This weekend sees the launch of Immersive Edge, A Hypergrid Story. I initially took a look at this project a week or so ago; OpenSim Storytellers Are Developing Some Impressive Storytelling Techniques. The launch covers more than just introducing people to Immersive Edge, there will also be presentations from writers and designers regarding techniques and tools that can be used in bringing immersive fiction to virtual worlds utilising OpenSim.
Some of the techniques will also be good for other virtual worlds, but OpenSim has made some great leaps and bounds in making it easier for people to create immersive fiction than other platforms. Let’s take a look at the presenters for the launch, or more accurately, let’s take a look at Nara Malone’s blog post introducing us to the presenters; Meet the Presenters for Immersive Edge Launch.
Sande Chen
Sande Chen is a writer and game designer. Her writing work includes 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus and the 2007 PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher. Sande was also nominated for a Writers Guild Award in Videogame Writing for The Witcher.
Sande is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform and a contributor to Writing for Video Game Genres, Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing, and Secrets of the Game Business.
Sande was profiled as one of the top 100 most influential women in the game industry back in 2006 for her work as Director of Girls in Games, Inc. On top of that, Sande was nominated for a Grammy Nomination in 1996 for music video direction.
So that’s quite an impressive bio I’d say! Sande will be speaking on Sunday November 8th at 9:00am SLT. The title of Sande’s presentation is : “How Technology is Changing Storytelling”.
Ruby O’ DeGee
Ruby O’ DeGee is a sort of fictional character, although considered to be better known than the human behind the fiction, Ann Dickerson. Ruby first appeared as part of journal in 1994 before moving on to the virtual stage all the way back in 2003.
Ruby is a virtual world and virtual reality enthusiast and feels that the latest wave of VR hype may actually really make the breakthrough in immersive storytelling that she has long been hoping for.
Ruby will be talking about Story Building on Saturday November 7th at 9:00am SLT.
Aine Caoimhe
Aine Caoimhe (AKA Mata Hari in OSGrid) is retired these days, although that doesn’t stop her from dabbling in virtual worlds. Aine progressed through photographic art in the 70’s and 80’s to digital art. These days enjoying the joys of using Photoshop and Blender.
Aine’s presentation will be on the subject of PMAC (Paramour Multi-Animation Controller). If you’re wondering what PMAC is, I’ll let Aine’s words provide more information :
PMAC is designed to offer a high performance alternative to existing systems such as MLP, nPose, and xPose. PMAC uses a core engine that leverages the powerful OSSL functions available only in Opensim to drastically increase the script’s speed and reliability while at the same time using only a fraction of the simulator resources of the existing systems.
Aine’s presentation will take place on Saturday November 7th at noon SLT.
Fred Beckhusen
Fred Beckhusen is President, Micro Technology Services, Inc. Microcomputer and microprocessor hardware design and programming.
Fred has experience of working with C, C++ and C#, perl, lsl script, Visual Basic, 3-D modeling in Solidworks, much more going back to the early 70’s. Fred’s bio further informs us :
My first computer was the Rockwell Autonetics Recomp-II, a 1K word, 40-bit drum-memory military computer. I took it apart, rebuild it, and wrote John Conways “Game of Life” for it, from careful study of the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. I still read and love Scientific American, which first published the rules for the game of Life in 1970. Yeah, I know. It dates me.
That’s way before my time, well way before I would have understood what a computer was anyway! Fred’s presentation will be about the All-in-One-NPC Controller, which has been used by the Hypergrid stories team in one form or another by various contributors. Fred’s work is extremely important to the project, as Nara’s post informs us :
The foundation of Immersive Edge is Fred’s NPC controller. The years of work he has poured into making a tool easy for everyone paid off on this project. From artists to authors we were all able to use some version of Fred’s work to rez and move NPCs through a scene to tell our stories. While we were building he kept adding new features we told him we needed. I think his controller went through a dozen revisions over the course of the project. We’ve coaxed Fred out from under his troll bridge to demonstrate all the amazing things that are possible with his NPC controller.
Fred’s presentation will take place on Sunday November 8th at noon SLT.
The presentations themselves aren’t expected to be too long, as Nara explains :
Presentation will last about 15 minutes, followed by a few quick instructions from me on how to adjust your viewer settings for best experience and how to access the story. Then our team will give you a guided tour through Immersive Edge. Clean out those suitcases because scattered through the scenes are gift items and storytelling tools. We look forward to seeing friends from around the metaverse.
For full details on the launch, presentations and locations, please visit Nara’s blog post.