     More generally, I should point out (as I periodically do) that
volunteers are very much welcome in this effort...the "team" pretty much
consists of anyone who's willing and interested.  As I'm working on my
dissertation (and related projects) almost 24/7, development has been very
slow of late; Karim and Isaac have been quite busy as well.  If there are
any newcomers out there who want to step into the gap, opportunities
abound....

    -Carter