Virtual Worlds – Page 126

August 6, 2014

High Fidelity Looks To Get Beautiful In Bid To Not Let Words Bring Them Down

Quite a few big stories around, the biggest obviously being that Villa Park will be in Fifa 15. Then there’s the news that Blizzard have announced the release date of the release date of the next World Of Warcraft expansion, Warlords Of Draenor. There will be an event on August 14th to announce the release date of the expansion.

Then there’s High Fidelity who are explaining their animation techniques. Inara Pey and Hamlet Au have already blogged on this but I’m going to go there too. High Fidelity have not only hired their very own version of Oz in the form of former Pixar employee Ozan Serim, they’ve also teamed Ozan (on guitar) up with another employee, Mary Poppins Emily Donald (lead vocals), to make a bold bid to win this year’s virtual world idol and based on this performance, they have to be the bookies favourite to win!

Ok ok what am I talking about you may be wondering, I wonder this often too. The issue is trying to make avatars in High Fidelity look as impressive as the do in animated movies made by the likes of Pixar, without having an animator such as Ozan Serim, who used to work at Pixar. We’re only on Wednesday and this has seemed like a very long week already, but we’ll get there, in fact we’ll just get to Ozan’s words :

One of the things I am trying to do here at HF is make live avatars look really amazing – as close to what we see in animated films today. This is a big challenge – we have to do everything in a fraction of a second without the benefits of an animator (like me!) being able to ‘post-process’ the results of what is motion captured. So I’ve been working on the ‘rigging’: how a live 3D camera and a motion capture package like Faceshift is able to ‘puppeteer’ an avatar.

The challenge of course is that in a virtual world, you’re looking at this live, whereas we all know from the outtakes from films such as Toy Story, they have more time and opportunity to put it right. Now as an example we can see Emily sing.

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August 5, 2014

Lady Anshe’s Empire Expands To The Territory Of Lord British

Shroud Of The Avatar Forsaken Virtues is the forthcoming selective Multiplayer game from Lord British (AKA Richard Garriott), creator and designer of the legendary Ultima series of games. Shroud Of The Avatar is not a sequel to the Ultima games, quite possibly due to the fact that Electronic Arts and not Lord British own the trademark to Ultima.

Shroud Of The Avatar is a new form of MMO, where you can take the multi out of the equation if you wish, as the FAQ explains :

Shroud of the Avatar is a new form of multiplayer online role playing game we are calling a Selective Multiplayer Game. This will allow players to choose how they want to play. Play options will include solo offline, solo online, friends only online, or open multiplayer online. For players who play in the default open multiplayer, Shroud of the Avatar will feel very much like a traditional MMO. However, Shroud of the Avatar also includes a full solo player story crafted by Richard Garriott and Tracy Hickman, best known for his best selling Dragon Lance series of books.

Player housing in MMO’s is a growing area and Shroud Of The Avatar is going to offer plenty of options in this area. There will be a variety of sized lots avaialble, rows, villages, cities, towns, keeps and castles. So how do you get these lots, again we turn to the FAQ :

There are three ways to purchase a Lot Deed. Backers at Citizen level and above receive Lot Deed with their pledge. Players can also purchase a Lot Deed in the game through earned in game currency. Finally players can purchase Village size Lot Deeds from the Add-On store.

We can see from the add-on store that land can be somewhat costly, $1050 for a City Lot being the higher end of the spectrum. There’s also a monthly tax that has to be paid with inworld game currency. However players can buy and sell lots to each other.

Ah virtual land sales, whose really going to want to do that? Enter Lady Anshe.

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August 4, 2014

Can Linden Lab Strike Licensing Relationships For Second Life?

Just over a year ago I blogged : Could Linden Lab Follow Amazon’s Lead In Fan Based Creativity? This was based on Amazon’s Kindle Worlds deal whereby they had struck deals for people to be able to write, publish and sell fan fiction via Amazon.

A year is a long time for my memory these days, but I was reminded of this issue when I read a press release from Linden Lab relating to Blocksworld. The press release though does not appear on the Linden Lab website, it comes courtesy of Gamasutra and carries a headline of Blocksworld Adds MY LITTLE PONY Sets. Part of the press release states :

The new sets are the result of a licensing relationship with Hasbro, Inc., through which Linden Lab also recently added TRANSFORMERS characters to Blocksworld.

So apparently, Linden Lab have negotiated a deal with Hasbro for this content to exist in Blocksworld. Now of course Blocksworld is very different to Second Life and the content is more strictly managed. However Linden Lab may be able to agree terms to sell content from a Linden Lab store, whereby approved creators submit content. They may even require sim owners to apply to be able to place and buy said content. In short, they may be able to take a leaf out of their skill gaming policy and have approved creators and users of said licensed content.

However the last thing a roleplay sim needs is an increased tier fee, so it’s not straight forward, on the other hand, it should be feasible in some form for Linden Lab to find a way to allow users to make and use licensed content within Second Life.

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August 2, 2014

Drax Files World Makers Episode 21 – Editorial Clarity, Love Is In The Air

Episode 21 of The Drax Files : World Makers features an interview with Editorial Clarity, the founder and CEO of Love To Decorate (AKA LTD), a publication about home and garden products in Second Life. This episode is, at its heart a love story. Wait wait wait, wasn’t that a theme from my previous blog post? *Checks Notes* … ah it applies to this one too! Love is in the air. everywhere I look around, Love is in the air, every sight and every sound.

The episode opens with Edi opening a real physical 200 page edition of LTD magazine. The items in this magazine are products made for Second Life. The magazine is funded by advertising and the way it works is that they decorate a home from scratch to show people what can be done.

Edi, who seems to have a rather slight West Midland and London tinge to his accent, explains how he’s not a creator but he does create spaces. I feel that creation in Second Life isn’t just the domain of those who create products, I see land and spaces as being part of the creation process too, so I disagree with Edi about him not being a creator.

Edi talks about how Second Life helped not only his confidence but his love life too. Love is in the air, in the whisper of the trees, Love is in the air, in the thunder of the seas. He met his partner Rico in Second Life back in 2010, at a time when he had not yet, in his own words, come out of the closet to his family. They met in real life a year later and have been going strong ever since.

The episode features some wonderful footage of their inworld marriage, a spectacular looking Alice In Wonderland themed affair that also doubled as a fashion show for Second Life designers.

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August 2, 2014

On Reflection, Business Insider Article On Second Life Contains Some Fair Criticism

Karyne Levy, Senior West Coast Tech Editor fir Business Insider, has penned an article about Second Life : Second Life Has Devolved Into A Post-Apocalyptic Virtual World, And The Weirdest Thing Is How Many People Still Use It. The article starts badly with the headine and on first reading doesn’t get any better when you read the body.

Now the easy thing to do here would be to don full Second Life fanboi suit and rip the article to shreds, but upon reflection there are positives and fair criticism within the article. However some of the article remains bemusing, for example Karyne says :

When I open the events tab, I see listings ranging from night clubs to pornographic classified ads and little else. Yes, avatars can get naked in the game, with special nude skins available for purchase.

Now unless something has changed, new users need to opt in to be able to see and visit adult content, so I’m a tad bemused why someone would opt in to being able to access adult content and then comment on the fact that they are seeing adult content. Obviously if things have changed and by default those who vouch that they are over 18 are automatically able to see adult content then this would be a fair point to raise.

However this article is at its heart a love story. The person who shows Karyne around Second Life met and married her husband inside and later outside, Second Life. The article is as much about the story of Karyne’s guide as it is about Second Life itself, it’s a personal article in many ways. Karyne’s guide points out that many of her favourite Second Life locations are now closed, which is something many Second Life users can emphasise with, places do come and go.

The article also delves into the issue of the new user experience. Although Karyne isn’t technically a new user, having first tried Second Life many years ago for a couple of days, she does go through the new user experience with all its flaws.

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