Nara Malone On OpenSim, NPC’s, Exhibitions And OpenSimulator Conference

Nara Malone isn’t happy; “It’s like being caught in your curlers” she purrs as I whip out my camera, but there’s a glint in her eye as she stands amidst the scene of an in progress exhibit from Fuscia Nightfire.

Nara is showing me around the build which is an interactive exhibit featuring machinima, which is playing on the floor and surrounding walls. The finished exhibit will feature the use of Non Player Characters (NPC’s) and Nara has been demonstrating to me just how easy they are to create in OpenSim.

Nara rezes a poseball and then explains the process to me : “I click the ball once it records my appearance, it runs the animation I put in the poseball. I can change those out or run a string. This is our simplest character maker.”

With that said Nara clicks the ball and few second later another Nara is in my view, this one sitting down tying her lace, which is the animation inside the pose ball. However how resource hungry are they? Nara explains that they are not that resource hungry at all : “Its just an animation running…very easy resource. We can have 20 or so at a time with 10 users online. We have more complex versions but this is the starter one. We can make them talk, Program them to interact so they are very helpful with storytelling and with the immersion. The characters draw readers in.”

Nara is a storyteller and of course her stories must be told. However she’s not alone and the exhibit she’s giving me a sneak preview of is part of her group’s work for the OpenSimulator Conference in November. Whereas the big names are keynote speakers such as High Fidelity’s Philip Rosedale and Oculus Rift’s Steve LaValle, many from the general OpenSim community will be there too and exhibiting their wares.

Nara explains to me that her group will have a total of eight examples of their work running at the conference. Whereas there’s a lot of storytelling, there’s also a lot of scripting involved and Nara tells me that scripting guru Fred Beckhusen is on their team.

So just what are Nara and her team working on? Nara passes me a note with some preliminary but rather ambitious details.

1) Flash Fiction

Choose your path story writing by author Siobhan Muir: Follow the prompts, write a notecard, add it to the book, and show how you worked your tale with step-by-step instructions. An example story from the same prompts will be there to read as you go along. Interaction is the key to virtual storytelling, and you can make your tales come alive like a Choose Your Own Adventure in the Virtual World.

2) Story World Gamification

Nara Malone, author of novels and video games, takes visitors through the basic elements of developing games. Three Keys to Eve is a 3-level mini game wrapped in a fairytale. In playing through the game, participants will learn the basic elements of designing games to hook visitors, subtly steer them through a level to complete tasks, and using game-story to encourage deep exploration of a region.

3) Voice Performance

Nina Camplin will be performing a voice performance but details at this stage are incomplete.

4) NPC Characters

Author Shannan Albright will demonstrate to the power of NPC in a dragon shifter version of an Ugly Duckling themed fairytale. She’ll include a tutorial on using our extremely simple, two-click NPC creator/animator.

5) Holodeck Stories

Author Shara Lanel will deliver a paranormal fairytale via holodeck and include a short tutorial on using the holodeck as a storytelling tool.

6) Storytelling Bots

Courtney Sheets will bring the flavor of Hawaii to her paranormal story and demonstrate using character chatbots to tell a tale.

7) The Interactive Dance of Poetry

Poet Tracy Olmstead invites visitors to dance together or with a dance bot and write romantic lines of poetry in his String of Pearls activity. Visitors are pulled in by the attractive rhythms and words, and how someone took the time to speak to their hearts in a poetic manner. It can also be a fun game of banter. He’ll have example panels, prompts, and a little dance area set up.

8) The Band Will Play On

Artist Endora Twinklens will debut her NPC marching band in the final activity which will include a tutorial on using a more advanced NPC controller.

The marching band, Nara tells me, is something I must see. Nara has a smirk on her face as she tells me that it is rather impressive. However Nara isn’t just talking to me about the conference, her enthusiasm for OpenSim shines through as she tells me about HyperGrid Safari. Nara has sent me a link to a youTube Video by Fuscia Nighfire on safari :

Nara fills me in on the background : “It’s about the weekly safari they do which brings people from Second Life and opensim together hypergridding to cool builds around the metaverse.  They go at noon SLT every Wednesday.”

However Nara is also honest about OpenSim and acknowledges that there are some technical issues with the platform, which is refreshingly honest. Nara explains that recent advances in OpenSim with regards to the introduction of new physics. However Nara assures me that those bugs and issues are being hammered out. This isn’t unusual for any platform, progress sometimes introduces new issues and OpenSim is no exception.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on the work of Nara’s group in the coming weeks and will hopefully get to talk to Nara and preview more of their builds as the event draws closer. Nara’s work is extremely interesting and as a fan of storytelling, I’m very interested in where this all goes.

Tweet