In the News: Project Sansar

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Daniel Voyager has an article up pointing to an interview by Ryan Matthew Pierson with Ebbe Altberg, Linden CEO, and Peter Gray, Linden marketing. See: Linden Lab’s Project Sansar and the Future of Virtual Reality. The article is about what is required for Virtual Reality (VR) to go mainstream.

ℜØSE Siabonne #paparazzoted
ℜØSE Siabonne #paparazzoted

The TL:DR is that Second Life did not catch on because the rewards of Second Life didn’t cover the cost of the learning curve, in people’s perception. The article puts that much more convincing worlds.

Ryan covers how Sansar will be different and that it targets the ‘developer/game maker’ rather than the user. But, he never answers the question implied by the first half of the article.

So, interesting, but no great insights.

Danial writes far more about the article from the perspective of a resident of Second Life™ that lives through the times being discussed. (Click Daniel’s name at the top of this article.)

OBDUCTION Getting Near Release

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If you are a long time reader, you know I came from the Myst gaming community. I am a big fan of Myst Online: Uru Live. Cyan Worlds the maker of Uru has been working on a new game for a couple of years: OBDUCTION.

Obduction Release
Obduction Release

Game Tyrant has an article about their experience with OBDUCTION at the Cyan offices. See: Exclusive: We Played OBDUCTION, the Spiritual Successor to MYST and it is Brilliant. 

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Blog Problems Follow Up

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Most of the site is cleaned. I am running on all new plugins. Removing others. Everything is only 3 months old or newer. I still have a few to re-install. I’m still trying to figure out which search engines to block. I’m not familiar with European Arabic, and Asian engines.

The software I am using doesn’t organize information as well as it might. Plus timing is fuzzy. But, it is free and has some other features I like, so I’ll keep it.

Today you’ll notice the ads are back. They pay for my hosting. So, deal with them and know I appreciate your patience with them.

I’ve changed over to Google’s ReCAPTCHA. The other company providing Recaptcha was an advertising company and may have been part of the problem with my site. I think it is easier to use. Let me know.

First Impressions of Black Desert Online

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I’ve managed to level up to level 15 and only get killed once. The game is fun. While some describe it as a sandbox MMO I would not suggest providing that description to Second Life™ users. Black Desert Online™ (BDO) players will not be wishing they knew Blender or Maya better. Nor have I seen what we would call ‘in-world building tools.’

Black Desert Online Map
Black Desert Online World Map – Small Part – March @016

While BDO is pretty much what I consider a typical buy-to-play mission and leveling game with the expected grinds, it is fun. There is a huge amount to learn and not much in the way of tutorials, well not in what I consider my usual sources. I should also say ‘English’ tutorials. There are lots of Japanese tutorials. I’ve also found that the US version of the game (English?) is different than the Japanese in minor ways. That button I need isn’t where the Japanese tutorial shows it. So, is that a language version thing or just changes in the game? I don’t know. But, the button ain’t there. 

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Blog Problems

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Update

This site went down Tuesday morning. The cause: several people are hitting the site causing problems.

You may have seen the site changing and going off-line Tuesday.

I was in the process of changing things and hardening the site. I thought I had it well protected, but I guess not. It should be harder now. Instead of using several different protective apps I’ve consolidated to one.

I thought I might have to block blocks of IP addresses. So, I was worried I might block some readers so I advised, “If you get blocked from the site, contact me in world.” But, I haven’t has to. I do block some single IP addresses.

There are a couple of search engines I’ve never heard of that abuse the site. I’m tweaking settings to slow them down.

I am slowly replacing plug-ins. I have to remove all the plug-in files and replace them with factory versions. That is tedious. I was surprised to see some of my apps hadn’t updated in 6 years. There were no new versions. I suspect this is where my problem got started.