Second Life and Virtual Worlds
The Guild of Messengers (GoMe) runs a monthly photo contest for Uru fans. You can read about it in several places. There is a thread on GoMa here: Maintainers’ Myst-Uru Photos Thread. The ‘How To’ for participating can be found on the GoMe forum in PhotoQuest Remembered. The rules of the contest are here: PhotoQuest Remembered Rules.
This contest is a continuation of the contest that ran in-game, thus the ‘remembered’. Without a live online game the CD/DVD based Myst games are being used.
The Eder D’Uru blog is updating regularly now. For goings on in the Myst-Uru style SL build check it out. For a discussion of the economics of two Myst-Uru style builds in SL check out the MOUL thread TheTale of Two Myst-Uru Ways To get the back story of another Myst-Uru style build in SL … Read more
This viewer updates rapidly. I have made several posts here about the different features being added to Greenlife Emerald viewer and provided reviews. There is a trail of links you can read through to read them in order. Or you can click on the Archive page and select the Emerald Viewer Reviews to see all the posts that relate.
12/3/09: I’ve added an index to all the Emerald Viewer Reviews. See: Emerald Viewer Review Index
Seems like everyone is making viewers for Second Life. GreenLife Emerald Viewer is an outstanding viewer for builders doing build-by-number building and sim managers that need to control AV’s in their sim. Emerald has several neat features handy for games inside SL.
You find several of Emerald’s new features in a new menu item labeled Emerald. See the image for a list if the items in this menu drop down.
I think everyone knows the Lindens are always working to improve things and add features for which SL Players/residents are asking. Those of us that write complex scripts, programs if you will, are concerned about what happens when a Linden change breaks one of our scripts being used in a product we are selling. Well, Stroker Serpentine has been through such an ordeal. While I don’t know what one can do to change things, his story can prepare you for what can happen.
Stroker is the manufacturer of the Stoker SexGen beds, line of animations, genitals and scripts for builders. Over 2-1/2 years he has sold thousands of his products and they are all over SL. Imagine his IM’s when suddenly thousands of horny residents can no longer have sex. Not a pretty thought, especially if one considers facing a handsome male AV pointing to a limp noodle and asking ‘What the @#%@&*?’
I mostly use Release Candidate (RC) viewers. The new RC viewer with the Reported ‘appearance’ problems is 1.23.0 RC. Note that by June the 1.23 viewer will likely be mandatory because of the Adult Content change over. However the Lindens will change schedules or fix the problem rather than upset everyone, so not to worry. Do know that by default in the 1.23 viewer you are set to PG/Mature. You must change to PG or PG/Mature/Adult. (More info on Adult Content: SL Adult Content Blog)
Probably the more serious problem is the RC 1.23.0 triggering a false positive in some anti-virus programs. That has been a show stopper. The requirement for RC 1.23 to be required for RC-users has been lifted because of that.
Part III is about fans being in control of the Myst-Uru open source version of Myst Online. It will be difficult for anyone person or group to control it. But, is that a good thing? I’m for freedom and many choices and lots of competition. Having lots of Uru worlds to choose from sounds good to me. But it may be disaster for Myst Uru and cause its ultimate demise. How can that be?
If there were but one Uru run by a neutral third party which all fans could enjoy, we would likely have enough financial support for it run indefinitely. It would also assure players in game to keep the place from looking deserted.
But Myst Uru is not just about players in game. It is about fan created content, some fan programming server and client changes and someone designing and building content. Strong central control kills creativity and Myst Uru has failed twice from lack of content. While a central control would appear to solve many problems it creates others.