In the Firestorm Q&A Oz has announced that Experience Keys stuff will be coming out today.
The Torley Video will be released today too. Plus documentation, plus blog post, plus Project Viewer.
Changes
Second Life User Groups
Nyx Linden is going to fold his UG meeting into the Server/Scripting UG. So, the Content & Mesh UG closes with today being its last meeting.
Nyx Linden told us today, “This will be the last regular meeting for this user group. I’m moving on to other projects and haven’t been able to keep up with the details of content creation tasks as well as I used to be able to.”
Whirly Fizzle and others asked the obvious question, “Are you being reassigned to the new world stuff Nyx?” I found the answer a bit ambiguous when Nyx answered, “I’ll still be in world from time to time, and will be helping Oz whenever any avatar issues come up or with any other pieces where I can assist of course.” So, I find that a bit fuzzy. But, I’ll take that as a yes.
Oz Linden told us, “Topics that otherwise would have come here can be brought to either the simulator UG or one of my open development meetings.” And continued by saying, “I don’t know what the new platform team will be doing to engage with users, or when.” I take this to mean no one knows for sure what they will be doing or when they will be doing it. Things are changing for the Lindens and while Ebbe can make off-hand comments I suspect the Lindens (staff) are still limited in what they can talk about.
Second Life 2.0 Coming
Ebbe Linden spoke at the TPV Meeting 6/20. We learned that Second Life 2.0 is in development and will likely go into Closed NDA Beta late this year. EARTH SHAKING! I’ll relate the comments below in the order as Ebbe did. He did not seem to be at the meeting to announce the news. But, it has gotten out.
Ebbe, the Linden Lab CEO was at the Friday TPV Meeting. He says he is enjoying popping into the various meetings. I think in general the users meeting him are happy with him.
Ed Merryman asked about Ebbe’s plans for player retention. See: TPV Meeting. I’ll touch on the things I think are interesting. But, listen to the video/audio for a sense of Ebbe.
Ebbe clarified what he means by making Second Life easier. He definitely does not mean making it dumber. He wants to keep the power and find ways to make things easier for new users to understand and learn.
Second Life Advanced Experience Tools
We have been hearing a bit more about the Advanced Experience Tools Project (AETP). Some have found the region in ADITI where Advanced Experience Tools (AET) test code is running. Friday in the Third Party Viewer (TPV) Developer’s Meeting Oz Linden told us that within about the next month an Experience Tools Beta will be opening up. He also expects it to last several weeks. So, these tools are close to release now.
We were talking about these tools back in 2011 when they were called Linden Realms Advanced Creator Tools. Tiggs Linden was talking to us at the LSL Scripting UG (disbanded now) in early 2012 about what was coming. See: #SL Linden Realm Tools. The Linden Realms (See: Linden Realm Tools – 2011)was a Linden Lab project to reveal to staff the problems in developing games and places in Second Life™.
The first roll out of these tools was in May 2012. See: Greifer Monday. That was a disaster. Since then AET has been in development.
Group Ban Sort of Released
The Group Ban feature on the server side rolled out today. After tomorrow’s roll outs to the RC channels the server side of Group Ban will be complete. All regions in the main grid will have the feature.
This afternoon the Project Viewer appeared on the RC and Project Viewers page. See Project Group Ban 3.7.8.290887. The release notes with some instructions for how to use the feature is here: GroupBan/3.7.8.290887 Release Notes.
For all practical purposes, we have group ban. Those wanting to ban people from their groups need to get the Project Viewer. Those being banned will be banned no matter which viewer they use. The ban actually happens server side. The Project Viewer is just needed to tell the server who is banned.
Linden Lab Ahead of It Self?
I see the Lab has announced the roll out of the second phase of the Sunshine Project, also known as Server Side Avatar (SSA) baking. See: Project Shining is now complete! This is the part we have been referring to as AISv3. These are the additional server side changes to the Agent (LL-ese for Avatar) Inventory Service (AIS) to fix remaining problems with avatar appearance failures.
The current main SL Viewer has the viewer side code for the latest Sunshine updates. But, only the Blue Steel RC channel has the server side of these changes. So, we won’t actually see the effect of these changes in most of SL until those changes roll grid wide.