It's been a while since my last (first) post about Combat Cards, the SL game of strategy and mayhem. In the intervening months, there have been a lot of changes. There are more cards to be played, more locations in which to play them, and more combatants as well. In fact, Combat Cards just finished a tournament that saw the top 4 scorers battle it out to the delight of all. If ever you were intrigued by this idea, now's the time to check it out!
I recently posed to be on one of the cards, and was told that Osprey Therian and Doc Boffin are looking for horror-themed models, so if you think you have an avatar that will fit right in with these, do contact them in-world. Here's a link to their website, and here's their blog, and here is their in-world location. Forget Tringo; this is a great example of an engaging, complex, absorbing game produced entirely within SL! Check out the tutorial here, then go fight the good fight!
Cube3, creators of the CubePODz, have updated their recreational vehicle line with the new Sunfish, a 2-seater, and the Albatross, a 10-seater. I loved the Syd Mead-esque design of the CubePOD, and these new additions have some of that going on, as well as a sleek retro feel to them. From the press release:
"We should take this opportunity to make the virtual worlds we'll live in optimistic and suggestive of a new frontier. Many of the tired cyberpunk visions that made good fiction 20 years ago are horrible places to really spend our time in. To me that's maybe fun for an RPG, but not for a world we're spending hours in daily now" says designer Larry Rosenthal.
The three vehicles sell within SL for base prices of 600L, 1200L, and 2000L based on the model and style. To see some screens of the new vessels, check out this gallery; for more of a look, go in-world to Theta.
This might be of peripheral interest to most of you, for which I'm sorry. However, for those of you that use ambient sound effects, it just might be a godsend. Soundsnap offer a range of sound effects and loops for you to freely use including in commercial ventures - the sound effects and loops personally recorded by the contributer and added to the library - and they offer you the chance to do the same.
I've had a bit of a dig through, and there's quite a range of effects there. Being hard of hearing I'm not always the best placed person to judge quality, and in this case the aesthetics are in the ear of the beholder of course, but there are some things I can hear and they sound pretty good to me - they should, as many are recorded by film and TV audio engineers.
Every MMO/NGO/VW has bugs. Every patch, every update for every one of them brings a slew of fresh bugs, glitches, imbalances and lost property. Dealing with those bugs, glitches and whatnot can be a pain in the ass quite frankly, but in Second Life, we're not just dealing with peoples' fun. We're also dealing with their revenue.
While Ginsu Linden made quite an effort to make everyone understand that Linden Lab understands the position that it is in, relative to the users, it's obvious enough from reading the comments that many of the users themselves either do not understand Linden Lab's position, or do not think Linden Lab understands it. Pick one.
Yesterday's rolling restart has turned into a hair-pulling nightmare for the manufacturers of various scripted devices - most notably furniture and devices that use a particular gimmick to reposition an avatar for multiple poses.
The trick was to use llSetLinkPrimitiveParams() which allowed (we think, quite unintentionally) a sitting avatar to be moved around as if it were one of the prims of the object - but other attempts to manipulate the avatar using the function could crash the sim in which the script was operating. Bug or not, yesterday's rolling restart fixed that without any notification of the change in behavior (server-side changes and bug-fixes are never listed in any detail, if at all).
The breakage has, itself, been reported as a bug, specifically as SVC-750 and bug-reporter dibbs Dogval is hoping to garner votes for rapidly repairing this problem. Entire product lines, we hear, have been rendered inoperative.
Earlier this week, a new type of vehicle was released into SL by cube3.com -- a vehicle that can transform into 3 separate configurations, depending on the medium being traversed: land, water, or air. The cubePOD is a sleek little unit, calling to mind the designs of Syd Mead, who most of you will know as the designer for the films Blade Runner and Tron.
"In a second world filled with nicely built but unoriginal replicas of real world cars, planes, boats, and TV starships, the cubePODz offer Metaverse users high level original product designs that can really only exist in this medium" said Cube3's Cube Inada, who designed the craft with Burke Prefect.
The company has plans to release more unique vehicles, such as the "Sunfish", a two person aircraft and the "Atlantia", a unique large "flying" luxury yacht/submarine. The cubePOD goes for 600L, and can be seen either at cube3's office in Theta, or at any of over 50 StarbaseC3 outposts across SL.
After many frustrations with existing machinima gadgets, CodeBastard Redgrave has created her own in order to shoot a small movie for her friends. The result is a simple HUD camera, perfectly suited for the point-and-shoot people or for those who do not want to spend time setting up complicated camera angles, which entail having build rights on the land of interest.
I know it sounds unlikely to anyone that scripts in lsl, but according to the BBC Technology news a firm called Novamente is working with ESC to produce AIs in pets, with the aim of branching out into babies, talking parrots etc.
The article points out that they believe places such as SL "will have a ready market for artificial pets" which is true - there is already such a market. You'd hope with ESC in the mix they'll actually be adding something to the pet market as well doing their research.
Do you want you're pet whispering "Dave? Dave?" as you tear memory modules out though?
Artist Vlad Bjornson opens new avenues for expression through his Sculpted Thoughts art piece. The morphing sculpture impresses the eye with a smart mashup of sculptie functionality and the Second Life media interface. The sculptie object is coded to take on a new shape as it cycles through the textures from a QuickTime movie stream.
SL limitations in this area were surpassed with some clever and custom scripts made by the artist. For example, Bjornson's sculptie is updated at a speed of almost 8 frames per second in order to maintain a smooth animation (see the machinima demo above). "If sculpties reacted to the video stream properly, [the motion] would be totally fluid [...] SL probably doesn't pick up the changes otherwise", explains scripter Candide LeMay.
Under the motto of "social engine for Second Life", Robbie Kiama has recently launched a new and interesting product – MetaHUD. This new gadget is a neat combination between a Digg/StumbleUpon network for SL and an in-world, easy-to-search marketplace. The interface is very friendly and reminds users of a regular web browser. The buttons are nicely designed, with graphics that cut across language barriers. You can access the Digg/StumbleUpon feature under the Travel tab at the top and the marketplace under Items.
I typically use the gadget to tag favorite places as I encounter them, but MetaHUD also has a system for people to buy items (without needing to teleport to a store). Simply search under "Items" for things you wish to buy or do the search "/8 meta mart" and grab the partner kit to learn about advertising here.
Much like SLExchange, this MetaHUD does charge a percentage/commission of sales. The other similar service is OnRez, which has free listings for shop owners. It features both in-world and on the web purchasing options. (Thanks for that clarification, Forseti).
MetaHUD's search method seems to be more more efficient than the classifieds and it does allow sellers to input a picture and tags for specific objects (much like SL browser). If you're a fan of digg or del.icio.us, you'll definitely love this. Get your own free copy here and let us know what you think!
This is intriguing: a text-to-speech unit in SL that can call out to any phone in the US or Canada. You can check out the unit here. From the release: "Sms and email services are included with the phone service. It's available with four different service plans ranging from 99 L to 199 L per phone call, and 0 L to 99 L per SMS message."
Here's the thing, though, and not to cast aspersion on the creator, but if you're sitting at your computer, aren't you probably already near a phone, land-line or cell? Though I admit being called by an unknown phone number, picking up to hear a computer-generated voice say your name does sound like it might provide a few yuks. Have I missed the point?
As previously reported by Tateru, 57 Miles from Metaversed.com moderated today a panel with Gartner's Steve Prentice (ST Mensing in SL), and representatives from Sun Microsystems (Fiona May), The Electric Sheep Company (Joel Greenberg), and Mystik business-school professor Robert Bloomfield (Beyers Sellers). Sadly, Skype was down all this morning and the panel had to resort to using SL Voice. This meant, at least for me, that the conversation faded in and out every few seconds. I'm sure 57 Miles will have more detailed notes up on his blog soon. Until then, here are two ideas that stuck in my mind:
Steve Prentice explained that his prediction that 80% of people will have a virtual life by 2011 was referring to the increasing popularity of virtual worlds/online gaming/social media as a form of interaction and entertainment. He was prompting companies to take note of this trend and explore with care as they learn. His subsequent attempt to caution companies mostly focuses on security issues and risk management of these platforms.
Joel Greenberg of the Electric Sheep pointed out that the problem is not security. There are some ways to get around that with private islands/restricted access. However, there aren't enough collaboration tools for enterprise use. And he's spot-on. I can count on my fingers what you can do in terms of collaboration in SL: build together, watch a movie/video, listen to music/audio, and present a slideshow of images. Many are trying to create gadgets that enable other types of collaboration, but the infrastructure is often times the limiting factor.
A group of residents gathered under the umbrella of Thinkerer Studios have announced yesterday at the NMC Symposium the search for a creative collaboration project that positively impacts real life. The prize consists of 30,000 Linden dollars and a fully paid parcel of land for a year (no mention of how large). Thinkerer Studios promises free promotion in both the virtual and real worlds for the winning entry.
To learn all the details, check out the official note or contact Thinkerer Melville.
I'm happy to introduce another cool gadget from Felix Wakmann and Diva Canto. It's called SecondView and it's a graphic RSS Reader that works both as a HUD and as prim-efficient object inworld.
As you well know, many RSS readers are quite disappointing due to the dynamic text need - each letter has to be rendered onto a prim - so you can imagine things quickly getting to 50+ prims. SecondView contains a total of 6 prims !
SL Browser is an inworld ad network created by Felix Wakmann and Diva Canto. So what makes this HUD gadget special enough to demand attention, you ask? Well, it indexes some 1.4 million products and averages 2000 searches per day.
But this isn't about numbers ... I'm excited about several features that surpass the searching capabilities available in the SL client. For one - you can search based on keywords and in your results you get the location and relevant object/keyword image (instead of the picture of a storefront). This helps narrow your search at-a-glance, without wasting time teleporting to a tens of sites to find something close to what you have in mind. It even sports an "impulse buying" option through the "Public" search feature. If you have that box checked, your HUD will react to searches other people make using the browser. If you like what you're hearing, go get your own here.
If you're a business owner and wish to update your object description, simply change the object description and the Browser will automatically update in a week's time. Felix is also working on creating tags for those who wish to have their objects stay un-indexed by his gadget. For the techies reading this, continue on to hear about how the browser works, pitfalls, etc.
This might be of peripheral interest to most of you, for which I'm sorry. However, for those of you that use ambient sound effects, it just might be a godsend. 
Every MMO/NGO/VW has bugs. Every patch, every update for every one of them brings a slew of fresh bugs, glitches, imbalances and lost property. Dealing with those bugs, glitches and whatnot can be a pain in the ass quite frankly, but in Second Life, we're not just dealing with peoples' fun. We're also dealing with their revenue.
I know it sounds unlikely to anyone that scripts in lsl, but according to the 
I'm happy to introduce another cool gadget from Felix Wakmann and Diva Canto. It's called 
