Avatar

An avatar in the context of Wildcard's world is, on the most basic level, a visual, three-dimensional representation of something.

Netizen use

See also: Web protocol

Immersive internet users typically set up a default avatar for themselves when browsing the 'net. If they don't supply one, it ends up being their 'offline-appearance' avatar, which is typically crafted by their client via the neural connector, but occasionally hand-crafted by hackers.

Some servers disallow default avatar use entirely, forcing all its users to appear human. Other servers, especially online multi-player games, often restrict the exact type of default avatar that can be used, or, as a less computationally intense variant, offer their own avatars to choose from while connected to them. Latter is especially popular with small roleplaying games.

Avatar style is parsed on initial connect, only once. Henceforth the data pertaining to it in pre-render computation computation (relevant, for example, for Puppets) is stored internally, often at grossly simplistic levels, such as a simple flag for the avatar gender.

Puppet use

Avatars for Puppets are of course not double-encoded: There is no 'offline-appearance' form. Beyond that, it's a mirror-image of the 'Netizen use' deal, as long as the Puppet is autonomous.

Simulation-bound Puppets are coded into the simulation and their data structures can either be more complex or lacking entirely. It's best not to assume anything about those.