Virtual World News

Big News? Myst-Uru-SL

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Update Aug 27

Cyan Worlds, Inc. announced in the Myst Online forum that they are working with Creative Kingdoms on MagiQuest an MMO version of the ARG part of the theme parks.

Original Article

The Myst-Uru community, especially those that moved too Second Life, has been waiting for a project that Cyan Worlds sort of named ‘Something Else’ to finish. Why?

You see the Myst-Uru MMO game previously on GameTap as Myst Online Uru Live (MOUL) closed in April 2008. MOUL fans don’t give up. That happened once before when an earlier version of MOUL closed and fans hacked up servers and started to put the game back online. This time the fans were promised the MMO game as open source. Code was to be published this Spring.

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Blue Mars Beta This Month

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If you have not heard, Blue Mars is a new virtual world using current state of the art tech, described as a Next Generation Virtual World. It will be along the lines of Second Life, with significant differences. It is in Beta now and at the end of August the Beta will expand to a larger more open Beta. Tools for learning to build within Blue Mars are available now.

One of the bigger differences is content creation. Property rights are supposed to be better protected. Builders are more controlled. There are 3 levels of builders/creators, City, Block and Content. It seems a City builder is somewhat like the SIM/Region owner in Second Life (SL). A Block creator is more like a Parcel Owner in SL. Blue Mars (BM) block builders are restricted by the city builder they lease or rent from. Pricing to join any of these groups has not been released.

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Roadmap for SL Content Creators

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Second Life
SL Content Creation Roadmap

New World Notes has a summary of Cyn Linden’s post on the SL roadmap for content creators. If you are selling or plan to sell in SL then this is something to know and join in shaping as it will affect you. Some of the highlights and issues are described below.

At the present time it is easy for alternates with no payment information to rip-off goods and sell them. There is a whole big thing about Stroker Serpentine versus anonymous, unregistered Volkov Catteneo. It’s hard to go after an anonymous person. This new system, if done right, has the potential to stop these content theft problems. The Lindens expect to see many of the new features implemented this year. So, get involved in the discussion in the forums.

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Bloggers Beware – FTC Control is Coming to a Blog Near You

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Federal Trade Commission
Federal Trade Commission

The FTC is planning to start regulating blogs. If you make money from your blog or Twitter micro-blog then you will be affected. Since the administration (America) loves to pass huge bills containing over a thousand pages written in legalese and submitted at 3AM and requiring a vote within 5 hours (I swear Obama said we would have at least 5 days…), we have no idea what we are getting. There will be possibly hundreds of pages tacked on just before the vote is called that no one has read, which is common practice now.

If these laws get passed, likely, they could go into effect by the end of summer 2009. So, is it little me they are after? No… as best I can tell. Big businesses have seen the benefit of using blogs. They are the target. But as incompetent as government is there is no telling what we will get. So, paying attention to what they are doing is important.

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Travel to Other Virtual Worlds

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Travel to other virtual worlds and look cool doing it. Cool as in wear your skin, shape and clothes. How is ths done? Answer: Dynamic Hypergrid Links or just Dynamic Links. Dynamic Links? What the heck is a dynamic link? In this case the Open Sim crowd means links between virtual worlds. The idea is a Second Life resident (player) can open the world map and select other worlds, not just regions.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIikPdQBsoI]

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Export from SL to OpenSim

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Anyone that is creating in Second Life now has the ability to export the things they have created in Second Life to Open Sim. For instance, in SL I have a house I built and a number of other things. I do not own land in SL so I really have no place to put the house. But, it would be fun to put it in OpenSim and landscape around it. I could make much better pictures, if I decide to sell the house.

I run my own little Open Sim world. But if I build something in SL, I have build it again in my Open Sim. If I could export it, I could build once and use twice.

Clothes I’ve made are not a big deal. Those I can easily take to Open Sim. But buildings and prim based things are a different story. At least until now. I’ll be playing with this over the new few days.

To export your builds from SL to Open Sim get the Meerkat Viewer.

See the viewer here: http://www.meerkatviewer.org/

See the Import/Export Instructions.