Casting Call for Project Bento

Here’s your chance to be in the movies. The Lab has posted a Second Life casting call for a Drax machinima (1/14/16). If you are interested in showing off what you are working on, be at Bento Island, ADITI January 19 at noon (SLT – PST). The region won’t open until noon.

They'll change the avatar when pigs fly... WELL!?!

They’ll change the avatar when pigs fly… WELL!?!

While you cannot enter Bento Island early, I advise you to log into ADITI, the preview grid, early. The last few weeks have proven the log in process for ADITI is slow and flawed. I have yet to see my inventory update as the planned changes are supposed to. So, I’m pretty sure the new ADITI login process is not in place.

The notice advises those with avatars to show contact Draxtor Despres inworld. Provide him pictures and as much information about your creation as possible. I suspect he is looking for color and human interest and has less of an interest in the technical. What tools you are using will probably be pertinent.

Project Bento is one of the biggest changes to the Second Life avatar ever! More than 90 new bones have been added to accommodate features like subtle facial expressions, articulating fingers, smoothly-flapping wings, waving tails, and much more that was previously impossible or required complex workarounds.

If you’re a creator who’s testing out Project Bento, or one who’s eager to give it a try – now is the perfect time! We’re looking for creators to show off some of the possibilities of Project Bento for an upcoming episode of The Drax Files. There are detailed instructions on how to get started and how to get to the beta grid (aditi) on our wiki page. (TIP:Testing on Aditi does not cost you upload fees!)

Second Life: Adult Content Problems

I am writing more about sex in virtual worlds and Second Life™ than I’m getting… Ciaran Laval has an article about Twitch: Twitch Explicitly Prohibits Second Life With Rules Of Conduct Update. The TL:DR is simply they have banned all content from Second Life, by name. The official details are in the Twitch RoC Update. I think there has been another edit since Ciaran posted his article.

Walk on through a red parade

Walk on through a red parade by Wendz Tempest, on Flickr

They say added for clarity:

If a game’s US version is rated Adults Only by the ESRB, you should not broadcast that game on Twitch. However, ESRB rated Mature versions of Adults Only titles are permitted for streaming, such as Mature versions of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy.

Games rated 18+ by other rating systems are fine to stream, so long as they are not rated AO by the ESRB, and they don’t violate the standard language of our RoC and ToS.

The peeps at Twitch are making it clear Adult Only… meaning sexual, content is NOT welcome. They list the games by name and SL is one. I suspect this is a move to save time and effort on their part, they are deciding what is too sexy by the game not the actual content. That saves them time looking at and deciding if the content crosses their line. Continue reading

Second Life: Meet a Linden Today

Today is the day for the Lindens to get in-world and mingle with the masses… well, whatever mass will fit in the region Our Island aka Basilique. The meet up starts at 1 PM SLT today, 5/14.

Basilique Dress Code - 2015

Basilique Dress Code – 2015

Seems everyone in the SL blogosphere is publishing the time and location. Since this is a single region without any adjacent regions, I expect it to fill up quickly and be hard if not impossible to get into. When I checked out the location at 8:30 AM there were already people camping out. Checking the map later, about 10 AM, it seems the region is already starting to fill up. Continue reading

Designing Worlds

Vivienne Daguerre mentioned that today Designing Worlds was having a show on the Future of Second Life or that is what I understood. I decided I had time to stop by and see what they had to say. But, they were recording a show. So, 5+ hours later it was done. Interesting experience.

Designing Worlds Pre-Show 2014-27

Designing Worlds Pre-Show 2014-27

The result will be two one hour shows. Originally planned for one show, but there was so much interesting stuff the one show grew into two. This is an excellent discussion.

If you haven’t been around for a recording at Designing Worlds, I’ll tell you it is way more fun than just watching the finished product. They were having fun, making mistakes, laughing, and joking. Most of which I suspect will get cut. But, then there were the microphone problems from JJ’s system that nearly deafened us all. Those need to be cut.

I’m not going to go over what is in the show. No spoiler. Watch it when it comes out. I will tell you there is no really new news regarding SL2. There is some new information on SL1. It is the depth of the discussion that makes this worth watching. it is amazing and the viewpoints are diverse. From this show I think you will get more insight into what is going on and what people are planning for than anything else I have seen.

I’ll post when the shows are posted.

Firestorm Q&A on #SecondLife’s Future

Wednesday morning at 7AM PDT at the Firestorm Auditorium a Q&A meeting was held. Oz Linden and Peter Gray were answering questions. For most of the meeting Jessica was asking questions I think she took from previously submitted ones and that she or she thought the community was interested in.

And I’ll be proofing this after it is posted… so…

Toward the end they opened it up to audience questions.

The meeting was recorded so you can see it at several places; SLArtists, YouTube, and other places… sound is better on the SLArtists video, but it is hard to jump around in that player.

As always I am paraphrasing and not quoting. Continue reading

Firestorm Q&A on Second Life

Jessica has posted on the Firestorm blog that there will be a Q&A meeting this coming Wednesday at 7:00 AM PDT (SLT). Oz Linden and Peter Gray will be there to answer questions about Second Life, not the future world we’ve talked about for the last week.

Generally the team has not been announcing meetings until just before a meeting starts. I suppose that keeps the crowd to a manageable size. Seating is always first come first served. The SL11B region held 96 (the most I saw) avatars when Jessica held an event to talk about the new world and the region worked very well. Yes, things get laggy and moving around is difficult. But, if one sits down and cams in, all is well.

The meeting is going to be at the Firestorm Auditorium. As with any popular event, be sure you minimize your script weight and prim count.

The Auditorium is on an island, so there is no walking in…

The meeting will be recorded and posted to YouTube. So, if you cannot be there, you won’t miss out. If you want to ask a question, post it on the comments of the Firestorm Blog post. Please don’t ask if the Lab will reduce tier. Enough people have already asked long winded versions of that question. Plus, I think asking Oz and Peter this question isn’t going to draw an answer as such a decision is above their pay grade. If such a plan is under consideration, they are not going to say, either way. They have to wait for upper management to announce those types of changes. Spend the time more wisely.

Second Life News 2013-28

This week we are getting new rollouts. The main channel got a maintenance release. I think anything called a maintenance release is a security and exploits fix. Whatever, we are told that this release has a fix for a popular griefing tactic. The hope is we will see less region crashes.

Server/Scripting Meeting #27

Server/Scripting Meeting #27

This package also includes the LSL changes for llApplyImpuse and llXorBase64.  Continue reading