Day: December 6, 2023

Is Blocksworld, a Former Linden Lab Property, about to Make a Comeback?

Posted on by Inara Pey
Credit: Blocksworld LLC

In 2012, as a part of efforts to expand their product portfolio, Linden Lab acquired a trio of Nordic developers operating under the name of BoldaiAB and who were building a physics-based 3D sandbox video game.

That game was called Blocksworld, and the three developers disarmingly referred to themselves as being “From the country that gave you Minecraft and the country next to the country that invented Lego”, whilst promoting the game’s initial (limited) release with an equally light-hearted promo video.

A year after the acquisition and in mid-2013, Linden Lab took Blocksworld to a global audience, where it proved very popular among gamers of all ages, and remained so throughout its life .It never made the jump to Android, as the Lab has hoped, but it did get on to Steam Early Access in late 2017 and was also briefly offered in a browser-only option. In fact, Blocksworld remained so popular with players that the Lab kept it going long after the other products acquired or developed around the same time – CreatorVerse, Versu (which reverted to ownership by its original developers), Patterns, and the always oddball Dio – ceased to be.

Fortell’s founder Alexey Menshikov pictured in 2022 for an article on Ukraine’s games industry in GamesBeat. Credit: GamesBeat

However, in 2019, Blocksworld appeared to reach the end of the line when Linden Lab announced a “pause” in its development and promotion, prior to the servers running it going off-line June 2020. Shortly thereafter the game vanished from the Apple Store, and whilst it remained advertised on Steam Early Access, there was no actual game available to load.

After that, all fell silent on the Blocksworld front until around the middle of 2023, when rumours started circulating that the game had been acquired by Fortell Games Inc., a company founded in 2022 by one Alexey Menshikov.

While the name may not be familiar, Menshikov is a games developer hailing from Ukraine, where he originally worked at the country’s first major games studio, Action Games, prior to branching out to establish his own studios. He now resides in Los Angeles, where Fortell Games is based.

As these rumours started doing the rounds, it was also noted that the Blocksworld page on Stream Early Access had been updated. Reference to Linden Lab as the developer  / publisher had been replaced by the names “Blocksworld LLC” and “Fortell Games Inc.”, although the game itself remained unavailable, attempts to load it still hanging at the log-in splash screen (which also still reads © 2018 Linden Research Inc. All rights Reserved”).

Blocksworld on Steam Early Access, December 2023: note the developer / publisher company names

Even so, this all suggests that Blocksworld has been released / sold by Linden Lab (although whether or not “Blocksworld LLC” is the trading name being used by the game’s original developers or not is beyond my ken), with Fortell Game’ at least having publishing rights to for it. More recently, further indications that Blocksworld is in the process of being revived have popped-up.

On November 27th, and after 6 years of silence, Blocksworld’s Twitter account came back to life with an EKG heartbeat gif. The post gained very positive feedback; hardly surprising, given Blocksworld still has an active fan base – so much so that an unofficial attempt was make to keep it going following the original server shutdown, when player-fans established Blocksworld: The Secondary Sever for a time.

The Blocksworld Twitter account updated on November 27th, 2023 – the first post in six years, featuring a EKG gif, suggesting the game is being revived

Then on December 2nd, 2023, the Blocksworld website, which had since June 2020 redirected to Linden Lab’s corporate pages, started displaying a beating heart shape and the tab banner “Coming Soon!” Thus it would seem that indeed, Blocksworld is on its way back – and I’m now quite keen to see where this all goes, even if Blocksworld is no longer part of the Lab’s stable. As such, I’ll attempt to keep tabs on things going forward and hopefully update on this for those also interested.

Now, if only we could see Patterns and its little Dorito Man get some similar love and attention. Oh well, one can dream…

Seventeen years in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
 My SL island home, as rendered on the PBR Materials viewer

So it’s another year and another pair of birthdays, physical and virtual – although I admit as the time passes, I get more and more envious of my avatar’s youth; she remains eternally young, trim and fit. Me? While I admit to still being vain enough to work out and maintain something of a trim figure (home rowing machines and exercise mats are both a godsend and a means of home torture), I have to admit that each year I find the back complaining a little more, the feet and knees getting more resentful when I go for walks or spend 20 minutes on the rowing machine…

However, be that as it may, December 5th saw my avatar reach 17 years of age. I actually had to be reminded of this by Johann Neddings (who always sends rezday greetings, bless him!), as I’d totally missed the fact for myself. I guess that as with the physical world, the older you get the harder it is to mark the passing birthdays with any enthusiasm!

2023 has been an interesting year; events in the physical world have – and continue – to mean that my ability to spend time in-world has become choppy. This is somewhat reflected in the number and frequency of posts appearing in this blog decreasing through the year as I’m just not had time to even begin to keep on top of things in Second Life. Sadly, this is likely to continue through the first part of 2024, largely as a result of one set of contractors messing a project up so badly, another project had to be postponed and cannot now commence until the end of January / start of February 2024. However, on the positive side, the project to switch to solar for the bulk of the house’s electricity requirements did go ahead without fuss or bother (although very nearly derailed by the aforementioned mess-up), and in the last 2 months alone has seen a reliance on the national grid for electricity drop by some 40%.

Anyway, what time I have had in-world has largely been devoted to various personal projects and following the ongoing updates to the platform  – particularly that of PBR Materials and the Lab’s work to adopt the Khronos glTF 2.0 specification. With the first phase of the PBR Materials work now live across the grid (see: A simple introduction to PBR materials, reflection probes & glTF in Second Life), I’m looking forward to getting the home island updated with reflection probes. I’m also eagerly awaiting the availability of the PBR Materials terrain work Cosmic Linden is working on, to see what that allows.

Another view of the island home, with two copies of the No Cottage Bazar used to form the “pool house” (lower left) ad “main house” (behind it, upper left) overlooking the old “castle courtyard”, the two linked via a small walled inner courtyard and be dint of swapping out windows on the upper level of the “pool house” for a door

In terms of the home island, Second Norway remains my “home” estate, but time being what it has been, I’ve not had the ability to fiddle-fart around with trying out new island designs and kitbashing houses as frequently as I’ve been known to do in the past. There are certainly a lot of house designs I’ve encountered whilst wandering SL and reporting on public regions, but even if I’d had the time to start playing with ideas, I’m not sure I would; a good deal of available effort this year has been in putting together a home design based on what remains one of my favourite models to be offered with Second Life: Marcthur Goosson’s NO Cottage Bizar, which I first obtained in January and initially kitbashed into – of all things – a home swimming pool and lounge area (see The NO Cottage Bizar in Second Life).

Since then, that build has gone through a couple of iterations, but remains very much in use, becoming the nucleus for a scratch-build home design using renovated ruins as a theme before I finally opted to simply bring two copies of the model together to form a single extended home. Although me being me does mean the layout has had a couple of updates since I originally blogged about it (notably swapping the positions of the “house” and the “swimming pool” with one another).

Under full sail

Due to the lack of time, sailing & boating – a particular pastime I enjoy in SL – has also taken a back seat in 2023, whilst flying has been almost totally absent my SL. However, I would like to again thank Spartaco Zemenis and Analyse Dean for their individual generosity in supplying me with versions of the ’86 Domino cruiser and Skûtsje Barge respectively. I’ve enjoyed taken both out on the water (even if the ’86 Domino is by far the largest vessel I’ve operated in SL!) and equally enjoyed modding them to suit my needs.

The other thing I’ve continued to enjoy / appreciate is Second Life is the art exhibitions and installations I’ve been privileged to be invited to view. I haven’t always been able to make every invite  – and certainly not every exhibit or installation; but the fact that my opinion is actively sought and artists and gallery owners take the time to write to me either via the blog comments or directly after I have written a review, is both greatly appreciated and genuinely humbling. Thank you to all of you for this – it genuinely keeps me engaged in SL and wanting to see (and often learn about) more art and expressionism in SL.

And, of course, there are all the marvellous public builds across the grid I’ve been invited to visit. Again, apologies to those who have sent an invite I’ve been unable to follow-up on for one reason or another; as noted already, time has often and quite genuinely often been against me. However, the fact that folk do take the time to offer a personal invitation is deeply appreciated, and I do try to respond whenever I can by paying a visit, even if time later conspires to prevent me from offering a writing-up.

A final but by no means lesser thank you to everyone who does continue to read this blog, comment on articles and who suggest ideas for articles and / or pass on news and pointers; all of you genuinely make these pages what they are as much as I (only with fewer typos! – I’m still exceedingly lazy in checking my own pieces after a day of checking other people’s written work; my apologies again for that).

Each time my rezday rolls around, I tend to wonder about the portion of my life spent in Second Life, and whether it has been a meaningful, worthwhile effort, and whether or not I should continue to devote time to it. But the flipside to this is just where else is it possible to see such a rich and diverse gathering of creativity, companionship and artistic outreach and expression from the comfort of an armchair and in the company of your own cats (yes, both of mine will actually sit on my lap / on the desk and watch SL on the screen in fascination – and occasionally try to paw something so it will stop moving!)? As long as all of that remains available, it’s kind-of hard to imagine stopping altogether.

Besides, next year my avatar will be old enough to vote! 😀

2023 SL SUG meetings week #49 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Castle Dracula, October 2023- blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 5th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • They are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • Tuesday, December 5th: the SLS Main channel was re-started without any simulator updates being deployed.
  • Wednesday, December 6th: the “Fall Colours” maintenance update may be expanded across all RC channels from BlueSteel / Preflight. This update includes llRezObjectWithParams, llIsFriend, but will not include the game controller updates.
    • However, following its initial deployment in Week 48, “Fall Colours” was found to have bugs with collision sounds (e.g. transferring them across region boundaries and with being able to silence them), with the result that the sounds can be repeated multiple times (see: BUG-234757 “Repetitive Collision Sound?” and this forum thread). As a result, at the time of the meeting, LL were still discussing whether or not to consider these issues as “blockers” against the release being more widely deployed.
    • If the deployment to all RCs goes ahead in the next week or two, it will represent the last server deployment for 2023.

No Change Window

  • The end-of-year No change window for simulator and official viewer releases will come into effect on the week commencing Monday, December 18th, 2023 and will remain in place until Tuesday, December 2nd, 2024.
  • Linden Lab offices will be closed for all but emergency support from close of business Friday, December 22nd, 2023, and will re-open on January 2nd, 2024.

Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, December 5th, the Maintenance-W RC viewer updated to version 7.1.1.7088402585.

Other viewers in the pipe remain as:

  • Release viewer: version 7.0.1.6894459864, the glTF / PBR Materials viewer, issued November 17, promoted November 28.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 7.1.1.7039128750, December 1.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 6.6.17.6935636398, issued November 21 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
  • Project viewers:

Game Controllers

  • Leviathan Linden has previously considered the idea of changing the signature of the LSL event to provide per-channel info (input, value) rather than all of the controller state (buttons masks + all axes). However, he has discovered that such an event system would make it difficult to handle multi-modal input: e.g. some_button + axis_state.
  • This is because the state of each input would arrive in different events, and the order or arrival would matter, with Leviathan noting what he already has in place would likely win out in the end, negating any changes.
  • Currently, he is trying to make it possible to supply game_control input with keyboard input, but without having to completely rewrite the keyboard mapping and other related UI.
  • The Gingerbread maintenance branch with the prototype game_control feature has been redeployed to the Beta grid, and can be found on the following Aditi regions: Aegis Island, Blake Sea – Turnbuckle, Cloud Sandbox 1, Cloud Sandbox 2, Firestorm Aerodrome, Gothlauth, Hona Lee Puff, Jigglypuff, Laefeon, LR151, LR 152, Mauve, Moonberry, Morris, SG2, and Smithereens.
  • A point to note here is that the game controller work does not currently support 3dConnexion SpaceNavigator Mouse many of us use for things like flycamming, photography, filming, etc., but he is promised not to break support for the SpaceNav functionality.

In Brief

  • Combat Updates:
    • Rider Linden has published his outline document on improving SL’s combat capabilities, which can be found within the combat systems discussion thread on the forums. Feedback is requested from users engaging in combat games in SL.
    • This lead to a discussion on combat capabilities and needs throughout the rest of the meeting – please refer to the video below.
  • A question was asked on fog and distance hazing, this is something the graphics team hope to implement within the on-going glTF project – see: 2023 week #46: SL CCUG meeting summary: PBR status & current release plan.
  • BUG-234598 “Avatar hit box rotating bug” has been accepted by LL, but is proving difficult to reproduce.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

VRChat uses Tilia LLC to Power Its Creator Economy

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Tilia LLC.

Tilia LLC the digital payments platform created by Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, is to power VRChat’s new Creator Economy, the first phase of which was launched on Tuesday, December 5th, 2023. In doing so, VRChat becomes the latest in a growing list of platforms and games utilising Tilia’s capabilities, including Second Life, Unity and Avatus.

The announcement came via a press release issued by VRChat and published by numerous outlets including Business Wire, which revealed the first phase of VRChat’s new Creator Economy is called Paid Subscriptions. It allows VRChat users to subscribe directly to their favourite creators and support them financially. In return those creators are able to craft unique, custom experiences for their supporters to enjoy. Eventually, the new Creator Economy is intended to allow the half-a-million creators using the platform to receive compensation for their work.

In particular, the Paid Subscriptions system is closely linked to the VRChat’s Udon custom scripting language, allowing creators to more easily build custom experiences for those supporting them through the service. IT has also been developed to work with many of VRChat’s other systems with the aim of enabling pre-existing communities on the platform to monetize their offerings as the Creator Economy is built-out and enhanced.

We’re thrilled to finally launch the first piece of the VRChat Creator Economy, Paid Subscriptions! Our community is responsible for everything magical in VRChat, and the Creator Economy enables us all to financially support our incredible creators. Our hope is that with more support, our creators can bring even more magical content to the platform.

– Graham Gaylor, Co-founder and CEO of VRChat

As an all-in-one platform and service, fully registered across the United Stats as a  licensed money transmitter, together with decades of expertise in dealing with digital currencies and token systems which can be transferred to and from fiat currency, Tilia occupies a unique business space. It is both able to provide platforms like VRChat with unique insight into operating and managing digital economies, and it can supply the core systems and services necessary to do so, whilst meeting all the various compliance and regulatory requirements for digital transactions and money transfers, relieving customers of the need to do so themselves.

Since it inception, Tilia LLC has been gradually building its client base and working to establish strategic partnerships, such as with J.P. Morgan Payments as announced in October 2022, and which saw an expansion of Tilia’s board (read more here). However, within the sector of immersive 3D social  / creative environments, VRChat is a name that is probably as instantly as recognisable as Second Life, and represents a major new partnership for Tilia LLC going forward.

Tilia was built to support the unique and complex requirements for creator-based economies. We are proud to partner with such a recognised innovator like VRChat as they seek to further encourage, empower and enable their creators.

– Brad Oberwager, Tilia LLC CEO

Read more via the press release.

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