Ciaran Laval

February 18, 2012February 18, 2012

Love Will Tier Us Apart Again

Crap Mariner has a good blog post about Circle Brooms Laurel Arts Isle succumbing to the tier conundrum and having to close down. What’s good about Crap’s post is that it delves into why places are special for people.

Daniel Voyager on the other hand has a post about The Cartoonimals sim not closing down after it was purchased by Ima Flanagan.

Hamlet Au, in his disappointingly named Sim Deathwatch series has recently been talking about the International Space Flight Museum Sim closing down, but now being saved, for a while at least, which you can read about here. Betterverse Non profits has more information on this, in this blog post, which links to the International Space Flight Museum’s official blog, where there’s a post on the subject, and where they point to how you can help to fund them via donations.

Prior to this we had news that Bryn Oh’s Immersiva was closing, but a crowdfunder on indiegogo appears to have saved that for now. All of these issues highlight the problems of keeping experiences alive in Second Life, but the big issue, the issue that needs to be addressed by Linden Lab, is that of Tier.

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February 18, 2012February 18, 2012

Little Text People Acquisition Is Related To Product 3 Says Rodvik

Back in December Rod Humble blogged on the official blog about 2011 and the outlook for 2012, there he confirmed again that Linden Lab would be looking at other projects:

“In addition to delivering new features and increasing our support for Second Life, we will be launching some completely different products next year not related to Second Life. Some of them will be very experimental, but all will fit within our company’s proud history of enabling creativity, which I hope may interest some of you.”

As I said in my previous post, the purchase of Little Text People is the first clear sign to outsiders that the Lab are developing other products, but the nature of the product has taken some by surprise. Hamlet Au on his blog post on the subject said:

“This acquisition is probably the source of the rumors last year that Linden Lab is developing adventure games, which Linden CEO Rod Humble denied at the time. But yesterday’s announcement strongly suggests something like adventure games are being made by Linden Lab (broadly defined as interactive fiction.)”

Rod Humble himself has commented to point out that the rumours last year were incorrect, that this is a different product and that the Little Text People purchased is related to the bland sounding, but still mysterious Product 3, the product that was talked about last year is the bland sounding, but still mysterious, Product 2!

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February 17, 2012February 17, 2012

Linden Lab Acquires Little Text People Game Studio

Talk of Linden Lab branching out into new areas beyond Second Life isn’t new, but the acquisition of Little Text People game studio is the first sign to outsiders that it’s really happening. I was alerted to this news via Ann OToole’s post over at SLUniverse, which in turn links to a post on TechCrunch about the acquisition.

Then via Inara Pey’s blog post on the subject I discover that Linden Lab have issued a press release on the matter, the question remains, what will come of this, well that’s probably right after the question of who the bloody hell Little Text People are and what do they do?

Little Text People are in the interactive fiction game, which is something I’ve mused over before with regards to Second Life, it’s a perfectly feasible aim but seems somewhat wasted to a degree in a sandbox as rich as Second Life with it’s current character development limitations, which is probably why Linden Lab this see this as a suitable venture for their beyond Second Life line…. that’s not the name of the line by the way!

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February 16, 2012February 16, 2012

Pathfinding Moves Closer

If you want to keep up with technical developments you can go to user group meetings, read forum posts, read the wiki or go and read Nalates Urriah’s blog. I like the latter as it’s a good central repository. This week Nalates has been keep us up to date with the upcoming Pathfinding features, you can read the blog post here.

Pathfinding will help prims navigate around a sim all on their own, this has potential for non player characters, such as pets, barmen (and maids), ambience, bouncers and such like. Pathfinding alone won’t make this happen, as Nalates points out animations will still need to be used but pathfinding is a big step in the right direction of making this more easy to get going.

There’s an alpha overview on the Wiki, which being alpha means we shouldn’t get too excited just yet. The overview informs us of some of the commands and their LSL counterparts. There is also a Pathfinding Alpha Release wiki page which tells us that there will be a development viewer for this, but it has not yet been released. The feature will appear on Aditi first.

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February 13, 2012February 13, 2012

Fantasy Faire 2012 Coming Soon – Store & Sponsorship Opportunities

Poster for Fantasy Faire 2012 Should Be Here — Fantasy Faire 2012

Details are slowly emerging about Fantasy Faire 2012 for Second Life, my chief Elf slipped me some early details, which include information on how to apply for a store, as well as some ground rules. Some of the info is ahead of its time, the link to the blog points to last year’s blog, which was a lot of fun, it’s early days. Those interested in this event are free to use the poster to promote it, although from my experience last year, mentioning the event in the official forum gets your post deleted, so I won’t be doing that again! Notecard details below the cut.

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