Tag: Games in SL

The Linden Realms game: Rock on!

Posted on by Inara Pey

Note: as of December 2011, Linden Realms is avialable to all SL users, not just Premium accounts.

A benefit of being Premium right now is getting to take a look at the new Project LR game (LR apparently standing for “Linden Realms”) that is set to introduce new concepts and tools to Second Life. As I had a spare 15, 20, 30 minutes – hour last night, I decided to see what it was like.

Game Portal

The first issue (as everyone is now probably no doubt aware) is getting to the game regions – you cannot teleport directly. Instead, one must go to one of the Premium gift kiosks locations and then locate the game portal. Not actually that taxing in effect, but an interesting way of managing numbers in the game regions: when the limit has been reached, the portal(s) cease teleporting until someone in the game leaves.

There is nothing to touch or sit on at the portal, no need to manually trigger a teleport – just walk through…

…And find yourself in a strange, mist-laden landscape. You’ll also find a HUD has attached itself to your screen, of which more anon.

The game has its own Windlight presets, and I strongly recommend you keep them to add to the sense of fun (and to make it harder to spot lurking rock monsters through the gloom).

Game world and HUD

The HUD is a simple-looking affair and auto-ADDS itself to the top left of your screen (it won’t knock-off any HUD item(s) already there). It comprises a register of crystals collected, a help button that will take you to the game’s FAQ page and a very tidy little prompt display that appears in the lower centre of your screen.

There are some nice touches to it: nothing is placed in your inventory; the HUD is simply delivered and attached. If you remove it or log out with it attached, it is deleted (in the case of removing it in the game regions, you are also automatically teleported home). Your progress in the game isn’t lost – records of your crystals collected and quests completed are stored on the server side, and you can resume where you left off on leaving the game.

Rocky Chaser Cutie Show

Playing the game is relatively straighforward: follow the HUD prompts and complete each quest in turn. Along the way you can also earn small rewards in the form of L$.

Well, obviously, it is not all that straightforward, otherwise where’s the fun? There are obstacles to avoid – such as the aforementioned rock monsters that will, if given a chance, hunt you down and (presumably) squish you. However, they are by no means the only obstacles that can “kill” you.

The rocks themselves aren’t really all that monstrous – they actually look quite cute, but they’ll turn an angry pattern when chasing you down and they can be sneaky – popping up unexpectedly. Given FLY is denied in the game areas, you need to be fleet of foot when avoiding them. Having sound on helps, as you can hear the rumble should one get behind you and out of camera view, and so can take avoiding action.

I’m not saying anything about other hazards – if you’re able to play, you can find out about them for yourself :). However, this being SL, no-one stays dead for long; on being “killed” you are teleported to the nearest “resurrection circle”, from which you can resume your quest.

Resurrection Circle

Crystals come in a number of colours, and the HUD informs you of how many of each you need to collect, as well as the number of each colour collected. When you’re reached the required number for all the colours you have to collect, you’ll receive instructions on what to do next.

There’s actually nothing stopping you from grabbing as many crystals that you come across regardless of colour – and that makes something of a game in itself: simply grabbing crystals and avoiding rocks and other obstacles. You don’t physically pick the crystals up (no need to touch or right-click) – just run through them to add them to your tally.

Where’s a good hobbit when you need one?

Crystals appear to be somewhat randomly “seeded” on the game regions, with the result some are next to impossible to reach – take the one above for example: the tree it is under isn’t phantom, so walking through the crystal isn’t really possible.

When you opt to end the game just teleport home and detach the game HUD (or detach the HUD in the game regions to be auto-releported out). As noted above, the HUD will be deleted and you’ll receive a fresh HUD on your return, complete with your progress to date.

Lurid landscape

Currently, quests are limited – although LL are apparently considering adding more. I’ll be curious if this is the case: at the moment it would appear that once you have completed the available quests and removed the HUD, a new one doesn’t attach to your screen on returning to the game. I’ve visited the game twice since completing it, and on both occasions, no HUD materialised on my arrival at the Summoning Circle. Whether this is by design or a bug, I have no idea and am curious as to whether anyone else has experienced this.

Some have reported issues with lag in the regions, but my own experience last night was anything but – even with people arriving and leaving at regular intervals, I had not lag, excellent frame rates and a lot of fun. My only real issue was that some of the region boundaries were exceptionally bouncy without apparent cause (the neighbouring sim didn’t appear overloaded), but this didn’t dampen the fun.

Opinion

Tiggs Linden

Overall, this is a clever little game that is well put together and which offers very simple, but highly effective fun. Tiggs Linden and the rest of those who worked on it are to be congratulated.

As to the future of this particular Linden Realm game, if the current plans within LL come to pass, it will flow from “Premium-only” beta to being available for all SL users and thence to being an activity-based follow-on for new users to try their hands at after Welcome Island.

However, for many, it’s the tools within the game that hold promise – tools that are to be made available to the content creation community. HUD-wise, one can see a whole raft of potential uses for these in a wide variety of sims: combat environments, immersive art features, tour guide systems – the list goes on. Secure server-side auto teleports also have a number of potential uses as well, properly implemented, and I know from discussions that Tiggs Linden has worked hard to ensure this feature cannot be abused. Then there is the nascent AI aspect of the game – the rock monsters reacting to your presence and chasing you (which will happen regardless of having a HUD on).

I had fun last night; if you’ve not had a go already, why not give it a try? Nysray is a good place to start.

Quick Hints

  • Turn off your Viewer’s Fly Override, if enabled – flying is cheating 🙂
  • Turn on ALWAYS RUN if you really want to avoid the rocks, otherwise be daring and walk until you encounter them!
  • If you are using Penny Patton’s camera position settings (or a camera HUD similar in nature), you might want to revert back to default camera placement – I found that with a rock chasing me, there were times when the rock totally blocked my immediate screen view and I had no idea what lay ahead as I ran!
  • Keep to the local Windlight settings if you can.

And no, I’m not going to give hints on gameplay or what to do – the first is easy enough, and the second is more fun if you discover for yourself :).

Project LR: there’s a new game in SL

Posted on by Inara Pey

Game play in SL is becoming “official” as LL slip out a new project. Called “Project LR”, it is currently in beta and available only to those of you with Premium accounts – so pooh to me where trying it is concerned!

Project LR is, to quote Rand Linden, “A fun, creative, and engaging virtual experience produced and provided by Linden Lab.  Project LR takes you through basic exploration and game play, where you can earn Linden dollars by gathering gems and completing quests.”

The project apparently comprises 12 regions currently (Prokofy has one or two pictures from a visit) in operation, with a further 24 apparently waiting in the wings.

Project LR: 12 sims right now

Project LR is a game that appears to have grown out of a demonstration given at SLCC-2011 by Durian, Esbee, and Gez Linden. That demonstration introduced the use of basic gaming mechanics into the SL environment and encompassed a few interesting features. While that demonstration was not intended to be seen on the Main grid, it was fairly evident from comments given that the ideas being developed within it would eventually find their way into SL.

An element of the game demonstrated at SLCC-2011

The Project LR game appears to be quest-based, and provides the opportunity to collect gems that can be exchanged for Linden Dollars. Elements of the game require you seek-out certain things, while other can lead you into a lot of trouble – and “death”. Interestingly, the game utilises something that may be new to some in SL, but which is quite familiar to those who use the Restrained Love API: forced teleports. Get “killed” in the game by one of a variety of means, and you are force-teleported to a “resurrection circle”, where you can resume your quest.

One of the items to find in your quest

It’s also interesting to note that, when demonstrating their initial game at SLCC 2011, Gez and Esbee pointed out they were trying to achieve results without the complication of HUDs, etc. – but Project LR does in fact utilise a HUD. I can’t help wonder if this is to perhaps help ease fears some might have about the entire idea of enforced teleports by providing the security that it can only happen when in the LR sims and wearing the game HUD. Or the HUDS could, of course be down to the fact that hey couldn’t simply work the game any other way :).

The HUDs also include other functionality, and are auto-attached to you when you arrive on the game regions. This is to avoid the need to access your inventory, etc., and get you straight into the game itself. The auto-attach is labelled as non-standard SL behaviour, but one cannot help but feel it may have its origins in RLV, with a bit of tweaking from LL. A further tweak is that the HUD actually vanishes when you log-out of SL, to avoid compromising people’s inventory.

Game HUD

To access the game, and possibly to facilitate the auto-attachment of the HUD, people cannot simply teleport to the game regions. They must instead go via one of a number of in-world portals. These are currently located (I’m informed) near the Premium account gift kiosks – whether this remains the case, or more appear elsewhere when the Project is open to all remains to be seen. Access to the regions is also limited – if the limit has been reached, the portals will reject attempts to use them. I assume this is to keep on-sim numbers to a manageable number without overly impacting performance (and is probably why another two islands of 12 sims apiece appear to be waiting in the wings for development).

Those that have been fortunate enough to try-out the game have given feedback that ranges from “Nintendo-esque” through to reports that while they went for a quick try, they ended up staying for over two hours and got thoroughly immersed in things.

Without having seen it for myself, I can’t really comment on the game per se, but it is clear a lot of thought has gone into it, and it potentially serves a useful end as well as being a lot of fun for those that try it. It will be interesting to see if any of the capabilities used within it do find their way into more widespread use – one can immediately see that a “guidebook” HUD that can be attached when arriving on a sim and poofs itself on departure and which, between times, provides a ready means of teleporting around locations of interest, and provides links to supporting web pages or whatever, could be something sim owners would end up drooling over (to name but one possible application outside of all the gaming opportunities).

In fact, while writing this piece, I see Rodvik himself has commented on that aspect of what’s coming, as well as the game itself:

“Yes glad you are enjoying it. As I mentioned back in SLCC we wanted to go through all the pain of reducing friction to make more interactive experiences ourselves and then pass on those tools to our content creators [my emphasis]. It will be on Premium for beta test for a while then we will roll it out to scale later. After we get it working at scale we will roll out the tools and our creators can make some great stuff.”

What else may emerge from this in terms of Viewer UI enhancements, improved camera controls, or whatever, will also be interesting to see – if indeed, any part of this does have impact on the emerging new Viewer 3.2 UI.

One thing is clear – there are some interesting and potentially useful / exciting new wrinkles entering the world of Second Life. I envy those who will get to blog about it ahead of me!

Project LR is currently in Premium Beta – accessible only to those with Premium accounts. Read more in the FAQ. A portal to the game can be found at Nysray.