What if the survival of an entire world was in your hands?
To those few of the public who care, Encom International's BABYLON cluster is a network of gaming servers located in San Francisco. It hosts games, tracks player statistics, stores downloadable content, processes payments. Its firewalls, virus scanners and other security routines hold off intrusions from hackers and low-end corporate spies.
To the Encom staff assigned to the secret Project: BABYLON, it's a gateway to another world, a realm where energy lives and breathes; a new, digital frontier for humanity, both enticing and dangerous. A realm that former Encom CEO Kevin Flynn, now missing for over twenty years, dubbed “The Grid.”
To the programs within the Babylon Grid, it's home, a neon city beneath eternal, starless night. It's where they live, play and work, serving the distant Users who send their commands from beyond the Grid. It's often besieged by attacks from other systems, but the valiant warriors who man the firewalls about the Babylon Grid's external network ports fight to keep the system safe while anti-virus programs patrol the streets, looking for worms, Trojans and other infiltrators.
But the programs aren't the only ones who call the Grid home. Thanks to the miracle of the Baines-Gibbs Laser Digitizer, six Users crossed to the other side of the screen in the earliest days of the cluster. While regular programmers wrote code from without, the Users have helped build the Grid from within, applying their coding skill through pure willpower.
BABYLON is an experiment. Encom knows it's a matter of time before the existence of the Grid goes public, and they want the possibilities and dangers of the electronic realm understood before floods of people start begging to get in.
That's where you come in. Project: BABYLON is entering a closed beta phase, and Encom has hired people from all walks of life across the globe to enter the Babylon Grid as Users and push its boundaries. The test will run for one week while a dedicated team monitors the server logs and compiles performance data. Then you will exit the Grid and report on your experiences.
On the Grid, a week in the Real World passes in something like a year. A year in a massive city on the frontier of the Internet, where hackers and script-kiddies send viruses to break down the walls. A year amongst its people, working alongside them, competing with them in games of Disc Wars and Lightcycles, fighting their battles.
And on the Grid, you'll have a power that you've never known. You can program with a touch and a thought. Will you repair, heal, create? Will you repurpose, corrupt, destroy? Could your changes destabilise the system?
Things are going wrong already. One of the Architects, the six original Users, has gone missing. Not only that, there's a spate of de-resolutions – programs being erased – on the Grid, and the one thing missing from the remains each time is the program's identity disc. The system can only issue so many, and the fewer discs available, the fewer programs that can fight when the system comes under external attack. Where is the missing Architect? Why can no one outside the Grid locate his file? Who is derezzing programs, and what are they doing with the discs? Is it influence from an external system? A virus? Or are the remaining Architects involved somehow?
Can you solve these mysteries? What if you can't, or won't? What will Encom do with the BABYLON cluster if your evaluation is negative? Will they reformat it? Shut it down? What happens, then, to this city when you leave? To the friends and enemies you'll make? To those you might give your heart to?
(What if there was a way... to get them out?)
What if the survival of an entire world was in your hands?
----
I'm a long-time Tron fan, and Tron: Legacy rocked my socks. It certainly wasn't perfect, but it was good fun, and at least part of my mind has been travelling the Grid on a lightcycle ever since. I reckon I can't be the only one!
I'm including a mystery as a way to keep things moving. I have no idea who the missing User is or what's happened to him – I'm hoping we can come up with our own clues that will add up to something cool. If not, I still reckon it'll be fun playing in Tron's backyard!
World-wise, I look at the BABYLON Grid as a fusion of all the cool stuff from both movies, a neon-bright, working metropolis with open I/O towers to the Encom offices, data ports to the Internet and a Portal to the Real World. Do you prefer your Grid outfit all black with shining strips or tight-fitting pyjamas printed with glowing circuit boards? Do you prefer your lightcycle closed- or open-topped (do you even like the Super Lightcycle from the game Tron 2.0)? Are you a User? A game bot? A data pusher? An intrusion countermeasure? A compiler?
Broadly, though, I'm assuming the events of the movies happened as seen. Jet Bradley, if he exists, doesn't work for Encom in any significant capacity and Lora is alive and married to Alan (she likely even designed the lasers for Project BABYLON). The rest is up for grabs.
But enough of my yappin'! Let's change the scheme, alter the mood! Mash up those Daft Punk boys with that Wendy Carlos girl, if you'd be so kind! Who's getting in?
(Yes, Project BABYLON is a Babylon 5 reference. I tried to track down the name of the town where one of Bruce Boxleitner's Western characters lived, then thought: "Bugger it. Space station in the middle of darkness? Glowing computer city in the middle of darkness? Same diff, eh?")
To those few of the public who care, Encom International's BABYLON cluster is a network of gaming servers located in San Francisco. It hosts games, tracks player statistics, stores downloadable content, processes payments. Its firewalls, virus scanners and other security routines hold off intrusions from hackers and low-end corporate spies.
To the Encom staff assigned to the secret Project: BABYLON, it's a gateway to another world, a realm where energy lives and breathes; a new, digital frontier for humanity, both enticing and dangerous. A realm that former Encom CEO Kevin Flynn, now missing for over twenty years, dubbed “The Grid.”
To the programs within the Babylon Grid, it's home, a neon city beneath eternal, starless night. It's where they live, play and work, serving the distant Users who send their commands from beyond the Grid. It's often besieged by attacks from other systems, but the valiant warriors who man the firewalls about the Babylon Grid's external network ports fight to keep the system safe while anti-virus programs patrol the streets, looking for worms, Trojans and other infiltrators.
But the programs aren't the only ones who call the Grid home. Thanks to the miracle of the Baines-Gibbs Laser Digitizer, six Users crossed to the other side of the screen in the earliest days of the cluster. While regular programmers wrote code from without, the Users have helped build the Grid from within, applying their coding skill through pure willpower.
BABYLON is an experiment. Encom knows it's a matter of time before the existence of the Grid goes public, and they want the possibilities and dangers of the electronic realm understood before floods of people start begging to get in.
That's where you come in. Project: BABYLON is entering a closed beta phase, and Encom has hired people from all walks of life across the globe to enter the Babylon Grid as Users and push its boundaries. The test will run for one week while a dedicated team monitors the server logs and compiles performance data. Then you will exit the Grid and report on your experiences.
On the Grid, a week in the Real World passes in something like a year. A year in a massive city on the frontier of the Internet, where hackers and script-kiddies send viruses to break down the walls. A year amongst its people, working alongside them, competing with them in games of Disc Wars and Lightcycles, fighting their battles.
And on the Grid, you'll have a power that you've never known. You can program with a touch and a thought. Will you repair, heal, create? Will you repurpose, corrupt, destroy? Could your changes destabilise the system?
Things are going wrong already. One of the Architects, the six original Users, has gone missing. Not only that, there's a spate of de-resolutions – programs being erased – on the Grid, and the one thing missing from the remains each time is the program's identity disc. The system can only issue so many, and the fewer discs available, the fewer programs that can fight when the system comes under external attack. Where is the missing Architect? Why can no one outside the Grid locate his file? Who is derezzing programs, and what are they doing with the discs? Is it influence from an external system? A virus? Or are the remaining Architects involved somehow?
Can you solve these mysteries? What if you can't, or won't? What will Encom do with the BABYLON cluster if your evaluation is negative? Will they reformat it? Shut it down? What happens, then, to this city when you leave? To the friends and enemies you'll make? To those you might give your heart to?
(What if there was a way... to get them out?)
What if the survival of an entire world was in your hands?
----
I'm a long-time Tron fan, and Tron: Legacy rocked my socks. It certainly wasn't perfect, but it was good fun, and at least part of my mind has been travelling the Grid on a lightcycle ever since. I reckon I can't be the only one!
I'm including a mystery as a way to keep things moving. I have no idea who the missing User is or what's happened to him – I'm hoping we can come up with our own clues that will add up to something cool. If not, I still reckon it'll be fun playing in Tron's backyard!
World-wise, I look at the BABYLON Grid as a fusion of all the cool stuff from both movies, a neon-bright, working metropolis with open I/O towers to the Encom offices, data ports to the Internet and a Portal to the Real World. Do you prefer your Grid outfit all black with shining strips or tight-fitting pyjamas printed with glowing circuit boards? Do you prefer your lightcycle closed- or open-topped (do you even like the Super Lightcycle from the game Tron 2.0)? Are you a User? A game bot? A data pusher? An intrusion countermeasure? A compiler?
Broadly, though, I'm assuming the events of the movies happened as seen. Jet Bradley, if he exists, doesn't work for Encom in any significant capacity and Lora is alive and married to Alan (she likely even designed the lasers for Project BABYLON). The rest is up for grabs.
But enough of my yappin'! Let's change the scheme, alter the mood! Mash up those Daft Punk boys with that Wendy Carlos girl, if you'd be so kind! Who's getting in?
(Yes, Project BABYLON is a Babylon 5 reference. I tried to track down the name of the town where one of Bruce Boxleitner's Western characters lived, then thought: "Bugger it. Space station in the middle of darkness? Glowing computer city in the middle of darkness? Same diff, eh?")
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