Come to Valhalla: Beginning: What is Valhalla?

  1. Getting Help
  2. Beginning

What is Valhalla?: Purpose

Valhalla’s purpose is to provide a meeting ground in ‘virtual space’. It is a space on the Internet where people can interact in real time or by leaving messages. People in Valhalla can personalize their interactions by creating special rooms and objects. Valhalla is meant to provide a place for the University of San Diego community to meet with other communities on the Internet. Members of the USD community can sponsor on-line festivals, professional conferences, regular get-togethers, readings, and anything else that humans meet for, using Valhalla and the Internet.

Valhalla is open to anyone on the Internet. However, ‘programmer’ status will generally only be granted on the request of a member of the USD community, and then only if it will contribute to the general needs of Valhalla’s USD users.

Technical Stuff

From a technical standpoint, Valhalla is what is known as a MOO. MOO is a ‘programming language’ for creating multi-user dungeons (MUD). There are many other MUDs around. MOO is object oriented (thus, MUD, Object Oriented, or MOO). Don’t worry about what that means. MOO was created and is currently maintained by Pavel Curtis and Xerox PARC, who are to be commended for their work. They provide the MOO environment free of charge.

Valhalla is a MOO on one of the IBM compatibles at the University of San Diego, using the Linux operating system. Linux is a Unix look-alike. There are different versions of Linux available, but all are provided free of charge by the people who write and maintain them.

Finally, Valhalla is maintained by Thor and Balder, who can occasionally be seen wandering about the Circus Bazarre and the rest of Valhalla’s universe.

  1. Getting Help
  2. Beginning