Immersive Fiction – Ciaran Laval

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”.
Continue reading “Immersive Edge A Hypergrid Story Launches In OpenSim This Weekend”

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.

Continue reading “Nara Malone On OpenSim, NPC’s, Exhibitions And OpenSimulator Conference”