I'm not sure what I smoked yesterday, but I was thinking it would be fun to have a desktop timewaster for Linux that features an A.I. cat. I'm thinking something along the lines of the Catz software available for Windows, but in a less dedicated "game" environment. The idea also partly stemmed from reading Rasterman's blog about the new Enlightenment developments in graphics. There used to be a very simple screensaver for Windows 3.1 that had a cartoon cat.

See, here's the idea. You have a cat living on your computer desktop. The cat behaves like any cat living on a computer desktop would; wanders around to explore the desktop, nuzzles cheeks against the side of windows, jumps on top of windows and walks across them, chases your mouse, etc. It'd be really cool to be rendered in 3D with realistic shading, but maybe a cartoon cat would work too.

Such a thing would have to have quite a bit of artificial intelligence code behind it, though. Real cats have all sorts of moods; your desktop cat might be in the mood to nap most of the time (curling up in the lower corner, or maybe even on top of an open window), or might get frisky and decide to chase the mouse pointer all over the place. This could have all sorts of levels of distraction; you could allow your cat to walk across something you're reading (just like a real cat does) or pounce on top of your active window, etc. If you really didn't mind not getting any work done, you could let the cat catch your mouse pointer and run off with it (maybe just when you're not using it). You could allow the cat to grab your desktop icons, play with them, move them around when you're not looking, etc. Whenever you put files in your trash/recycle bin, the cat goes over to sniff them and eat any goodies it finds. There are all sorts of levels of how interesting it could get.

The thing here is that it's basically a background process. The cat is non-interactive; he only reacts to the things that normally happen on your desktop. Mouse movements will get his attention, and if you close a window that the cat is sleeping on top of, he'll have a rude awakening, but I don't have anything at all in mind by way of actually interacting with the cat like it's a pet. It would be, more or less, like a very sophisticated XEyes

Does anyone have any clue what kind of work would be involved in something like this? I already have my hands in half a dozen programming projects, so the last thing I need is a useless one like this, but I can't get over just how much fun it would be. If it's designed right, it could be built to allow configuration of all kinds of different pets - dogs, iguanas, turtles, or whatever, where users could decide how the animal moves and behaves. But a cat seems like it'd be the most fun to have living on a computer desktop.

I'd suggest looking up AWOR. It's basically what you're talking about with a little less AI.

It's an Amusing Waste Of Resources.


And BTW: it does have a cat skin.

You mean AMOR? Yeah, I hadn't tried that before, but I just installed it and checked it out. It looks something like what I'm thinking of (and the cat skin, I see, is taken from Neko, which is the one I remember having for Windows 3.1). It doesn't appear to do much interaction, though. The cat just wanders around on the current window and does some cute animations; it doesn't even appear to chase the mouse, which even the original Neko did. I think having the more advanced AI is what would make something like this really entertaining.

That's it. But the acyronym for it doesn't work. I read it was Amusing Waste of Resources, so what's the M doing in the W's place?


And I still have Neko. I think Wine can run it. Old-school fun.

Amusing Misuse of Resources