Let's talk tech (Now with Glossary)!

[animenologist offline]

Odd may just have motion sickness. Motion sickness is caused when the body moves, but according to their vision they're staying still. In the case of the transporter to Carthage, he basically is seeing the inside of a white sphere which to his vision means he's staying still, but the transporter orb is heading off in some direction really fast.

To Odd, that would mean a sudden sensation in his stomach to which he feels a sensation in his stomach, similar to what he would feel on Earth. Of course for that to work, their would have to be something similar to the endolymph found in his ear on his avatar which would be swooshed around to sense the motion. Its possible there would be something similar to the to it on his constructed body, to help maintain balance. We know the body would have to have some kinda neural system in order to feel sensation and pain. Whose to say it doesn't have similar items to represent balance. They probably could have based it on Odd's DNA sequence that they took from the initial scanning when creating his avatar, as a way of making it seem more natural to him.

As for the molecular scanning, we're not entirely sure of the entire scanning process works, so there are points where we have to take leaps of logic and who knows what consequences or mis-steps Hopper may have taken when creating the scanners. The scanning technology couldn't have been perfect as A Fine Mess has shown. Personally, I actually agree with TB3's current theory, as it would simplify the scanning/virt/de-virt procedures as well as explain the healing of injuries that seem to occurr in episodes like Cold War or between Code: Earth and False Start. It makes a lot of sense.

[TB3]

When you say the current theory you mean the one I posted just up above right?

As for the healing section, I think the computer has to be told to remove discrepancies, otherwise the body would be reconstructed exactly as it was before, unless there's something about injuries I don't understand.

Meh! I'll try and get the next draft up sometime tommorrow okay guys, and then we can iron out the last wrinkles before moving onto what might be the final chapter - the one covering Lyoko, its construction, function etc.

[Taelia offline]

What about sector creation? Will that be covered too?

[YDV offline]

...Why?

All the sectors were created at the same time (although they were unfinished because of the Digital Sea) by Franz Hopper. Why would we need to cover that?

[Pyro-Lord offline]

About all the Odd sickness to stomach stuff, in the last episode of season two, Odd didn't even feel like he was going to throw up. I wonder why not then, but in all the other times they went to Carthage(sector5).

[animenologist offline]

Sometimes anomolies have psychological explanations. In this case, the anomoly is not having a stomach ache. He could have felt some psychological sensation that caused him to surpress the odd feeling he was having in his stomach.

As an anology, some people get a bad feeling in their stomach when they sense something really bad is going to happen. Odd could have the same thing except in reverse since, due to intuition, could of felt that the mission was going to go horribly awry.

And when I said current theory, yes I meant the one above. Though at the same time, I feel it also is quite possible for the scanner to just use a molecular scanner as a reference for reconstruction of the human body, and only specific things go into the creation of the avatar. The DNA, which is part of the initial scan, a superficial body scan for body build, any odd anomolies like prostetics or things that don't fit (which would be shown as a corruption error), age, and would than form the shape of the current avatar. I think its a viable possibility, but I think yours makes more sense.

[TB3]

Well after a week, I think I've finally finished this chapter. PRAISE BE!

This one was quite an effort as you guys know, so I hope this meets your approval.

Enjoy!

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AVATARS





The Avatars

When in Lyoko, the minds and consciousnesses of the protagonists operate through their Avatars – ‘bodies’ derived from their virtualisation scans and customised to suit their own tastes, combat styles and abilities. There is far more to these colourful figures though than meets the eye.

The avatars are not strictly ‘avatars’ in the internet sense – on forums an avatar is a small image which allows users to identify each other – while the Lyokan avatars serve the function of creating distinct divisions between characters, they also function as ‘file folders.’

We will shortly dive into an analysis of the avatars, but in order to understand them fully we must take a short lesson in Genetics.

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DNA – THE DOUBLE-HELIX
The human genome or DNA strand is one of the largest molecules known to exist – though smaller than idividual cells each DNA molecule is extremely long (5 cm) and like tangled spaghetti that 5cm is crammed into every single cell of the human body.


A schematic of a human DNA strand

This is the universally known ‘double-helix’ configuration of DNA – actual genetic information is encoded in the ‘rungs’ – also known as ‘base pairs’ – the human DNA strand contains 3 billion of these base pairs.

The base-pairs are made of a pair of ‘bases’ or ‘nucleotides’ - these are Adenine (A) and Thymine (T), and Cytosine (C), and Guanine (G). The sequence of these basepairs control the creation of amino-acids in the growing human body – these amino-acids in turn control the development of proteins which eventually group, combine and develop into cells and then the complete body. Hence the DNA sequence determines the structure of the human body.

What’s interesting is that at least 99% of each person’s DNA strand is common to every human being on the planet – only between one in every hundred and one in every thousand base-pairs differ from the standard template.

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VDNA – THE QUADRUPLE HELIX
NOTE: In the show this is referred to as DNA, but to save confusion with human DNA it is hereafter referred to as V-or ‘Virtual’ DNA.

Is what the team’s ‘virtual structures’ or ‘avatars’ are derived from – VDNA imitates human DNA, but with four helix-structures instead of two, as shown here;


‘Missing Link’ screencap showing the quadruple helix structure in the top left screen, centre, and bottom right.

Much like human DNA, vDNA controls smaller agents which work to build a body – in this case a particle simulation system (from which the infamous Multi Agent System was most likely developed) – and from that the avatar is built.

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PLAYING CARDS
The avatars are represented on Jeremie’s console as playing cards, and he uses these an adjoining functions to communicate with the team and also control their materialisations, settings, weapon reloads etc.


Aelita’s Playing-Card and Communications Screen


Odd’s ‘Physical-Status-Display’


Aelita’s ‘Mental-Status-Display’


Odd’s Lazer-Arrows are reloaded.

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AVATAR COMPOSITION
As said the avatars are virtual constructs, and thus are very different to human beings – they have no organs, they do not rely on respiration and ingestion of food for energy. They never age, and would remain eternally young were they not updated with each scan.


Image showing the wireframe of Yumi’s avatar

The bodies are simply very advanced wire-frames, animated by the computer and controlled by Quantum Digital replicas of their human brains, which receive ‘sensation’ through a simulated nervous system.
The avatar itself contains three VDNA files, and links to several other files.


Screencap showing the composition of Yumi’s avatar, showing the three component files and (top right beside her avatar) a display monitoring her separate DNA code

The three files are;

VDNA PHYSICAL DATA
This is a pre-existing file within the computer that contains the physical data of the avatar – its shape, build, clothing, coloration, weapons etc. This file also contains the basic data that all the avatars share – the ‘Template’ data.

VDNA MENTAL/CONCIOUSNESS PATTERNS
This file contains all data referring to the ‘mental’ aspect of the human body – namely a molecular scan of the mind and a recording and simulation of all neural impulses and wavelengths.

This file is also encoded in vDNA to allow it to be simulated and linked to the avatar’s ‘nervous system’ – when the two files combine the avatar ceases to be inanimate coding and becomes a living, thinking, feeling being.

VDNA SEQUENCE CODE
This file, encoded in vDNA, allows data stored in a vDNA format (such as the mental/consciousness patterns) to be decoded and reintegrated into the molecular scan – without it the body could be brought back to reality but it would be mentally ‘blank’ – incapable of even supporting it’s own autonomous body functions. This was the danger Yumi was placed in during ‘Missing Link’ when XANA stole her vDNA codec.

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SEPARATE FILES
The avatar only contains the files necessary for it’s own operation, but it also serves as a link to several other files held in the supercomputer’s restricted access memory.

MOLECULAR SCAN – BIO (V. large file, VDNA encoded)
This is all the data picked up by the scanners during the virtualisation, minus the actual consciousness, which is diverted to the avatar. Also the scan does not include the DNA encoded in each cell, as it would make the file needlessly big.

DNA (V. Large file, DNA encoded)
Here a single copy of the DNA strand is held, picked up during the scan and then reintegrated into every cell during the reconstruction of the body.

It should be noted that aside from building the avatar during the subject’s first scan, DNA is not used in Lyoko, but it is saved and held because without it the human body reconstructed could not function.

BACKUP (V. large file, VDNA encoded)
This contains a copy of the molecular and DNA scan from the last successful transfer as a redundancy.

LYOKO ATTRIBUTES (Small/Medium file, VDNA encoded)
These file was written by Jeremie and contains all the aspects of the avatars that are not part of the default programming, such as clothes, weapons and abilities. This sections of vDNA are spliced into the prexisting avatar data before the actual transfer begins.

Two of these attributes are noteworthy;

1.ODD’ S VISONS:
The supercomputer is a powerful number-cruncher, and with the right data and chaos-theory-based programming can predict the future to a small extent – therefore Odd’s ability ties to that – and on several occasions the computer has given him a 'heads-up' on an upcoming situation.

This saved the team’s backs a few times but Odd has seemingly traded this up for a shield ability – possibly he still has it, but either it's use has not been shown on the computer has not seen fit recently to warn him. At this point, it’s conjecture.

2.AELITA’S BOND TO LYOKO:
Aelita’s notable gift inside Lyoko is the Creativity/Synthesization ability – a manifestation of her half of the Keys of Lyoko – the other half possessed by her father and pirated by XANA. Together the keys give dominion – alone they grant a level of control. Aelita can physically alter Lyoko and also has the ability to not just interface with the towers (which in theory all users can), but also control and override them. It is also through this bond to the towers that Aelita gains a degree of extra-sensorary-perception within Lyoko.

As an aside, it works that it was the presence of this highly encrypted, unreadable, unusual coding in Aelita’s vDNA packet that SEEMED connected to her abilities that inspired Jeremie to not only give the team weapons in Lyoko, but also superhuman abilities. Most likely their abilities were also derived from some of Aelita’s coding, as all of their powers rely to some extent on a manipulation of Lyoko’s environs.


MOLECULAR SCAN – NON BIO (Small file, VDNA encoded)
This file is the same as the biological molecular fan, but it only holds the data on the clothes and accessories worn by the human subject and thus is much smaller.

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CONSTRUCTING AN AVATAR
As now shown an avatar is dependant on DNA to function, both human and simulated. The human DNA is acquired with the subject’s first ever scan.

As pointed out around 3,000,000 to 30,000,000 of the 3 Billion base pairs in DNA determine the ‘uniqueness’ of a human being – in the first scan the computer strips out many of these DNA fragments, converts them to vDNA and then splices them into the VDNA PHYSICAL DATA file of a blank avatar.

At this point the blank avatar contains only the vDNA coding shared by all the avatars, much like the 99% of DNA shared by humans. This defines how the avatar will walk, talk, move and receive sensation, image and sound etc. As extra data is spliced in however the various details begin to fill in – the default vocal patterns become those of the subjects, hair colour develops as does data on eye colour, facial features, build etc.

At this point however the avatar is just a ‘genetic’ model, containing the potential for all the myriad ways in which a body can develop. In order to tie the avatar down to it’s subject’s specific physicality some data from the molecular scan is converted to vDNA and spliced in – this specifies height, skin tone, age, finalises the build and ensures that the body is as accurate as possible.

Finally the ‘Lyoko Attributes’ data is converted to vDNA and spliced into the PHYSICAL VDNA FILE. This is now complete and is saved to the restricted-access memory of the computer. The avatar is now finished and ready to accept it’ s owner.


Aelita’s ‘pre-saved’ avatar awaiting it’s owner

COMING AND GOING

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COMING AND GOING

VIRTUALISING
When Jeremie begins a scan this ‘pre-saved’ avatar is all he had to work with, and before he can actually trigger the program he must set this avatar up to receive a consciouness
as well as create folders and data streams for the various human elements and program all the interlinking threads.

At the same time, Jeremie has to prepare an uplink to stream all of the avatar and scan data into Lyoko – these uplinks are derived from a much larger collection of programs handling all the data exchanges known as THE TRANSFER PROTOCOLS, which are vital to the data-handling and shunting capacity of the complex.

The other important task though is configuring the avatar. The prepared avatar includes a lot of variables affecting how the avatar will be affected by external stimuli, as well as what elements are incorporated from the scan. Here Jeremie can modify the settings to dull the avatars to pain, allow them to run great distances without feeling exhaustion and jump, run, balance and fight with a grace, strength and dexterity impossible for a human. When these are combined with the Lyoko attributes the team is transformed from students of exceptional willpower and courage, to literal superhumans in a simulated environment.

With all these elements in place the avatar is now ready, and all that remains is to begin the scan.

The person enters the scanner which rolls through it’s programmed operation, and from it is ejected a vast amount of code. This is split into two streams;

The Molecular Scan – this streams directly to it’s storage space, where it is encrypted as vDNA and stripped of it’s DNA molecules to save on memory space. A copy of that common DNA thread is saved in the separate folder, not encoded or encrypted in any way.

The Mental Scan – at this stage this comprises the neural impulses, which go straight into their folder in the avatar, again encoded as vDNA.

The computer now moves to the next stage of splicing together elements – new data from the molecular scan is added to the avatar’s physical vDNA to include any changes that have occurred in the human form. The mind’s molecular data is uploaded to the mental vDNA folder to complete the mind, and the two sections linked.

Jeremie now launches the particle-simulation system, and this, guided by the molecules, generates the avatar in a holding space in the computer. Finally the human body is destroyed and the avatar uploaded to Lyoko.


Yumi’s Avatar nearing completion of construction, as evidenced by the main screen showing her virtual particles configuring, and the playing-card showing the upload of mental data.

To date the above process is the only means by which a person can come to Lyoko. There are however multiple ways to leave it.

All three of these means share a common concept – of bringing a virtual body to reality – and also common software, such as the standard CONSTRUCTION PROGRAM for the scanners, and in the case of the avatars the common codecs for converting vDNA to DNA and molecular data.

LIFE POINTS AND SAFETIES
The wireframes that compose the avatars are also their Achilles Heel – they do not contain data on the human DNA and molecular data, but they do contain the consciousness – this has no backup, and if the wireframe is destroyed, that data will discharge into Lyoko, sundered, fragmented and lost, the person with it.

Thus the Life-Point system was developed – the status of the wireframe is noted, and damage to it equated as points deducted from a total of 100. When zero is reached, the automatic devirtualisation program triggers to remove the person before the wireframe receives further damage and collapses.

Of course an automatic program can easily run into problems, thus some safties were built in by Franz – neither the devirt/rematt programs will trigger if the scanners are not operating and a passageway open to stream the molecular data to them – were the avatar to be intentionally decompiled without these factors in place the data would be lost across Lyoko anyway as surely as by any monster’s laser. With the safety tripped the person remains in Lyoko, the lesser of two evils between certain ‘death’ and possible ‘death’, as seen in ‘Common Interest’. XANA has also tried to bypass the safeties – in both ‘Routine’ and ‘Franz Hopper’ he managed to sever the Lyoko-to-Scanner passageways without tripping the safeties, which would have resulted in again, fragmentation of data if the avatars had decompiled.

REMATERIALISATION
This is perhaps the best and most comfortable means of leaving Lyoko. It can however take a considerable amount of time. Once Jeremie triggers the process the computer begins a dual process of maintaining the avatar in question whilst simultaneously decoding its mental/consciousness folder and combining the physical data with the BIO and NON-BIO MOLECULAR FILES.

The actual process of decoded is interesting. Based on a scene in ‘Missing Link’ (which I couldn’t get an image of, but right before Ulrich and Odd interrupt Aelita’ transfer), the mental vDNA strand separates into two double-helixes. It is now in a format where it can be decoded via algorithms into a data-stream that the scanners can use to reconstruct the physical mind and neural impulses.

Finally the data is ready to be returned to the scanner and the final stage takes place – the avatar decompiles and its mental patterns are transferred to the scanner with the body data to be combined and constructed.


Yumi and Ulrich’s avatars are decoded and combined with their molecular scans prior to decompiling

The process is very carefully executed, checked for regularity and errors multiple times in both the combination, transfer and reconstruction stages - the net result (at the expense of time) is that the person will cheerfully step out of the scanner with no mental or bodily fatigue and can actually be virtualised again rapidly as their bodies are physically ready and the various elements of the avatars are held in the console in an easy-to-compile state.

It should also be noted that Jeremie has written a more effective materialisation program than was originally present in the system, but in the interests of care and keeping the subject safe the process can still take some time

DEVIRTUALISATION

Just another day in the life of...

It’s a sad fact that this program which was written as an emergency fallback is actually used more than the program primarily intended for bringing a person back from Lyoko.

The devirtualisation process is in actuality a poor-man’s version of the materialisation program, which is triggered by an avatar’s life-points falling to a critical level – the program begins to prepare to yank this person out of Lyoko – the scanners power up, the data begins to decompile and translate – unfortunately in a crisis situation there is often very little time between 30,20,10 and 0 LP, and so the process has to be sped, stages cut out, the whole affair stripped to the bone – and the net result is that the person is saved, but also they are usually exhausted, on occasion in mild pain.

This is worsened in cases where the person has been devirtualised due to a sudden ‘death’ in Carthage, a devastating surprise attack or where they have ‘committed suicide’ in order to leave by their own free-will, as the program has no forewarning or time to prepare, hence the recovery process has to be a sped and rushed affair, literally streaming data straight from the memory banks to the scanners via the vDNA/DNA sequence code pack.

The process also requires a longer turnabout time before the subject can be virtualised again, partly due to the physical exhaustion, also because the program has not had time to salvage the avatar components, so Jeremie is back to square one in terms of recompiling the elements.

XANA has been able to exploit this rushing element to put the lives of the team in serious jeopardy – in ‘Routine’ and ‘Franz Hopper’ he was able to corrupt the programming to an extant where the computer believed everything was in order, when in actuality the vital stage between the decompiling and codec processes has been stripped out, with the result of the vDNA being scattered across Lyoko and lost.

MATERIALISATION

The first full Materialisation

For the first year of the alliance and friendship between Kadic and Lyoko Jeremie’s main objective was to generate a program which could bring Aelita from Lyoko to Earth.

Aelita requires some thought here – she left Earth on June 6th 1994 and was not seen again until 2004/2005. In that time XANA had removed all of her memories of a human life, and either by design or accident her avatar/playing card had been permanently damaged – as a result she had lost all traces that showed she was once a human being – notably her DNA and her back-up files. Tragically this data was probably still in the restricted-access memory, but with the loss of the avatar links Jeremie could never even know they existed, let alone go hunting for them in an area to which he does not possess access codes.

As a result, Aelita could not be devirtualised – if any of the team lost 100 LP they were instantly dragged out – Aelita did not, and without that her already fractured avatar would suffer fatal damage if she lost any further LP.

When exploring Aelita’s avatar coding Jeremie only had one element to suggest she was not merely an advanced AI – the clothes she had been wearing when virtualised. However this most likely led him to believe Aelita’s creator had intended to bring her to reality, and if that was possible in theory why shouldn’t he try to achieve it. XANA even played along to this concept in the episode ‘Franz Hopper;’

[i][b]“I created you to be Lyoko’s guardian – but I never dreamed I would see you in flesh and blood.â€

[Chad Rains offline]

Yay! Lovely work so far. Makes an interesting read when your bored.

Now lets just hope we even get a tiny "human" response from Moonscoop on this. Even that would be interesting to see rather than an automated response or none at all.

[Taelia offline]

*applauds, and soon a large audience is applauding!* Bravo! Bravo! Encore!

Yay for the Avatars!

[YDV offline]

Wow! Bravo!

I have to say your Quad Helix/vDNA encoding idea works out all the bugs in my original theory. This chapter was genuinely beatiful, although it did take a while to get it down to a finer form. I see no errors that jump out at me right now-- I think you've explained it quite profieciently.

What worries me though is the increaling length of the essay-- I do hope someone at Moonscoop has time and enough interest to read through all of it...

[TB3]

Thanks guys - in the end this is one chapter I'm very pleased with - the challenge was also nice at times, at others TEARING-HAIR-OUT-AWFUL! There's a bit or two I'd like to edit, but that one's pretty wrapped up.

As for Moonscoop - do we still have plans to write a shorter, simplified version and post that as well? The finished essay as well, by my calaculations, will be a pretty substantial tome.

[Odd22 offline]

OK that was amazing as usual and I would like to say I am ready for any thing to be tested. Ofcourse once it is ready but i think this is an amazing pace.

[TL.]

Well done brother. Makes more sence by the day. Just have to read the other papers to see the whole picture

[animenologist offline]

Other than the minor blurb of the human DNA being 99% unique (I think you meant to say similar), and the very odd removal of the special cases concerning avatar powers (Odd's and Aelita's), very nice work. Glad to see we could reach a consensus.

[TB3]

Other than the minor blurb of the human DNA being 99% unique (I think you meant to say similar), and the very odd removal of the special cases concerning avatar powers (Odd's and Aelita's), very nice work. Glad to see we could reach a consensus.

The bit on the powers is one of the edits I'm putting back in shortly - thanks Animenologist

Now - the last chapter - 'The World Without Danger' - what do you want for it?

[animenologist offline]

Well, you would need to include towers, the acess panel, tower activation and its effects on Lyoko (large scale manipulation of landscape and monster creation aswell as pulsation convergance), and movement between sections, Carthage and its defenses, as well as the panel that allows access to XANA's data. Theres also the digital void which needs to be explained, the exaggerated physics, and could also place in the little quirks associated with the Sectors, like the simulated water in the Ice Sector, the tall trees whose roots extend to the sea below, etc.

Also this is also a good place to integrate the analysis of both XANA and Aelita, since they have the greatest amount of manipulation of Lyoko's resources, which I believe you stated would include an evolutionary discussion and psychological profiling. Just some ideas to get you started. And again, we're here to help you if you need us.

[TB3]

Thanks - I'll probably need a lot of help over the next few days.

<b>Post merge point.</b>

I'll try to help you. Anything for a friend.

Not to sound mean but how exactly?

Just a quick update to say that I've edited the previous chapter, and that tommorrow I begin work on the last section (on Lyoko) - Animnologist and YDV have already had their say on what they want in this, but it's still open to everyone.

Also, Rodri has suggested an 'LTT-After-Party' for when the project is finished - who's up for it?

Rodri has also offered to delete some of the spammier posts in order to help us stretch this thread's lifespan and prolong the locking (who foresaw that back in November huh?) - again, have your say here!

[Taelia offline]

Uh....never mind. Didn't mean to getcha started.

[comex offline]

Don't I love my own hiatii? Actually not, but I'll wikify the (three, correct?) new articles ASAP.
(*pokes at its vs. it's*)

"Avatars": http://xemoc.net/clwiki/index.php/LTT:Avatars
This extremely long entry had no less than 32 images, which managed to beat the text in terms of overall height by quite some amount (a little less if the images had all been placed at the top so that the images could appear above the relevant text, not just below, but whatever).

It has nearly that many sections, going as deep as the fourth level...

[Omega offline]

umm.. someone earlier mentioned the 100- posts remaining. if we really wanted to save this, someone could copy all the posts of the first 30 pages, then we could all go back and delete our posts up till then. I'm not sure if the moderators would like it, but I don't see why they wouldn't. This would save the threrad from being locked forever and make sure that this world was not in danger... (yes, that was a pun. not a punny pun, but a pun nontheless)

Also, I have to agree with everything I've read (which is everything up till about page 33 I think. Then I started skimming) with nothing to say should be edited.


ΩΩΩΩΩ

[YDV offline]

You know.. I don't see why we can't just make a new thread when it's maxed out, and have a backup of this somewhere...

[comex offline]

Exactly... deleting is a waste. Always.

[Cassius335 offline]

Any chance this could be included as a footnote?

http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/viewtop ... 3262#73262

[TB3]

Just a small update to say I should have this last chapter written by next Saturday - sorry to keep you guys waiting.

CHEERS!

[Cassius335 offline]

Not a problem. You should see how long it takes ME to write some things.