METAbolt is a lightweight text-based client for Second Life and OpenSim offering a range of features and capabilities. At the start of the year, there had been concerns that due to the long delay between updates (the last being August 2013), work on the client had stopped.
However, as I reported in February, this was not the case, but rather CasperTech were stepping-in to take over the project, as was announced on the METAbolt website at the time.
While it has taken a while for things to move forward since then, the initial interim updates from CasperTech have now started to appear.
The updated METAbolt log-in / splash screen highlighting the fact CasperTech are now maintaining it (Feb 2014)
The first of these was to update METAbolt from release 0.9.69.0 (Beta) to version 0.9.70.0 (release notes) on June 13th. As an interim update, this release did not bring with it new features or capabilities, but focused more on bug fixes and under-the-hood updates:
Bug fixes from CasperTech and contributed by users – for which CasperTach pass on thanks
The removal of x64 support – the viewer is now 32-bit focused and installs into C:\Program Files (x86) by default. The reason given for this is, “If METAbolt uses over 4gb of memory, it’s really not doing its job as a lightweight text client. Let’s use faster 32-bit pointers instead!”
Initial work on providing Mono support for Linux and Mac compatibility, although as the release notes state, it will be a while yet before this is complete
As this release resulted in an issue with METAbolt plugins, June 14th saw the release of version 0.9.71.0 (release notes) which, as well as fixing the plugins problem, also added a digital signature to the installer to prevent any security warnings from popping up on download.
Both of the releases present METAbolt as an installer .EXE, rather than packaging them as a ZIP file containing the installer and support files, as with previous versions. A little more work is required on cleaning-up some elements, as the installer does still refer to “METAbolt (64 bit)” and defaults to naming the installation folder “METAbolt (64 bit)” under Program Files (x86). However, this is purely a cosmetic thing, and not something that interferes with using the client.
The latest releases mostly contain under-the-hood updates and bug fixes. However a major code refactor for METAbolt is underway
Given the focus with these updates is on under-the-hood changes, the look and feel ofMETAbolt remains largely unchanged from earlier recent releases, other than the revised log-in / splash screen. Which is not to say additional work isn’t already underway.Tom Mettam, now leading the METAbolt project indicates that there is a major code refactor underway; as a part of this, CasperTech apparently plan to offer “bounties” for people willing to assist with the work. Those interested are advised to keep and eye on the Issues section of the METAbolt GitHub tracker for more information.
While I have not covered every release of METAbolt through this blog, those unfamiliar with the client may want to read my initial review, mush of which still appears to be relevant, and check the METAbolt category of this blog for those updates I do have.
Updates for the week ending: Sunday June 15th, 2014
This summary is published every Monday and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information
Official LL Viewers
Current viewer release: no change from version 3.7.8.289922
Black Dragon updated to version 2.3.9.9 on June 9th – core updates: please refer to the release notes (included here as the update had been published at the time of going to press)
V1-style
No Updates
Mobile / Other Clients
Metabolt updated to version 0.9.70.0 on June 13th and then 0.9.71.0 on June 14th – core updates: bug fixes; initial work to provide Mono support for Linux / Max compatibility; removal of x64-bit version; fix for broken plugin issue; digital signature added to installer to prevent security warnings during download – release notes (both versions)
Following a successful inaugural event in 2013, Art in Hats returns to Second Life with a new venue and even more designs and images to see – and more to do!
Art in Hats 2014 is taking place through until the end of July at Boutou. As with the 2013 event, it focuses on hats as both a statement of fashion and art. On display in a open-air, urban-style environment, are around 100 hats and headgear from some eighty designers and artists.
Exhibition curators Quan Lavender and Emma Portilo paired the designers with SL photographers, who produced portraits and images of the hats being worn. The result is a stunning display of art and fashion, all of which is available for sale should visitors feel inclined to obtain something to make a splash at the next major event they attend, or if they are looking for fashion-inspired art for a wall of their home. Demos of some of the hats are also available if those who prefer trying-before-buying.
At the centre of the installation is a little gift and freebies area and a selection of classic top hats from The Mad Hattery for sale at L$10 apiece.
As well as the main exhibition, Art in Hats will be hosting a fashion show on Saturday June 21st at 14:00 SLT, and there is a special charity auction event being held through until the exhibition closes on July 31st, which features a number of unique hats which are being auctioned-off in support of Feed a Smile. These include the delightful Dark Collection, comprising six items of headwear by Secret Rage, including Symphony, which features piano keys which can be played, and Life of the Party, which turns on and off when touched. Visitors just need to touch the little red top hat next to each item to place a bid.
Visitors can also participate in the Art in Hats contest which offers some very impressive prize packages. All visitors have to do is take the Copy / Mod basic bowler hat on offer, decorate it, take a photo of the finished item (aspect ratio 3:2) and send the image to Quan Lavender. All entries received are displayed in a special section of the exhibition, where they can be voted on by other visitors (who account for 50% of the voting, with the competition’s judges providing the other 50%). So that everyone has an opportunity to see and vote on competition entries, they must be sent to Quan no later than July 27th. The three winning entries will be announced during the closing event on July 31st.
It’s time to kick-off another week of fabulous story-telling in Voice, brought to Second Life and Kitely by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library.
As always, all times SLT / PDT, and unless otherwise stated, events will be held on the Seanchai Library’s home on Imagination Island.
Sunday June 15th, 10:00: Seanchai Kitely: Miracles: A Trio of Island Tales
Join Caledonia Skytower as she reads from her own book Miracles: a Trio of Island Tales, best described in her own words:
Belief is essential part of life. If there is a through-line to most of my work, it is the essential need for all of us to believe in something beyond ourselves. It does not matter what. Simply believe. By believing in something beyond yourself, you learn to better understand your world: to believe in yourself.
Belief is woven into all three stories in Miracles: A Trio of Island Tales. These stories are fictionalizations of family stories shared by my collaborator, Saane Tome. She is a native-born Tongan and devout Christian. The power of her stories is moving and undeniable. You may or may not share her belief system, and that does not really matter. It is hard to hear her stories and not recognize the essential power of them.
Join Cale in-world at Seanchai Library, Kitely (hop://osgrid.kitely.com:8002/Seanchai/144/129/29).
Monday June 16th, 19:00: Space Wars: The Man Who Would Be Kzin Concludes
Gyro Muggins continues to tell a tale drawn from the deadly Man-Kzin Wars.
The Kzinti, are a warlike race Niven first introduced to the world in his 1966 story The Warriors. They permeated many of his stories set in the Known Space series, and well as appearing in his Nebula and Hugo award-winning Ringworld. In his stories, Niven references a series of conflicts between Kzinti and humans, but did not write about the wars himself. Such was the demand for more information on the wars, however, he allowed the Man-Kzin wars to become a shared universe series, with the majority of the stories written by other science-fiction authors such as Poul Anderson, Dean Ing, Jerry Pournelle, S.M. Stirling, Greg Bear and others.
The Man Who Would Be Kzin, written in 1991 by Greg Bear and S.M Stirling, appears in the Man-Kzin Wars IV, and The Best of All Possible Wars. It poses the interesting question: how exactly does a human spy infiltrate a civilisation of 8-foot tall anthropomorphic tiger-like cats?
Tuesday June 17th, 19:00: A Dog’s Purpose, Continued
Reincarnation can be confusing for a human; reborn into different lives, trying to learn lessons of the past in order to discover one’s purpose … Imagine what it must be like for a dog.
That’s exactly what humourist W. Bruce Cameron has done in his 2010 best seller A Dog’s Purpose. Bailey, pup of a stray, is rather surprised to find himself reborn as a Golden Retriever after being euthanized. It surprises him even more when, after a happy life involving a young boy, a farm and more, Bailey passes from the world … Only to find himself occupying the body of a German shepherd bitch. Thus comes the realisation that he is serving some higher purpose.
The problem is, and as his lives continue, Bailey can’t figure out exactly what that purpose might be…
Travel with Caledonia Skytower and Kayden Oconnell as they continue their journey through Bailey’s heartwarming and funny tale of many lives, a dog’s-eye commentary on human relationships and the unbreakable bonds between man and man’s best friend; a story in which love never dies, and true friends are always with us.
Wednesday June 18th, 19:00: Tales of Despereaux, Continued
Following-on from Flora and Ulysses, Caledonia Skytower reads from Kate DiCamillo’s first novel to win a prestigious Newbery Award.
The Tales of Despereaux is a story of four parts, each part told from the perspective of a different character. Despereaux Tilling, is a mouse, and the hero of the piece. Born a runt with big ears and eyes, he is an incurable romantic, given to reading tales about knights and princesses. Chiaroscuro is a dungeon rat with an obsession with light, bright things. Miggery Sow is a simply serving girl with an impossible dream.
Together, these three become bound in a tale of dungeons, betrayal, kidnap, redemption and a princess named Pea, as well as a host of other memorable characters.
Thursday June 19th
19:00: Legends of the Brethren Court
Shandon Loring takes to the high seas with none other that a young Jack Sparrow, Pirate Lord of the Caribbean Sea, Captain of the Black Pearl, and the youngest Pirate Lord ever admitted into the Brethren Court. With the Shadow Lord seeking to destroy the Brethren Court and it’s down to Jack – sometimes helped, sometimes hindered, by his fellow brethren Pirate Lords – to prevent it.
21:00 Seanchai Late Night
With Finn Zeddmore
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Please check with the Seanchai Library SL’s blog for updates and for additions or changes to the week’s schedule. The featured charity for May-June is Habitat for Humanity: envisioning a world where everyone has a decent place to live.
Frankx Lefavre’s latest installation at LEA18 may have been put together at relatively short notice after the intended artist had presumably dropped out of the current round of the LEA’s Artist In Residence grants, but it is nevertheless a fascinating piece offering a wonderful breadth and depth of interpretation.
Insidious: The Spread of Ideas presents the visitor with a very alien environment. Around you is a strange, faceted green sky, while the ground beyond the very human-looking walled terrace on which you land is a vivid blue-green, suggestive of a sea frozen in time, waves caught mid-swell. Scattered across it are other indications of former civilisation: collapsed walls, a meandering footpath, and a huge, crystalline form carved into the likeness of a human head.
Across this landscape spreads a strange tangle of organic-looking growths, reaching outwards from the great monolith and curving around the landscape as if to enfold into slowly spreading arms. Nor is this all, as ranged between these tangled arms, stand creatures for whom the term alien is entirely appropriate.
Whether the landscape is that of Earth in the far-flung future, or another world elsewhere in the cosmos in unimportant; all that matters is that it had once been the home to humans. For a time it had been theirs, but that time has long passed. Whether civilisation here had faltered and failed or moved to other stars and other planets, makes no difference. All that remains are their ideas; stored for the ages to come within a great monolith, carved in their likeness, awaiting others…
And others have come. So much like us in their curiosity to explore the cosmos around them, yet so unalike in look and form. Perhaps they sought to study the strange monolith; or perhaps it was simply the passage of time and the weakening of age. Whatever the reason, the human ideas have escaped their confines, and now they spread across this otherworldly landscape, growing, spreading like tangled vines. They call to those who have come, drawing them to the monolith; infecting their thoughts, reshaping their ideals and goals, supplanting them. Like a contagion, human ideas will survive; they are insidious.
Is the crystalline head, in which the ideas can be seen shifting, writhing, turning, growing, through the magic of ribbon particles, a honey trap? Did it lure these creatures to it and encourage them to build their stairways up to it and breach its walls to give the ideas within freedom? Or is their presence purely happenstance, the spread of ideas as organic forms already having begun long before their arrival? You decide.
That ideas can seem like an infection invading us, is not so strange; when struck by an idea, we can react in an excited almost feverish manner. Thus this installation has something of a resonance for us on a purely natural level. But there is also a lot more here as well; the hint of racial immortality, that in the distant future humankind might outlive its own extinction by infecting other races with its thoughts, ideas, desires, emotions. This brings with it shades of the age-old debate on whether or not humans are planetary parasites, adding a whole new twist to such ideas.
Beyond offering multiple interpretations (which tend to grow the longer you explore – just like the ideas within the build are intended to be growing), this piece is fascinating for its use of mesh – Frankx tells me some 90% of the installation is mesh – to create a very organic look to the environment and the aliens themselves. Ribbon particle effects are also put to good use here as well, as mentioned above, so it is worthwhile taking a little time in explorations to discover them; those not wishing to walk can ride on buglike buggies. Do keep an eye out for the fish as well…
An absorbing installation which will be open through until the end of July as a part of the current round of LEA grants.
Episode #23 of The Drax Files Radio Hour was posted on Friday June 13th. With the “live” podcasts currently on hiatus until August 2014, this is the second of a series of more in-depth interviews with people from across the metaverse and beyond.
As usual, and as well as being available on the show’s website and on Stitcher, episode #23 is also on YouTube, and embedded at the end of this article.
The featured interview with this show is with none other than interactive fiction writer, narrative design consultant, co-founder of Little Text People, co-developer of Inform 7, the interactive fiction system, co-developer of Versu – I could go on and on, such is my admiration for her – Emily Short!
Given the above, you might be able to guess that this is an interview I’ve been looking forward to, and while time wasn’t the best, I tried to assist Drax in getting ready for it (although even then, some of the planning went out the window as we were overtaken by events!), so my thanks to Drax for the shout-out at the start of the show,
Emily Short on the IF panel, PAX East, 2010
The interview, which commences at the 3:44 mark, is extremely wide-ranging, covering topics such as the creation of Little Text People, the time Emily and her LTP colleague, Richard Evans spent at Linden Lab, the nurturing of Versu, Emily’s own background and how she came to be interested in interactive fiction (IF) via the work of games design pioneer Scott Adams (not to be confused with the creator of Dilbert!) and moving forward from there.
Since the announcement that Versu – albeit is a slightly different Versu to the one initially marketed by the Lab – would be able to continue under its own banner, there have been musings as to the deal struck between Linden Lab and the Versu team. Had the IP been fully released by the Lab? Had an agreement on revenue sharing been achieved? Were there other strings attached?
Obviously, such questions may not be the easiest to answer; commercial arrangements between companies tend to be saddled with NDAs and the like, and the Versu / Linden Lab arrangement is certainly one of those. As such Emily has to be circumspect when answering such questions. However, she does indicate that there may potential for some of the titles from the “app version” of Versu to reappear, such as the Office Politics titles by Deirdra Kiai. Whether these will be direct ports or will see anything added to them, should it come to pass, remains to be seen.
The Office Politics titles, by Deirdra Kiai, were written for the original Versu app, and which might appear with the new Versu in the future
It’s important to note that the Versu we see with Blood & Laurels is somewhat different from the Versu which first appeared under the Lab’s banner. As Emily notes, the “first” Versu was more an app into which IF games could be plugged. Versu as we see it now is geared more towards developing self-contained titles – as Blood & Laurels is, and just as Bramble House will be. Packaging titles in this way offers the ability to build much more involved games – as has been noted, Blood & Laurels has some 240,000 words of interactive content, only 7% of which is liable to be encountered in a single play.
With the original Versu, much was made of the potential for people to create their own IF games for use on the platform. Whether this is still the case is unclear. The system itself would apparently need more work to support this, and the agreement with the Lab may limit what can be achieved in this area. Currently, story development remains confined to the Versu team and select other authors such as Bramble House’s Jake T. Forbes (himself a Linden as well as an author in his own right) and, possibly as noted, Deirdra Kiai.
An interesting aspect of Versu’s modularity is that it needn’t necessarily be limited to a text-based front-end. but could be embedded into something else or skinned by an alternative front-end. This means it could, for example, potentially be used in other game types or in business training or in education. These latter areas were somewhat upon in May 2013, when Versu co-creator Richard Evans presented his paper Versu: A Simulationist Interactive Drama, at the Games and Media Event at the Imperial College London, which prompted Douglas Heaven to write AI makes social game characters all too human for New Scientist Online, and which I wrote about at the time.
Whether this flexibility with the Versu components means it might see use in support of better AI-driven NPCs within Second Life, as many have speculated in the past, remains to be seen. This is another area Emily is not in a position to comment upon – which shouldn’t necessarily be taken to mean something is being worked on.
Another interesting aspect with Versu is the potential for it to be used in a multi-player format. While there are no plans for it to be used in this way at present, Emily offers some intriguing speculation on the matter:
The Versu engine is capable, under the hood, of doing multi-player as well as AI characters. And something that we talked about a long time ago, in the early days of the project … you would be able to play in the multi-player, and you would actually be able to add new content to the story. So if you got to the point where you were playing with somebody and you wanted to say something that wasn’t already coded into that scenario, you would actually be able to, right at that moment, write a new piece of content…
It’ll be interesting to see if this does come to pass down the road, as the team hopefully develop the resources they need to enhance and develop Versu, and as opportunities of perhaps working with third parties arises.
There is so much more to this interview than can be covered here. Where AI may go in the future; cautionary notes on how governments or private organisations might employ AI technologies alongside the huge amounts of data (social and otherwise) we’re allowing to be accrued on ourselves; caveats about tests used to determine whether or not the conditions of the Turing Test really have been met; have been met; even dreams of holodeck-style IF are explored!
All of which makes this a fascinating conversation, one well worth taking the time to sit down and listen to, whether or not you’re directly interest in interactive fiction (and you likely will be by the end of it!).
METAbolt is a lightweight text-based client for Second Life and OpenSim offering a range of features and capabilities. At the start of the year, there had been concerns that due to the long delay between updates (the last being August 2013), work on the client had stopped.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 