The Virtual Body on Designing Virtual Worlds

Maintenance

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

You wake up, you visit the bathroom, you wash, you brush your teeth, you have breakfast.

You wake up because you went to sleep. You have to go to sleep because human (and most other animal) brains won’t work if you don’t.

You visit the bathroom because your body is powered by chemical reactions that generate waste products.

You wash and brush your teeth for cultural reasons. You don’t have to, although the chances are it’ll prolong your life considerably if you do. People used to die if they got an abscess on a tooth.

Survival

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Don’t go to sleep on the ground if it’s covered in snow; if you do, you’ll get hypothermia and die. The same thing will happen if you swim in icy water. In a desert, if you don’t freeze to death at night you may bake to death during the day.

That’s in the real world. In virtual worlds, you will either suffer some minor, temporary skill or attribute degradation or you won’t notice any ill effects at all. Characters are generally immune to the environment.

Sensing the Virtual World

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Traditionally, human beings have five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. These are the means by which individuals can detect the world about them. Virtual worlds that have human or humanoid characters will usually want to account for these senses, with perhaps some additional ones for special cases (bat-like sonar, insect-like infravision, and so on).

Most virtual worlds, whether graphical or textual, emphasize vision. When a character enters a location, the player experiences what the character can see. They may also experience what their character can hear. Textual worlds also will make occasional reference to smells and tactile sensations (for example, heat from a fire), but taste only really comes into it when something is eaten or drunk.

Body Composition

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

When a character picks up something, strangely this does not mean that the object teleports into their backpack. To make sense, they need to use their hand. Similarly, when they walk, their legs and arms move, when they look to one side their head moves, and when they’re fleeing in mindless panic every part of their body moves. The issues involved here extend beyond mere animation: If characters can move their hands, that implies they have hands to move.