Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly is 'ATHR' or Acronymized Trade Holdings Resources

It's a platform for a few game loops and some isolated games that all use the same parts. Namely, accounts, inventory, locations, loot systems, etc. You can see the projects some of the dev notes on the sidebar. I was trying to spell 'Aether' but I couldn't figure out what to do with the Es.

What is GRAV?

That is the content engine this page runs on, I have not had time to tweak the template yet.

What the hell is this domain name?

It was where all the switching and backend files got put, and originally it was just a title card and an email address. When RedactedLifeChangingEvents happened, it was the last domain standing when I closed and sold off projects. It's where the hmm is hosted, and a lot of projects still running using text files in the root director for initialization and re-pointing to new homes.

Are ATHR$ or Venue/App$ an alternative to L$, Real Money, Crypto, or an NFT?

No. Nope. Nopity-Nope. Hells Nah, Fam! These are like monopoly money or prize tokens. It's not a real currency, alternative to L$ or a real-world currency. It's not a crypto. V$ are earned by redeeming items or performing some kind of activity. It is NOT interchangeable for L$ at any point in the UI. In fact, you can't directly convert L$ to ATH$ except through buying consumables and trade goods. Why? Because it's an expensive to do anything like that, and also, but more importantly the Lindens would eat Rez's kidneys. Also, there are hooks in the system to try to not allow you to use 'L$' as an app currency name.

Is ATHR logging my movements?

Simply put, no. There's no use for that data. However, some instances like digging for loot, redeeming items, mining a map grid, etc will create or effect an entry in the database. If you happen to interact with an ATHR element in a region that ATHR hasn't seen before, the region's coordinates and name are saved for later reverse indexing purposes.

Aren't you just re-hashing (existing game concept / thing you already did)

Probably. None of these concepts are new. I might have already made, helped develped, fixed, or sold off something with similar aspects to the projects documented here.

What is the difference between ATHR and Venue games?

"Venue" games are self-isolated accounts, stats, and inventories that might work globally or in specific locations. They cannot directly interact with other games. An example wold be OMFG!, which lets you redeem fish, buy baits, etc, but you can't trade fish for arrows in another game.

ATHR games have some cross-connection oppurtunitues. Example, you mine ore in Name Pending Mining Game, then redeem it at an ATHR location or silo, then you can process it in We're not sure this has a name into a refined materiel, the carry that material in a truck (this is probably just 'ATHR', still), then sell it at a refinery for more monies. You could also then buy finished components or 'commodities' and haul them elsewhere. It will all connect under 'ATHR'.

What kind of backend are you running?

PHP / SQL. I can't seem to learn anything more complicated. It's also, for now, not running on AWS as the latency change is very small.

The following questions are jokes...

What is atInvokeZalgo(), atBanishZalgo(), and atCaseDemocles() that occassionally appear and disappear in the API documentation?

If you see these functions in the 'live document' page, refresh and it should be fine. If they are present in a backup or static copy, you will need to CTRL-F5 your local causal domain.