Earlier in 2013 I happened upon Garden of Eden, an exquisite parcel created by Liara Okiddo. Just 8192 sq m in size, the parcel was a veritable tour de force of design and presentation, demonstrating just what could be achieved in a small space, given a keen eye and patience.
Garden of Eden is now sadly gone; not because Liara has moved from Second Life, but because she and her partner Lucy have moved to a Homestead region, where they’ve been establishing a new home and new art studio and gallery.
Liara kindly offered me a preview look at Isla Okiddo ahead of the formal opening, and while real life prevented me from being able to take up the offer when first extended, I’m pleased to say that Liara kept the invitation open, and it was my privilege recently to have a tour of the island and spend time photographing it, and I can say hand-on-heart, that it is an incredible build.
As Isla Okiddo is not yet open, I’m not providing a SLurl here; I’m saving that for when I can fully review it. However, those wishing to show their interest in seeing the island Liara has established a unique way for them to do so via another build.
As well as working on Isla Okiddo, Liara has also been developing a small airport. As with Garden of Eden, it is once again a very creative use of space, buildings, and windlight. Should you visit it, I really do recommend you accept the parcel windlight to experience the setting as intended. Liara has put considerable effort in bring the scene together, and the selected windlight really brings the setting to life.
Here you can enjoy a period setting, with a silver Douglas DC-3 sitting on the tarmac in the early morning light, waiting for the inaugural flight to Isla Okiddo. This is to be a first class flight, as the champagne on ice alongside the steps up into the plane demonstrates. Alongside the champers sits a guest book where those wishing to join the flight – registering their interest in seeing Isla Okiddo – can do so.
James kindly loaned me the Aston Martin for the drive to the airfield … (Yes, there’s a little joke there for film buffs)
The airfield offers an excellent location for those wanting something a little different as a backdrop for their photoshoots – just make sure you drop word to Liara about your intent beforehand and make sure she’s OK with things.
I’ll be bringing more news on Isla Okiddo in the future; in the meantime, and rather than my usual Flickr slide show, here’s a little preview video I put together to help whet your appetite.
Loki Eliot is renowned for his scripting and building abilities in Second Life – and rightly so. His ideas, designs and builds stand at the forefront of what can be achieved in-world in terms of games and immersive activities, and he is always quick to embrace new platform capabilities and opportunities.
In The Well: Sollicitius, he brings all of these talents and abilities together to present an immersive and engaging experience, complete with a special guest star.
Given the time of year, The Well is a little bit of a horror story mixed into a mystery you must solve. It actually expands on an experience Loki created last year, which he has now enhanced to include more twists in the story and which makes use of recent SL innovations such as materials processing.
This does mean that the game is best experienced with Advanced Lighting Model active, and preferably with Sun/Moon + Projectors enabled. Loki has placed the entire experience as high up in the sky over his region as he can in order to minimise lag and the performance hit running with shadows enabled can create, so if you have a moderately good graphics cards, it’s worth giving Sun/Moon + Projectors a go if you can. If you still find yourself struggling, try disabling that option, but leaving ALM active. Also, do make sure you have sounds on, they are very much a part of the experience.
The backstory to The Well is that a young boy fell down a well, and he and the rescue team which descended to recover him vanished without a trace. Now, a year later, you have arrived at the scene to join a scientific team sent down to the cavern and caves beneath the well in an attempt to understand what they are and discover what happened to the ill-fated young boy and the rescue team.
Except that, by the time you arrive, the science team has also vanished…
The Well: Yes, he’s talking about you being late. Now he and the rest of the team have vanished…
The Well is a HUD-driven experience, and as such makes for very immersive game play in that there is no need to click on anything in-world once you’ve started; as you move around, the HUD responds to your position and offer-up choices and information – and a few other things as well :). All you have to do is click when a choice is required, or click to clear any message. The HUD cots L$100, and can be purchased from the vendor at the start of the experience.
Note that once started, removal of the HUD means you’ll have to return to the start and begin again. So if you want to enjoy The Well to the fullest, set aside about an hour of your time.
Once worn, the HUD unlocks access to the experience and presents the opening credits before setting the scene for you. This is very imaginatively done through a BBC News 24-style bulletin. Once the titles have rolled and you’ve cleared the instructions, you’ll be teleported down into the cavern beneath the well, where your adventure begins.
I don’t want to give too much away in terms of what to expect – that would spoil the fun! Suffice it to say, the main rules are, walk around the opening scenes carefully. There are clues and aides to be found which will help you along the way. The Well make use of SL’s experience permissions, so teleports are prompted as a part of the game’s progression, again making the moves between scenes as seamless as they might be, allowing for the necessary permissions being granted.
As the instructions note, you have a Sanity Meter. This starts off in the green, but will drop down and eventually arrive in the red if you let the Shadows get to you too much. If the meter reaches zero, you’ll be teleported back to the start. I’m not going to say too much about the shadows, other than they tend to travel in pairs, so if you see one, keep an eye out for the other when dodging! Oh – and you really should have the sound on ready for when they do grab you :D.
The Well: Beware the shadows … if you can see them …
The name of the game in The Well is choices. As you progress through the tunnels, you’ll come across additional caverns where you’ll be given choices. Some may lead you onwards, some may set you back to an earlier part of the game, some might simply put you back where you started just before reaching them. Hence why you need to set aside a reasonable amount of time to complete your explorations.
Those that do find their way to the end face one final choice. To go left or to go right. It sounds simple, but given the nature of the one offering the choice, don’t expect things to perhaps be as straightforward as you might think. Once you have completed the experience, you will be returned to the starting point and offered your reward.
To call The Well a game isn’t really doing it justice, per se. It really is an experience, and an enjoyable one at that. It combines some of the genuine strengths of the platform with some of its latest features to present an entertaining and engaging means of spending a portion of your time in-world. Sure, it can be subject to the vagaries of the platform at times, but there is nothing that really impacts the experience to the point of distraction, and it is clear from the way the various “levels” have been spread around Loki’s region, coupled with the height at which he has placed them, that Loki has worked hard to minimise as many causes of lag which may otherwise occur as possible.
The Well: The caves will lead to a number of mysterious caverns, each with its own look and feel, and also with its own … perhaps you should find that out for yourself…
This is the kind of experience which would be ideal for the Oculus Rift. As everything is proximity-based in terms of the in-world interactions, and HUD- based in terms of actual interactions via the mouse, The Well would seem to naturally lend itself to a fully immersive first-person experience. Loki and I briefly discussed this idea after my “rite of passage” through The Well. Sadly, he’s a little hampered in terms of Rifting the experience, as a “Rift-ready” version of the viewer with basic UI support has yet to appear for the Mac. However, the potential is there, and while I’m unlikely to opt for a Rift headset myself in the foreseeable future, The Well has left me intrigued as to exactly how Loki will be working with the headset in the future.
In the meantime, I highly recommend The Well if you’ve not already tried it. It is more than worth the time taken to visit, explore and experience.
I came across Asa Vordun’s Caprice and Easy A entirely by chance, the happy circumstance of flipping through Flickr and bouncing around Second Life. Call it is case of SL serendipity, as I couldn’t have come across both at a better time, thanks to a number of stresses crowding me somewhat of late. Both shooed those worries away and left me smiling.
Caprice is perhaps best defined by the description given in About Land:
Once upon a time in Caprice …a place of whimsy and wonder…beauty and peace…of tales and fairytales…what is real what is imaginary …do you trust what you see…
It’s a beautiful little corner of a Second Life, featuring houses by Kayle Matzerath, who provided the fabulous Lumenaria at the 2013 Fantasy Faire, arranged around a small square and fountain.
When I first visited, Caprice was enjoying a bright autumn, with the leaves on the trees a golden brown, the air crisp and the sun still warm enough for one to forsake a coat when stepping outdoors. Since then, I gather the time as moved on, and winter is gradually encroaching, the trees now denuded of their foliage and snow drifts laying claim to corners and to the sides of roads. Just as well, then, that a café offering coffee and hot chocolate stands on one side of the square, facing another offering filling snacks and warm drinks over on the other side. Or, if one prefers, apples and hot cider can be had from a wooden stall.
This is place where friends can meet and spend time seated around the fountain or at the cafés or – if the weather gets too nippy – inside the delightful library. By day or by night, Caprice offers the warmest of welcomes and its whimsical looks and feel encourage you to tarry and forget the bustle and call of the rest of the grid.
From the arch of the arrival point, looking out over a seafront scene with jetty, lighthouse and sail boat, you can meander along the footpaths and the road which catches the square in a paved lasso, wander past the cafés and the library and cider stand until you come to the arch of a narrow tunnel. Here, beside a sign inviting you to breathe, you might want to slip on a coat before continuing through the tunnel and into Easy A.
Here is a place where winter has truly arrived. Asa has done a fabulous job in creating a wonderful winter tableau photographers could likely have a lot of fun with – and to really capture the atmosphere, I do suggest you try a night / low lighting level with your time-of-day / windlight.
Cottages by Cory Edo and Van Auster sit by the side of a road which circles a high mesa. As the snow falls, a lone truck rumbles along the street, passing under the roadside lamps, headlights picking out the road ahead – you can see why I said Easy A needs a night-time setting to really be appreciated :).
As with Caprice, the attention to detail here means you’re going to need to keep a sharp eye open to appreciate everything on offer, particularly where the cottages are concerned, each of which offers a place to sit and reflect, or chat. Or if you prefer, you can find your way to the top of the tall pillar of rock, crowned as it is by a ring of fir trees, themselves topped and hung about with lights and which surround a secret place to sit and share while coffee and soup bubble on an open fire.
Easy-A
Both Caprice and Easy A offer a small slice of magic well worth taking the time to visit, particularly if you enjoy taking photos in SL.
I have no idea as to how frequently Asa giver her parcels a make-over, but I have to admit that outside of changing them to suit the seasons, I rather hope they don’t often go through too drastic an overhaul – at least not Caprice, given that Easy A is a little more in keeping with the onset of winter in the northern hemisphere and so may change more dramatically as the year passes. As it is, both offer charm, warmth (despite the weather :)) and individual beauty to the passing traveller. Be sure not to miss either of them!
As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.
The Main channel was updated on Tuesday November 5th with the same maintenance package previously deployed to the three release candidate channels, and which comprised bug fixes and crash mode fixes
On Wednesday November 6th, all three release candidate channels were all due to receive a new maintenance package, comprising further infrastructure changes for the yet-to-be-announced Experience Keys (experience tools) project. However, an undisclosed test failure meant the deployment was cancelled.
Upcoming Releases
Week 46 should see a new maintenance package in RC, which will include:
A fix for BUG-4152 Sim crossing on vehicle fails when parcel at opposite sim border is full
A number of crash fixes, including some which combat a physics griefer object
The fix to allow objects rezzed by sat-upon objects should have a fresh auto-return and temp-on-rez timer, This will allow them to last the full ~60 seconds (for temporary) or parcel auto return time. This should help is situations where combat vehicles in regions with short auto-return times can have their ordnance immediately returned when a weapon is fired, and any temp vehicles are unable to rez attachments, even when sat upon.
An interest list fix for issues where you don’t connect to regions far enough away when draw distance is set to 512m
Maestro Linden’s disco-themed Server Beta meeting venue (stock)
Trojan Objects
A further update is a change to try to deal with a griefing situation wherein estate managers/owners can be added to a region’s the ban list or teleported them home with llTeleportAgentHome(). This is apparently achieved through the use of what Maestro Linden refers to as “Trojan” objects, in that the object appears perfectly innocuous until passed to the an estate manager / owner but which, when rezzed, will the manipulate the ban list via llManageEstateAccess().
Maestro described these scenarios thus:”I could give you ‘cute kitty’ which you then rez on your parcel. But the script with the ‘purr’ function also has a ‘manipulate ban list’ function. Since you (the parcel owner) own the kitty, the script there can do the operation.”
It has also been noted that the use of such “Trojan” objects isn’t restricted to manipulating llManageEstateAccess(); they are also used to clear-down ban lists using llResetBandList(). In the case of llManageEstateAccess(), the function is being changed so that the owner is notified, and is given the option to allow the function to run in “stealth” mode.
The problem here is that by the time the notification is received, the Trojan script has done its job, so the solution is not ideal; the same would be true in the case of altering llResetBandList(). However, as Maestro put it, “But you’ll know exactly what it did in case you need to undo it.” A further concern in the case of llResetBandList() is that some estate owners use the function remotely to legitimately manage their ban lists, so if anything is done to alter its functionality, it might break existing content. This led to extensive debate within the Server Beta meeting as to how such matters could best be addressed – or even if they needed to be addressed beyond people taking the proper precautions when receiving scripted objects from untrusted sources.
SL Viewer
Default Region Restart Sound
In part 1 of this report, I noted that a JIRA has been put forward (STORM-1980) to have a default region restart sound added to Second Life. This would be played automatically by the viewer on receipt of a region restart message, adding an additional warning of an approaching restart for those who may miss the pop-up notices, giving them time to take the appropriate action prior to logging-out.
The work is progressing on this idea, although a suitable sound has yet to be found, and precisely how the region restart messages will be redefined has yet to be entirely settled. Sound-wise, something is required that would universally recognised and which is preferably not language-dependent. One of the more popular ideas at the moment is to have a submarine dive / air-horn like sound (the “A-wooo-GAH!” beloved of films), although there have been some muted concerns about people possibly being offended by the use of “military” sounds. Torley Linden also joined the discussion and, in fun, offered up his own idea – just make sure you don’t have the volume up too loud before playing the clip!
Torley’s region restart warning
Sadly, it doesn’t meet that criteria of being language-independent, but it’s still fun to listen to.
Script Syntax Updates and Increasing Source Text Allowance
In week 39, I reported that Ima Mechanic and Oz Linden are working to improve syntax highlighting in the viewer’s LSL editor by allowing the viewer to obtain the information required for syntax highlighting directly from the simulator the viewer is connected to. This should eliminate issues of the current, manually updated, files used to manage syntax highlighting falling out-of-synch with new LSL syntax as new functions and parameters, etc., are added.
This work is progressing well, and may now additionally see the source code text allowance in the viewer’s LSL editor increased. Currently, the source code limit in the editor is some 65,000 characters, however a number of scripters having been finding that they frequently are coming up against that limit when writing the source code for their scripts, so it has been suggested the limit be raised to 256,000 characters.
As regular readers here will know from my weekly SL project reports, Linden Lab is (among other things) working on the final clean-up of the Server-side Appearance (SSA) code. A large part of this work is directly linked to inventory handling, and is being referred to as the Advanced Inventory Service version 3 updates (AIS v3).
The primary aims aim of these updates is to address a series of inventory issues outstanding from the implementation of SSA, and to aggregate some operations that are currently multiple things into a smaller set of more powerful APIs. As noted in my last update covering AIS, the viewer-side code has reached a point where the Lab is both keen to progress with further testing. This being the case, the Lab has asked TPVs if they could incorporate the updates into experimental versions of their viewers so that they might assist with the testing.
Integrating the AIS v3 code isn’t as straightforward for those viewers which support both OpenSim and SL as it is for those that are focused solely on SL, as the AIS updates have been combined with a removal of the old client-side baking code from the viewer, as this is no longer required by the Lab. So in order to ensure avatar baking continues to work when users log-in to an OpenSim environment, those TPVs supporting both environments with a single viewer are having to ensure the client-side code is not lost when incorporating the new SSA / AIS updates.
On November 6th, Nicky Perian reported that Kokua has now done this, and has a test viewer for Windows available in the former version 3.6.9.30799, which is available in both 32-bit and 64.bit flavours.This viewer both includes the AIS updates and retains the client-side avatar baking code.
As the AIS code is still under development, it is not recommended that either version of this test viewer is used as the primary viewer for logging into Second Life. The primary reasons for making the viewer available are to:
Allow SL users to test inventory transactions, including changing avatar body parts and body part parameters (for example, eye colors) using the dedicated test regions which have been established on the SL Beta test grid Aditi (sunshinesls, sunshinesls1, sunshinetest, sunshinetest1)
Allow OpenSim users to also test inventory transactions and avatar baking on an OpenSim, and check for any unexpected changes to expected behaviour when compared to the latest release viewer.
In April 2013, I visited the Isle of Myrth, a full region which is both home to the Noble Family and which is also generously open to the public for visits and photography.
At the time of my first visit, the Noble Family were celebrating the works of Beatrix Potter, and the isle contained many touches that reflected her writings. Now the seasons have moved on, winter is sitting on our shoulders in the northern hemisphere, and the Isle of Myrth has been reworked to represent scenes from New England in the autumn (or should I say fall?).
The change in look and feel couldn’t be more apparent, although there are familiar touches for anyone who visited the region back in April. The lighthouse is still there, for example, acting as both the arrival point and (I think) the gallery for a photo contest, of which more shortly.
Step outside of the lighthouse, and you’ll find yourself on a small promontory, the island before you, covered in what might best be described as coastal mist which tends to hide more than it reveals, and which – to me at least – undersells the beauty of the island to the newly arrived.
In this, I admit to being biased. Autumn in New England has for me always conjured-up images of crisp autumn days where trees are burdened with leaves Irish Setter red, ready to flutter down and blanket the ground under crystal blue skies, or where the lowering clouds tint the horizon and a soft rain makes us think of the colder days to come, and recall the warmer days that have passed.
However, windlight issues can be quickly rectified to suit one’s taste, and certainly aren’t an impediment to the willing explorer. And once taken care of, the island offers more than enough to compensate for spending a few minutes fiddling with your viewer while switching between windlight options. As with all of the Noble Family’s work, there is mush here that is worth taking the time to explore and more than enough to keep happy snappers snapping.
From the lighthouse, you can stroll across a golden beach, then follow a stream inland to a small land-locked lake, complete with boathouse, an old parish church sitting across the water, long converted into a place to shelter from the fall rain and sit and chat with friends.
Paths and wooden walkways wind through, over and around the isle, offering the visitor many different routes by which it can be explored. Whether you opt to follow the paths up and around the old church and over assorted bridges and crossing to reach the hilltop playground, or take the steeper climb up to the old barn, or decide follow another meandering stream back to the coast and from there up to the old race track, is entirely up to you. Whichever way you roam, you’re likely going to want to keep your eyes peeled and camera ready.
While exploring, do please be aware that as mentioned above, although the region is open to the public, it is also home to the members of the Noble Family, with their house and gardens located towards the north-west corner. So do please respect their privacy when wandering close to the house.
The photo contest kicks-off on November 15th and runs through until 12:00 noon SLT on November 30th. Details are actually scant, but I assume entries are to be made via the Noble Flickr Group, and winning entries will be displayed in-world at the Noble lighthouse.
All told, this is another delightful re-working of a region which has rightly had a long line of fans and visitors. If you’ve not visited Isle of Myrth in a while – or never at all – I can only urge you to don your coat and grab a hat and go enjoy New England scenes in the fall. I doubt you’ll be disappointed. And having managed to include a line for a song I like in the body of this article, I’ll leave you to enjoy the song in full.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 