Update, October 9th, 2014: Linden Lab announced that development work on Patterns has been discontinued.
Update, 24th Sept: Linden Lab are now e-mailing those who have signed-up to the new product beta programme with news that Patterns is available to pre-order. Received my e-mail this evening!
Linden Research has announced the pre-release “Genesis” version of Patterns is now available to pre-order, and will ship “on or prior to” October 5th. The cost for the initial release is $9.95 (£6.32), and payment can be made via PayPal or credit card.
Pattens: Pre-order now (image courtesy of Linden Research Inc.)
The Genesis release is available for Windows and Mac OS, and has the following specifications:
Windows:
XP SP2 or later
2GB of memory
250MB free disk space
Any 3D graphics card with minimum 128 Video RAM and pixel shader 3.0 support
Mac:
Mac OS X: Intel CPU & “Snow Leopard” 10.6 or later
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz (2 CPUs)
2GB of memory
250MB free disk space
Any 3D graphics card with minimum 128 Video RAM and pixel shader 3.0 support
The specification page notes that: “Patterns is a 3D intensive experience. By adjusting the quality settings we provide some flexibility to accommodate the performance experience based on your needs.”
Version 0.0.1 feature list – Genesis
Build with over 20 Unique geometric shapes.
A hand crafted world of substances and shapes.
Explore, discover and bust apart a world in a pure sandbox environment.
Shaping Stone workbench that enables you to craft and discover shapes.
8 collectible substances.
Clay
Bonestone
Starene
Nak
Limewood
Coralwood
Jasper
Gypsum
Emergent objects that explode or roll.
Simulated physics, gravity and tensile strength that plays upon substances and your creations.
3 Save slots.
Building tools that include shape repeating and shape rotation.
Two camera modes for building and exploring.
A controllable character with Run, Jump and Walk capabilities.
3 different quality settings to accommodate a variety of system specs.
Full screen and windowed mode support.
Windows and Mac version.
Public access to bug reporting.
Those purchasing the Genesis version, “Are entitled to have your name featured in the credits of the game in version 1.0.”
Update, October 9th, 2014: Linden Lab announced that development work on Patterns has been discontinued.
On Wednesday 19th September, LL issued the trailer for “Patterns”, one of the two new products announced this week that are completely separate from SL and which represent the company’s first steps in diversification.
Watching the video, again narrated by LL’s CEO, Rod Humble, it is clear that Patterns (apparently the product of a partnership with Free Range Games) is a much more involved product than Creatorverse – and one that is perhaps even more built on LL’s experience in developing world-building tools.
When the new first broke, Lomoco Binder, speaking at an in-world User Group, referred to it as “Minecraft with triangles and physics” – which should not be taken negatively. He was perhaps the first outside of LL to draw the line connecting Patterns with Minecraft in terms of similarity of approach, although it is something that was clearly not lost on LL. The Minecraft parallel is mentioned pretty much front-and-centre by Rod Humble himself in an interview with IGN: “The notion was you take a very simple 3D creation tool, you take that lovely elegance of the resources that’s in Minecraft, and then make the whole thing have physics right from the ground up,” Humble said in describing Patterns.
The core aspect of the game is that of “shared creativity”; people working individually or collectively, developing their own work, sharing it with the world at large so that others can enhance or modify creations and everyone learn from one another. Two additional aspects of the gameplay in Patterns are an element of discovery and the use of a physics engine from the ground-up.
The discovery element is designed to lead people naturally from the basic triangle through to creating more and more complex shapes, using a variety of materials, including wheels and the like. Creations can then be manipulated using the physics engine and can also be naturally affected by the physics engine. For example, build upwards without providing the proper foundations or bracing, and your tower (or whatever) could collapse as a result of the ground giving way beneath it, or simply as a result of its own mass. Similarly, build outward (such as with a bridge) without the proper support, and your structure may collapse before you complete it. Even the materials you chose to build with have different properties and react differently with the physics engine.
Pattens
While it is going to be a while yet for Patterns to make a formal debut to the world at large, it will shortly be open in what Linden lab is calling a “Genesis Release” program – effectively a pre-alpha release – available to early adopters (Founders) for $10. This is aimed, according to the video, at helping to develop enhanced features within Patterns which can in turn be a part of the launch product and form the basis of on-going collaboration both between users and between users and the company to enhance and develop the product over time. Founders will apparently get all future updates to the game in return for their input.
Patterns
Details on the Genesis Release have yet to be fully release (although IGN state it is happening this week) and neither the video nor the IGN interview hint at the platforms on which Patterns can be used. However, given the pricing of the Genesis Release (which is described as being “low” by OGN, suggesting the released version will cost more), it would appear the game is perhaps not initially aimed towards mobile devices. In the meantime, those interested in gaining further news can try their hand signing-up to the Beta Release form on the Lab’s website.
Patterns also appears as if it will be getting its own dedicated website in the future – buildpatterns.com. At the moment, this resolves back to the Linden Research promo webpage for the product, but it’ll be interesting to see if this remains the case once Patterns is launched and is being used creatively and collaboratively.
Both of the new products go some way towards revealing the directions in which the company is heading aside from the continued development of Second Life.
Creatorverse
Creatorverse is described as a “Simple, shared 2D creative space” which will be available on the iPad. The basic idea is that users create whatever they wish – pictures, puzzles, games, etc, and then place them in the creatorverse universe, where others can download them, add to them and re-share.
A Creatorverse screen shot (copyright Linden Lab)
As with in-world building in Second Life, Creatorverse appears to use simple and complex shapes which can be dragged and dropped into the application and combined to create more complex elements, forms and shapes which can in turn be animated. There is a website associated with the new product, and the Lab’s press release includes a video overview of the product, narrated by Rod Humble. It has been submitted to the Apple Appstore and should be available in the next few weeks.
Patterns
Patterns first came to prominence in July of this year, when it appeared that the official Linden Research website was being prepared for a re-vamp (which has subsequently happened – see below). At the time, it wasn’t clear if “Patterns” was indeed a new product or simply a placeholder in a proposed new web design (interestingly, and in something of a repeat of events surrounding Linden lab’s “other” leaked product, dio, the images relating to the proposed site redesign vanished shortly after the news broke). The press release describes Patterns thus:
Patterns is a new 3D creative environment to explore and shape, where you can build large-scale structures that reach the sky, bridges that traverse chasms, and more, all while the pull of gravity challenges your construction techniques.Soon, we’ll share more details with a video trailer, and adventurous early adopters will be able to get the ‘genesis release’ (our first public build), help shape the development of Patterns by providing feedback and suggestions, and get their names added to the credits as founders.
Imagine a 3D universe of creativity…Explore caverns and valleys, while you harvest substances with real world densities. Build large scale structures that reach the sky or bridges that traverse chasms. Challenge real-world physics to see which creations will tumble — or withstand — the power of gravity. It’s your universe to shape. Interestingly, and in difference to Creatorverse, there is no mention of any specific platform for Patterns. Whether this is indicative of it being available for platforms other than the iPad (the only platform mentioned in reference to Creatorverse) remains to be seen.
Revamped Corporate Website
Alongside the announcement, Linden Research have launched a new, much slicker, corporate website, which places equal emphasis on both Second Life and the two upcoming new releases – with plenty of room for further products to be added over time.
Part of the revamped Linden Research website
The website still includes an opportunity to sign-up for the company’s beta programme for new products, which I reported on at the start of the year thanks to a nudge from Daniel Voyager, although the sign-up page itself has also been given the once-over.
Initial Thoughts
While it is hard to judge either product from what is seen in this release and on the websites, it would appear that perhaps they are aimed at different age groups. Creatorverse in particular would seem at first glance to be the kind of activity that might find appeal amount younger people and could even be used as something as a learning tool to encourage children to interact with tablet devices (or at least (initially?) the iPad). Certainly, it would seem to be something one could see parents and children playing with together. Obviously, a large part of this observation is based purely on the graphics shown within the screen captures and the video; the reality of the product might will be something else entirely.
Patterns appears – again on the basis of the screen shot and web text – to be somewhat more involved, and thus potentially aimed at an older audience. Both products certainly appear to build on concepts found within Second Life, such as building complex, potentially interactive creations using relatively primitive building blocks. As I’m not an iPad owner, I doubt I’ll get an opportunity to play with Creatorverse.
If for no other reason than this, I hope that Patterns will be more widely available for those of us who have not taken a bite from the Apple. And if it is intended for mobile use, I hope LL takes account of the fact that Android is increasingly enjoying the lion’s share of the mobile market. Nevertheless, the news is now out – and with at least one, if not two more products also in the offing, times are certainly about to get interesting when Linden Lab is concerned.
Not too long ago, Linden Lab committed a bit of a faux pas when they registered a new trademark – Dio – which was quickly linked to what appeared to be a beta site for a new product that had been inadvertently exposed on the web.
Something similar appeared to happen again earlier today. It started when Rocky Constantine dropped a link in a Tweet:
The link lead to a couple of images which appeared to show that the official Linden Research website is about to undergo a facelift. One of the images showed the revised page on which people can sign-up to participate in LL’s new product beta testing (which I covered here), and the other a snapshot of an updated home page.
The images themselves were credited to one Amber Xu, whose Behance and LinkedIn profiles reference her as working for Linden Lab.
However, it was Botgirl Questi who noticed the really interesting thing about the home page image – a reference to something called “Patterns”, under the section entitled “Products”.
Linden Lab products: “Patterns” prominent to the left of Second Life
Now, the whole thing could be a hoax – but it seems unlikely; the images would appear to be a genuine re-working of LL’s rather bland corporate website. What’s more, almost as soon as people started Tweeting on the images, they were removed from Behance, in much the same way the Dio website was closed-off as soon as LL realised what had happened. Although the thumbnail of the main page remained on Amber Xu’s Behance pages for a while after the main images had been removed, it also now appears to have been pulled.
If the home page image is genuine, then it is interesting to speculate as to whether “Patterns” is a genuine name or a placeholder – although one suspects the former. It is also interesting to speculate as to where it might sit in relation to Dio and its associated website.
While “Patterns” and “Dio” may well be one in the same, it is worth pointing out a couple of things.
At the time the Dio Trademark and the leaked website hit the news, they were seen as being related to interactive fiction and thus linked to LL’s acquisition of Little Text People (LTP), owned by Emily Short and Richard Evans.
However, in response to speculation elsewhere related to the LTP acquisition and LL’s product development, Rod Humble did pass comment that LTP’s work was separate in nature to the work already under way on a product specifically aimed at content creation and what we come to refer to as “share creative spaces”.
The tagline for “Patterns”, Build something amazing inPatterns (I’m ignoring the rest as I confess to cringing when I read it) does suggest it is perhaps more aimed towards shared creative spaces than it is interactive fiction – which would suggest it is separate from anything Short and Evans are developing, although not necessarily divorced from the overall Dio brand.
It’ll be interesting to see if anything more comes of this. In the meantime, have fun speculating!
A closer view of the relevant section of the image
With thanks to Botgirl Questi for the use of the redesigned Linden Lab web page screen capture.
Update 31st May: Tateru has provided the following update with feedback from Linden Lab on the new website: “The Dio staging/test server has now been closed off, and Linden Lab expresses thanks for the notice of the security issue. Linden Lab also adds that yes, it is not ready to talk about it in any detail other than that it will be something new and completely separate from and unrelated to Second Life and that it is not yet ready for public consumption.” As such, the links to the site given in this article no longer work. (With thanks to Tateru for permission to quote her update.)
Tateru has reported on a new trademark having been registered by Linden Research Inc. You can find the full details on her site, but the key point is that it is for an entirely new product – called Dio (which, among other things, Wikipedia points-out is the Italian name for “God”).
The name would appear to be connected to a new website, which has a rather interesting home-page:
The metadata for the pages supplies a clue to their purpose: “Dio allows you to create and play user-created stories.” As such, it’s a reasonable to assume the website is connected to Linden Lab’s range of “new products”, first alluded to by Rod Humble at SLCC-2011. Details were vague then, but have become clearer thanks to various clues dropped by Humble himself and as a result of other goings-on, including:
That there are perhaps / at least three products in development
Ms. Short herself appeared to drop some hints on LR’s direction in a recent Gamasutra interview.
Given the site links to a secure log-in, complete with confidentially statement also points towards it being connected to Linden Research’s call for product Beta Testers, initially made in March this year and which still appears to be open.
Call for Beta volunteers – opened March 2012
Speculation on the site is open to all – doubly so given, as Tateru points out, security is somewhat billoxed – allowing people to discern rather a lot, including URLs for image assets, one of which is rather novel to say the least, and another to what appears to be an Apple-related wallpaper. Others appear to be more “game / story” related.
One of the images gleaned via examination of the Dio site’s source-code
Commenting on Tateru’s article, Psyke Phaeton points out that site’s URL’s might be an oblique reference to Baron Bwimb of Ooze, the self-proclaimed baron of the Paraelemental Plane of Ooze, in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, and provides a link to another webpage from the site, entitled “Baron’s Test Story”.
Speculation is bound to continue now the cat is out of the bag. Tateru is seeking further feedback from Linden Lab, and will update her article if / when any feedback is forthcoming. I’ll follow suit here, depending on the amount of information that is forthcoming. In the meantime, for more speculative analysis, keep an eye on her comments page.
With thanks to Tateru Nino, Miro Collas and Pyske Phaeton. Note that some of the image links given in this article may become unresolvable, depending on how the apparent security breaks in the Dio website are fixed.
Clicking on the link will open a form requesting various information from you.
The form (click to enlarge)
Some have taken this to be about Second Life, and have questioned the need for LL to ask for information “they already have”. However, it should be clear from the form itself that the call is not specifically about Second Life, but rather about Linden Lab’s upcoming new products.
There is no guarantee that those submitting details will be accepted for any Beta trials of products, and there will clearly be more involved in the process than simply filling-out a form (NDAs almost certainly will be involved).
Even so, it’s an interesting step for the Lab to take, and suggests that at least one of their new products is reaching a point where it is ready to be seen by something of a larger audience. If this is the case, then it would suggest that Rod Humble will be a step closer to his goal of talking more openly about the products – something he was finding hard not to do in a recent interview with Games Industry, which I reported on earlier this month.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 