January 27, 2004
Viper Tower
Dark_Viper built an apartment block/bar complex for the Oasis neighbourhood. Japanese group seating on all levels except the top floor, where the bar is located. The stair is Dark_Viper's own design, available in auctions.
[Yes, this building has already been replaced by another one...]
Posted by Ian at 3:31 PM in Places | Permalink
January 26, 2004
Levels of Detail
I'm a member of Josie2's Adventure Quest Club; this month I qualified for the monthly chest award for the first time. The image shows the January chest, gold with red jewels inside.
In the top-left corner, you can see the chest from a fair distance; top-right is slightly closer: you can see that the chest has opened slightly! Similarly, in bottom-left and bottom-right you can see the final transition to a "fully open" state.
Given that object builders don't yet have the ability to "script" objects, how can this be happening? I believe that the designer (Jeff) is taking advantage of the fact that each object in There is actually designed at several "levels of detail" or LODs: the idea being that as you move further from an object, you need to see it at a lower level of detail and a simpler model can be used. In the usual case, the lower-detail models are just simplified versions of the highest detail one; in the case of the award chests the different models have altogether different shapes, thus leading to the pseudo-animation shown.
Posted by Ian at 4:28 PM in Techniques | Permalink
January 19, 2004
Corpse
Body found in the Jungle Pools today: away goggles, no forcefield. Foul play suspected.
Posted by Ian at 4:24 PM in Funny | Permalink
January 17, 2004
Pod People
Having seen pixiemoto's spaceship recently, I couldn't resist going to Tyr and seeing what Tophe's new Green Glow Industrial Columns looked like in the darkness. I couldn't find any already in use, so I rented a couple from auctions and threw them up in a temporary portazone near the Boneyard. The simple answer is: they are awesome.
The columns appear solid (you can't walk through them) but that doesn't stop you from using the "hoverpack trick" to get inside them, as the picture shows. The hoverpack trick just involves hoverpacking up close to an object, facing it, then jumping off. There's collision detection logic doesn't seem to work during the dismount animation, and the result is that you can use this trick to get through walls or even jump inside an apparently solid object.
It's Fun to use Learning for Evil!
Posted by Ian at 3:53 PM in Techniques | Permalink
January 16, 2004
Oasis Article in Caldera Sun-Times
Caldera Sun-Times journalist Rose_E_Vette has a new article out interviewing some of the principals from the Oasis neighbourhood.
The Oasis: User-Created Community covers some of the history and personalities of the area from a point in time that although only a week or so ago already seems pretty distant, as the locale has developed in a number of ways since the article was written.
I wasn't interviewed, but I am mentioned in the article as the Oasis' chronicler. I will try to make good on that description soon with details of some of the recent changes.
Posted by Ian at 4:10 PM in Oasis | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Permalink
January 15, 2004
Pointy
My buddy MuPp3t has a very sharp sense of humour, and a hoverboard to go with it.
Posted by Ian at 12:23 PM in Funny | Permalink
Aliens!
The serenity of the Calderan desert was shattered today by the arrival of an alien spaceship. As can be seen from images taken at the landing site above Sirocco, the green warp cores are clearly visible and point without question to the use of Tyrian technology in the design. The spaceship's commander is believed to be a long-time Tyr resident known as pixiemoto.
Posted by Ian at 11:00 AM in People | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Permalink
January 10, 2004
Roaring Tiger
The Caldera Sun-Times recently ran an art competition. The competition's grand prize (one of freddie's amazing Origami Tiger hoverbikes) was awarded to Kangaroo, seen here with the animal suitably caged.
What you can't see here (and the reason I've placed this item in the Techniques category) is that as you approach this tiger, it makes a most un-There-like roaring sound that has astonished many an onlooker and not a few passing hoverboat passengers.
The clue to this is the radio you can just see hidden behind Kangaroo's chair: it is tuned to a custom Shoutcast channel sourced from his home computer, broadcasting a loop of various "roaring tiger" sounds. Anyone approaching the cage will hear this as long as they have made the small one-time purchase of the music pack or transitioned from the original There beta program.
Of course, pulling off something like this requires a fair degree of technical sophistication, but I can't help feeling that this technique might be used in a lot of places to give custom ambient sounds to a location or even just provide a public address system for events.
Posted by Ian at 5:17 PM in Techniques | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Permalink
Balls
Kangaroo is one of those people who likes to push the envelope a little bit. Newbies to There quickly find out that the sea is solid; most people know that buggies travel faster over water than over land for some reason, perhaps to allow quicker travel between islands. A few people have noticed that balls bounce differently on the sea than on the land in that they don't bounce lower and lower in the way you would expect; this may be related somehow to the buggy effect. Kangaroo is the only person I know who has pushed things to the limit and used this effect to make a perpetual motion machine.
The picture shows Kangaroo standing behind his construction, which as you can see is made out of four walls with windows plus one roof all placed in a casual portazone. You can put one or more soccer balls into such a cage and they will bounce forever in a quite hypnotic fashion. Drop a couple of dogs in there for the maximum fun; they really seem to enjoy this setup and will run round and round in circles after the balls.
You'll find that if you drop one of the larger "feelium" balls over the ocean that it appears to vanish; in fact, it is just going straight up faster than you can see. You can verify this by putting out a large builder portazone with a large deck placed at its top, then dropping a feelium ball from a hoverpack directly under the deck and retreating rapidly to a safe distance before the ball hits the sea. The result is similar to Kangaroo's cage but on a much larger scale and with much faster movement.
Posted by Ian at 2:49 PM in Techniques | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Permalink
January 9, 2004
Cliff Houses
Here's another building style I haven't seen anywhere else. In this case, the left-hand building is the first to be constructed and was erected by Kobby, who is apparently some kind of builder in the real world. You can see that he favours building something that looks like it is solidly constructed and definitely connected to the ground.
The second cliff house belongs to MupP3t; both houses have fantastic views over Dune Valley and Sirocco.
Posted by Ian at 8:32 PM in Places | Permalink
It's a Cheese Shop
Designers are doing all sorts of things with the new "shop" builder objects. Some designers are making delicate confections you'd be happy to live in, others are producing things a bit more on the eye-popping side. I found these two shops by KayCee_Cow on display near Karuna Plaza the other day along with their matching floor sections.
Yes, the holes in the cheese shop are transparent; you can see through each one.
Posted by Ian at 4:48 PM in Things | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Permalink
January 8, 2004
Cuts
I think it is fair to say that the whole There membership community is alight today with the news that There have reorganised, resulting in the loss of an unknown number of staff positions. Many of the people without a job today are well-known in-world as event hosts and all-round nice people and will definitely be missed. It remains to be seen how many of them will continue in their non-staff avatars.
I have some sympathy for There's management: I've seen this kind of thing several times in real life and in one case even been on the management side when we were forced to trim the company down for financial reasons. To say that these are "hard decisions" for management is much more bloodless than the reality: it hurts you to have to do this to anyone, particularly as in this case when people have been doing their job well.
However, There Inc. have brought another kind of pain to the world in doing this: the people who have lost their jobs are well-known, and this means that management are being seen as having sacked my friend. This is quite different to a bank shifting its call center to Bangalore; members know the people involved on a much more personal level, even though that probably wasn't part of the job description.
I've been relatively lucky, in that I'm new enough to There that I know of only two people on my buddy list who have been laid off. I'm sure the fast hot spike of shock, anger and betrayal I felt when I learned about their misfortune must be magnified many, many times in the feelings of longer-term members.
The bad news is that those long-standing members who have just had a slew of their friends laid off are likely to be the very people that There, Inc. are assuming will be able to pick up the load. Somehow, no matter the financial reasoning, that doesn't sound like a good decision from a community standpoint.
Posted by Ian at 11:45 AM in People | Permalink
January 7, 2004
The Oasis
In the Calderan desert, an oasis has appeared containing (amongst other things) the first flamingo I've seen in There with its feet in water...
It is perhaps too much of a simplification to say that member-built architecture has tended to be along the lines of a large portazone, a couple of sky decks and some components from the Roman builder set. However, the oasis is clearly a departure from the old style.
This has been enabled in part by the new "shop" construction objects, which are being used as small accommodation units. Their flexibility, low price and size (they will fit in a medium builder portazone) has allowed a number of different people to come together to build a little spontaneous village around a shared garden. Perhaps half a dozen portazones of different sizes are involved in the current setup.
Posted by Ian at 4:07 PM in Places | Permalink
Slartibartfast's Signature
In the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, the Magrathean planet designer responsible for Norway leaves his signature on a glacier. Somewhere in the desert on Caldera, I recently found this plaque performing much the same function.
Posted by Ian at 12:50 PM in Eggs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Permalink
January 6, 2004
Pirates
Something about There makes people want to dress up as pirates and go "arrrr" even when it isn't Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Check Minx's left thigh for a flintlock pistol; there is a treasure map pinned to the rock with a dagger. The chest in the background is actually part of MuPp3t's quest for SONofBOB.
Posted by Ian at 5:31 PM in People | Permalink
There
In which our hero visits There, a virtual world where it's still sunny at 3am but you never seem to get a tan.
[Originally posted 20031111 to Technology Stir Fry.]
A couple of weeks back I had a long conversation with some friends about social software and virtual worlds, and gave my observation that people of my generation (I've been using e-mail since the late 70s) often have a hard time "getting" these things while "youngsters" see them as much more natural, perhaps because of a lack of preconceptions. The obvious example, to me, is mobile phone text messaging: my friends felt that someone "texting" in the middle of a conversation was rude; I suggested that it was possible that others might look on the same act as including in the conversation someone who didn't happen to be physically present, and therefore as a social act rather than an antisocial one. Similarly, I went on, people using social software aren't necessarily doing it because they can't find friends in the real world: instead, its possible that they just don't see physical locality as a relevant consideration.
Most of my own experience with 3D virtual environments has been in the form of video games of the "first person shooter" variety, where conversation is much less of an issue than watching your six. I tend to avoid the more "social", on-line variants of these environments because... well, to be honest because my trigger finger isn't as quick as it used to be.
In recent years, the on-line environments have moved up in scale from simple multi-player versions of the single-player computer games (Half Life and the like) to so-called massively multi-player systems like Everquest Online and Star Wars Galaxies. These newer systems have persistent worlds, significant internal economies and contexts in which skills other than close personal combat are valued, but they are still basically built around the "smack some bad guys and sell their stuff" model.
Enter There, a new virtual world in which the nastiest weapon available is a paintball gun, and you can opt out of being a target for those with a simple preferences setting. If you wait in line for a while, a 14-day free trial is currently on offer: today, I got to the head of the queue and went for a little exploration.
In the Matrix, as we all know, everyone's "residual self-image" involves black leather and black sunglasses. My own residual self-image tends more towards the Gordon Freeman except that his beard is a little tidier than mine. In There, my avatar started out with the default physique (that of an anonymous beardless youth in perfect physical condition) and default clothing (white "newbie" T-shirt, cargo pants, "classic loafers"). My on-line mentor tells me that I can make my avatar fatter if it would make me feel better...
My first encounter with the other inhabitants came when a helpful mentor turned up to explain the basics of the system: he had someone else with him at the time, who kindly gave me a much nicer T-shirt to wear; I later sold my original T-shirt back to the store for 159T. This simple interaction says a lot about There, if you look closely: most obviously, that There has a concept of possessions and an internal currency running at around 1700 There dollars to the US dollar. You can buy, sell, trade, lend and so on: and of course you can buy more There dollars with real ones if you run out.
The less obvious aspect of the conversation was that each of the people I spoke to did something that affected them in terms of the world's skill system. My mentor's friend increased her Newbie Helper Skill by giving me something decent to wear, and when I added my mentor to my list of friends so that I could call on him in times of need, his Socializer skill increased. Higher levels in the twelve different skills give you increased abilities, access to new parts of the world, and so on. For example, a Socializer can create clubs for people to join. The social skills therefore work a little bit like a simplified, partitioned, non-transitive version of Cory Doctorow's Whuffie. This is not to say that people in There do things for their skills benefit in the way that Doctorow's characters obsessively chase Whuffie: the effects are too small for that and There also has its "real" currency; however, I'm sure it doesn't hurt the social structure to let people feel that being nice is a good thing.
As well as social skills, There has a number of activity-related skills: vehicle driving of various kinds, paintball sharpshooting, Dog Handler: yes, There has dogs. I haven't met any yet, but from the on-line information they seem to be playful Labradors and Dachshunds rather than ferocious attack dogs, and can be taught to do tricks. It may or may not be significant that there are as yet no cats in There.
Author skill is an odd case; an Author can drop publications in the world for people to read (and for which the Author can charge a fee). A more famous Author can have more publications in the world at any given time, and they last longer before disappearing due to There's automatic anti-littering system. Some of the less obvious kind of publication are instructions for games, treaure hunt clues and the like; this gives There the ability to support a sort of collaborative Myst-like kind of fun as an alternative to the dune buggy and paintball variety.
I only met three people in my first visit to There, and thanks to its current Brigadoon-like opening hours it will be a while before I can return. However, in an initial run-through I was quite impressed by the feeling of "presence" of other avatars: this is improved by a gesture system which lets you punctuate your conversation with actions. I was pretty impressed the first time I saw someone literally "roll on the floor laughing".
Graphically, the world is a bit rough; if you want a broad comparison you should think in terms of original Tomb Raider level of detail rather than Halo. It would be a pity not to have a higher resolution option for people with client machines that can take the strain, but so far I haven't found one. It also seems to be possible to do things like drive vehicles through rocks, walk on the sea and so on. This is less than perfect in terms of sustaining a "real world" feel but is probably intended to keep the client bandwidth requirements down. Or it may be a current glitch, like the stack of treasure chests I found floating serenely 50ft above the water a little way out from shore...
As well as the walking around, chatting and exploring aspect to the world there is also a "developer" system, so that people can invent new objects or customize old ones. I doubt we are talking about a Merovingian dessert level of access here, but the place could do with some cats at least.
In conclusion (for now at least), There is a well-implemented shared interactive space without the usual emphasis on rocket launchers and "Elven Sword +1"s. If you take There's own demonstration movies at face value, their current target demographic is interested in endless variations on clothing and hair styles, flirting with hunky boy-avatars and skateboarding. However, I think the promotional movies do There a disservice; the system itself seems flexible enough to support a much richer set of activities. Many of the people I've interacted with in There claim to be thirty-something or even forty-something in what we laughingly refer to as "the real world", so there is probably a wider spread of interests represented than the movies make it look.
In any case, I look forward to exploring a bit more later in the week.
Posted by Ian at 3:34 PM in Miscellany | Permalink
Welcome
Welcome to iay@there, a repository for my musings on the virtual world of There. If you come across me in-world, you'll find that my avatar goes by the badly-chosen name of iay.
Although I already have a blog covering my main interests, most of the posts appearing in iay@there will only be of interest to other Thereians. If I post something here that is of wider interest, I will also post a link in Technology Stir Fry.
Posted by Ian at 3:05 PM in Miscellany | Permalink