In the previous versions of Tootsville, the Gossip Mouse named Little Reminder might appear sometimes to give players news and information from the staff. In the new game, things are a little different.

The Gossip Mice now are actually a user interface to the mesh networking technology that makes it possible for Tootsville V to operate.

When you join the game, your web browser connects up to other play in the game world directly, using a technology called a mesh network.

In most games, every player’s computer talks to a cluster of game servers “in the cloud,” at a data center somewhere. As more players join, those computers have to do more and more work.

With a mesh network, each player’s computer is doing a little bit of the work that keeps the game running. That spreads out the work, so we don’t need to charge a subscription fee to run the big cluster of servers.

There are still servers, and it still does cost something to maintain them, so we are also working to organize some fund raising activities for the Violet Volts project to offset those costs. Right now, they’re being paid out of pocket by the Fenn Pocock family.

When the servers are back online, soon, you’ll get messages from the Gossip Mice to let you know if there are problems with that mesh network.

As always there’s more information in the Wiki-Wiki. Check out the Mesh Networking article.