Obduction Update

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Obduction is the Cyan Worlds’ single player game currently in the Kickstarter process.

The latest update on Kickstarter tells us that Cyan plans to place the game on Steam. If your supporting this project or just curious, jump over to steam and have look. If supporting the game, please take time to login or sign up and rate the project. It will help get work out.

With 6 days left to funding, the project has funded US$869,605 of the $1,100,000 target, 79% of the target in 78% of the allotted time. It looks like it will fund, but it looks to be close. So, help out where you can; become a supporter and pledge funds, tell your friends, and help out at Steam’s Greenlight site.

Second Life Down Time

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Thursday morning (11/7) starting about 7 AM PDT Second Life™ will sort of be down. The Lindens will be doing some database maintenance. They will have the following impacts:

During this period, a number of Second Life services will be impacted. Some users may be logged off and may be temporarily unable to log in for a brief period. The maintenance may also disrupt transactions, logins, and account registration. The land store and land auctions may also become unavailable during this time. 

Of course, it is unwise to rez no-copy items, attempt financial transactions, or modifying Market Place entries. Trying to build or script in SL will likely be flakey too.

You can see the post here: Expected Downtime Thursday, November 7. They say they will update the post when the maintenance is complete.

Second Life News 2013-45

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I’m distracted with real life projects. But, the main channel is getting a rollout from the RC channels today (Tuesday). It is a maintenance package with some bug/server crash fixes. There is not much in the way of details.

RC Channels

All three RC channels will get the same package Wednesday. This package is preparatory changes to the Second Life™ infrastructure to allow eventual rollout of the Advanced Experience Tools.

So, what is changing? No one is saying. We can assume most of the change is going to have to do with the permissions system. If that suspicion is correct, we can assume that this will be a very slow well tested rollout.

Consider. Linden Realms was news in March 2012. The first rollout of Advanced Experience Tools (AET) resulted in Griefer Monday (June 2012). The exploit was about a hole in permissions, which is why I thin the permissions system is being changed. After that fiasco the Lindens said the project was being re-thought and it disappeared from view. Now we only hear bits and pieces about it, like preparatory infrastructure changes’.

The AET project is approaching its second birthday.

Also, one has to wonder how the Lab is going to handle permissions to denote what items in SL and the Market Place can be sold on Desura…

Windows 8.1 Upgrade

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Windows 8.1 came out recently. For Windows 8 users the upgrade is free. Some of you will see it pop up as a standard Windows update without your doing anything.

Be warned! There are a certain number of computers that cannot handle the upgrade to Win8.1.

So Sad - Image by: Jason Lander - Flickr
So Sad – Image by: Jason Lander – Flickr

About 10/18 Microsoft started receiving reports of the Windows Update pushed out to users was failing. Some of the problems have been tracked to driver issues. The update installs Windows basic divers that are simply not compatible with the hardware.

But, the problem extends beyond just driver compatibility. In some cases systems do not have the hardware to support the new software.

Additionally there is a problem that Microsoft has yet to figure out. 

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Second Life News 2013-44 #2

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Simon Linden  has put together a server maintenance release. This package is mostly bug fixes. There is a fix for BUG-4142 which has to do with a ‘parcel full’ error associated with vehicle region crossings. We are also told that some teams have some other ‘shinnies’ included in the package. But, for now those are secret.

Server Beta Meeting 2013-44
Server Beta Meeting 2013-44

There are some hits that something is going on with “Fitted Mesh”… that is what the Mesh Deformer does. So, is there something going on? Probably. But, we have no clues. In any case this is what we would call preparatory work. Nothing to see folks.

At this time they doubt the package will make it through QA in time for next week’s RC roll out. They expect it to make for the week after.

This means there is nothing to roll to the RC channel next week (45).

The current RC maintenance package will likely roll to the main grid next week. So, we will likely have a week with the same server software running on all channels of the grid in week 45. 

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Oculus Rift & Cyan Worlds

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If you have never played a Cyan Worlds made game you have missed out. They do highly immersive games with incredible graphics. When they made the hit game Myst, it pushed people to buy CD drives, which I understand were a ‘new thing’ at the time. People were blown away by the high quality graphics. Looking at the near twenty-year old graphics the game looks a bit dated.

Claire Humme Concept Art for Obduction
Claire Humme Concept Art for Obduction

Even Uru (Myst Online: Uru Live) is looking dated. But, it is great fun to play.

Cyan Worlds has their Kickstarter for a their new game: Obduction. They have just added a new incentive for people to support the project. If they go over the target by $200,000, they will add Oculus Rift support.

Considering they are using the Unreal Engine for the game, the Oculus should provide an awesome immersive experience.

I think supporting Obduction will indirectly provide support for the Oculus. If you feel this would be a fun thing, join in here: Obduction.

Quoting from the project regarding the image above:

So this fellow looks like he’s taken the long way around. He seems fairly at home in some vaguely familiar clothing, but also appears to have picked up a few trinkets along the way. Many of which were probably not standard-Earth-issue. (Like those boots… source unknown!)