November 2013 – Page 6

November 9, 2013

Disrespecting Hedgehogs, Mafia Hits, Trolling Forums – A Look At The Old Police Blotter

Back in the day Second Life used to list the 25 most recent offences in what was known as the Police Blotter. Later on it became the incident report. These reports looked like this:

Date: Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Violation: Community Standards: Indecency, Global Standards
Region: Ahern
Description: Offensive language in IM.
Action taken: Warning issued.

Being as that offence took place in Ahern you can’t help but wonder whether the issue was using offensive language in IM, whereas in Ahern it’s traditional to be abusive in local chat. Some of the offences fall into the bizarre category, such as what appears to have been the St Patrick’s day massacre:

Date: Friday, March 17, 2006
Violation: Community Standards: Violations using Alternate Accounts
Region: —
Description: Use of primary and alternate accounts for mafia “hits” on residents.
Action taken: Suspended 14 days.

We see examples of offences that were serious enough to be listed but had a touch of humour about them:

Date: Friday, June 30, 2006
Violation: Second Life: Respect, Pets
Region: Arabian Nights
Description: Hedgehogs will be respected, dammit!
Action taken: Warning issued.

Date: Saturday, July 8, 2006
Violation: Terms of Service: Adult Allowing Teen Access to MG
Region: Hawaii
Description: “My little brother did it.”
Action taken: Suspended 14 days.

Then we see examples of action being taken because of abusive behaviour in the forums, spamming event listings, nudity in profiles and using real world trademarks to sell goods in Second Life:

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November 8, 2013

AnnMarie OToole’s Automated Vehicles Hit The Buffers

They filled mainland roads .. and roadside parcels. They sped along the highways, cars, tanks, Taxis, Ice Cream trucks, motorised vehicles but it seems that they’ve now crashed permanently. I’m talking about the infamous AnnMarie OToole (not to be confused with Ann OToole) automated vehicles which have apparently disappeared from the Second Life highways.

In her profile, AnnMarie says:

“Yes I am the notorious AnnMarie who invented the drunken vehicles on the SL Roads but the Lindens have shut it down.

Remenber you live in a dictatorship, not a democracy. No charges, no arrest, no hearing, no representation, no appeal. Don’t forget to give copies of all your creations to an alternate account and never keep Linden $$, convert to US$ or risk losing everything.

5 years with over 110,000 visitors taking over 325,000 rides. All gone.”

Now these vehicles were not universally popular, this may be an understatement. A thread over at SLUniverse entitled Guess who’s at it again…Exploiting Mainland cites many reasons for their unpopularity. Allegations about exploiting exploits, crashing, using Linden rez zones, polluting the highways etc.

AnnMarie herself actually pops into that thread to explain a few things, to try and dismiss a few misconceptions and most intriguingly to me, to explain about the problems with an Ice Cream Truck:

“There was a conflict with the Ice Cream Truck, it used to vend ice creams when clicked but people wanted to ride them so the click was changed to RIDING instead of VENDING. Despite 10 fancy Italian flavors they all tasted the same . IM me if you would like a free ice cream.”

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November 7, 2013

No Sex, No Drugs, No Wine, No Women, No fun, No sin, No you, No wonder it’s dark

“Learning providers can create entire campuses composed of multiple learning environments. Game designers can create custom games Virtual world providers can provide any type of environment (within similar constraints as the Entertainment Software Ratings Board [ESRB] content ranges, we intend to avoid the issues that Second Life is wrestling with due to the adult/erotic/pornographic flavor of so much of their content).” – Richard Garriott (AKA Lord British).

The above quote, which I covered in more detail back in June 2011 was to do with a project that Lord British was contemplating, that now seems to have morphed into Shroud Of The Avatar, an MMO, so the previous post is now well out of date. However the issue of adult content is rearing its head once more, this time in Cloud Party where more attention is bringing more questions.

Questions regarding adult and mature content in Cloud Party are not new, indeed they have been discussed in the Cloud Party forums more than once. Cloud Party’s community standards are pretty clear on the issue of mature and adult content:

“Sexually Explicit Content We do not allow adult content or behavior, or visuals of explicit sex or simulated sex on the platform.”

Yet there’s another side to this coin, it’s the whole icky factor some have of sharing spaces with children as young as thirteen. This happens in World Of Warcraft, you’re short of a player on a guild run, you advertise for one more and along comes a gnome warrior with purple hair who tells you “I’m 13” and the rest of the group are “WTF!” but of course, in a 13+ environment you’re likely to run into thirteen year olds!

A thread over at SLUniverse raises the issue of the other side of the coin:

“It has some very good stuff. But no cash out and the PG13 rule ..”

“There’s PG-13, and then there’s hanging out with 13 year olds.”

“The point remains though that in Cloud Party there’s no partitioning of age groups whatsoever at present. They could use a General (13-17) and Mature (18+) filtering themselves, even if they omit Adult forever.”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but can a happy medium be reached?

Continue reading “No Sex, No Drugs, No Wine, No Women, No fun, No sin, No you, No wonder it’s dark”

November 6, 2013November 6, 2013

I Got Two Turntables And A Microphone

I downloaded a Sinclair Spectrum emulator for the android the other week. After the initial buzz of seeing all those old game titles from the eighties my interest waned. The android is a bit clunky for such games, many games don’t work and time has not been kind to many of them. However it was a thrill at first. When I had a Speccy as a kid, so did lots of my school friends. We’d share games (piracy as my teacher scolded us, so don’t try that at home). We’d go to each others houses, we’d have fun not only due to the games but because there was also a social aspect.

I left the Speccy behind many moons ago, as I did the Commodore Amiga after that, and I have been looking to see if there’s a legal Amiga emulator but will most likely go through the same cycle as I did with the Speccy emulator, thrill, then flat and no social side to keep the interest.

As it’s my blog I can draw comparisons between the Speccy and Second Life, a bit of a stretch it may be but I can draw them. The Speccy was not the height of technology on release, there were better products around but the Speccy caught the imagination. Therefore software developers were alerted to it and stretched the Speccy to limits beyond what many thought it was capable of, Lords Of Midnight springs to mind here. The Speccy had the people and of all the ingredients that make a product a success, that is arguably the most important one.

Roll forward many years and Second Life is simply where it’s at in virtual world terms. Cloud Party has some very impressive concepts going for it. I like their royalty system on content sales whereby if you sell an asset with royalties enabled, if someone else then sells another asset whilst using your asset as part of the build, you’ll receive a royalty payment. Cloud Party has also had materials for quite a while now. Another impressive apsect of Cloud Party is that objects are not the only limiting factor in a build. In Cloud Party you can have x amount of objects, or x amount triangles or x amount of bandwidth, whichever you hit first will strike the build limit. This is a well considered concept as objects are far from the only issue when it comes to performance.

Kitely has some impressive offerings, such as putting sims to sleep when not in use due to using a cloud based system. Kitely is also not only cheaper than Second Life, but for those who may only spend a few hours a month there they have a time based billing option and under any plan you get at least one free sim to play around with.

Inworldz is also cheaper than Second Life, Jim Tarber and the team are also moving in directions Second Life isn’t, as can be seen in the Inworldz Techblog where they inform visitors they’re implementing physX and project Thoosa, which is aimed at making everything run faster and more efficiently. Inworldz has also implemented Qarl’s mesh deformer project.

However despite these advances in other virtual worlds, Second Life still has that magical community ingredient and what makes this all the more impressive is that Second Life still has the community despite the fact that Linden Lab have been actively distancing themselves from the Second Life community for a few years now.

Continue reading “I Got Two Turntables And A Microphone”

November 3, 2013November 3, 2013

Jane Austen World In MMO

A couple of post ago I mused over the possibility of a Second Life game engine. In that post I mused that the engine wouldn’t be ideal for an all action first person shooter. Estelle Pienaar of Second Life Play Instinct respectfully disagreed. There are some excellent examples of games within Second Life on that blog.

So, what sort of game do I think could benefit from a Second Life style game engine. Well let’s create a formula, let’s take the regency period where Jane Austen novels thrived which has given birth to Emily Short’s interactive fiction in Versu. Then let’s mix that up with avatars who don’t fight, but gain reputation and status via gossip, or being invited to events. Then throw into the mix this mysterious Second Life game engine and to top it all off, let’s throw in an ex senior engineering manager from Linden Lab who worked on Second Life. Result? Far fetched?

Well some of that formula is actually happening. Thanks to a post on SLUniverse from Aimee Weber I’ve discovered that an MMO set in the Jane Austen world might very well be in the works. There’s a kickstarter for a game called Ever, Jane. Indeed the person behind it, Judy L Tyrer is indeed an ex senior engineering manager for Linden Lab who worked on Second Life. Rumour may suggest that I added that part to my formula based on seeing the kickstarter, rumours are sometimes true!

Here’s part of the description of the project:

“Ever, Jane is a virtual world that allows people to role-play in Regency Period England. Similar to traditional role playing games, we advance our character through experience, but that is where the similarities end. Ever, Jane is about playing the actual character in the game, building stories. Our quests are derived from player’s actions and stories. And we gossip rather than swords and magic to demolish our enemies and aid our friends. ”

I’m not making this up!

Continue reading “Jane Austen World In MMO”