Exciting sculpties!

One year ago i made lots of sculpty using the former version of BLENDER.
All kinds of difficulties, and always small inconveniences in the results.

For a new laptop i had to reinstall BLENDER, and discovered that the UV editing mode was skipped. Then a bit of searching resulted in a big surprise:
The sculpty for Second Life plugin!
it can be found here:

http://slost.net/2007/12/19/blender-for-second-life-added-to-on-123107/

here some nice demonstration video's:

http://pkpounceworks.sljoint.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=28&func=fileinfo&id=130

and here for other connections, Papervision for instance:

http://www.rozengain.com/blog/2008/01/02/export-your-blender-objects-straight-to-away3d-papervision3d-and-sandy/

now the world of sculpties is made much more accessable!
some people have done some hard work here, thx!

(of course knowing a bit of BLENDER helps, but in fact it is only up to editing shapes now)

Also in the LSL wikii the sculpty parameters are published, not the least of which is: mirror sculpty! (PRIM_SCULPT_FLAG_INVERT)

(I got a lot of mirrored sculpties in the beginning, not checking it in the upload sculpty check.)

llSetPrimitiveParams:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlSetPrimitiveParams

The sculpty type can be set, so i want too discover soon what this exactly means:
PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_TORUS
it has all to do with the stitching of the UV plane.

Also the BLENDER plugin is just a Python script, so from this script you can learn how these wonderfull UV images are made.

Also the BLENDER plugin lets you load an UV image, and you can even edit this.

Of course getting the texture right on a sculpty (for instance a face on a head) has to be doen manually, and will always cost a lot of time.....

Japanese!

It all started with the tiny avatars in the shops of Saitot Tammas. Saitot specializes in small avatars of all sorts: animals, pets, robots…shop: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pelinor/236/11/66

You can become a cat with a hat, or have a few on your shoulders, or you can have a bird flying around your head…..
Five followed this tiny avatar trail from one Japanese sim to another.
The Japanese are everywhere!

Remember the Tokyo addict Taka Teatime? He had a quiz about Tokyo and this idea of a quiz was so funny that also the virtual museum Schielandhuis got a quiz!






Then there is Salmaru Masala, this is a extremely funny and very inventive person, making all kinds of very hilarious things, like snoring animations, silly taxies, and sushi eating animations put in a plate with sushi’s. He gives away his jokes, which certainly cost him a lot of work, practically all for free!








But there are also many Japanese sims to be explored. Little Kyoto is very funny and well worth a visit, but Japanese design and fantasies have moved on. The strip figures have become very important.
This is an example of such a modern Japanese sim:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/sugamo/69/22/21, selling tiny avatars again!














Nearby I found this, it looks gigantic! 5 is completely dwarfed. But actually if you try to enter the skyscrapers, it is miniature! Great gag!














Here a book shop of the brightest colors, probably an ordinary sight in Japan, in SL it is a labyrinth!





From the large spaces to the individual encounters again:
One of the shops: Sculpted work – and more, of Arrshu Dagger.
In her profile: I'm Japanese. Ispeak engrish very small.XD.
Well my Japanese is only: Domo! (Which means hello, I think, I hope) I cannot even say in Japanese: I don't speak Japanese...:-(

But we could talk! Really great. Using a translator. You must take care to formulate basic and simple sentences. But it works!
The shop: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Balenissa%20Grove/193/146/80

Her sculpties shown here are really masterpieces. The sculpty has its limitations, due to the limited resolution. The sculptor has to know these limitations. In principle sculpties are transformations of the sphere. So with a bit of pinching and pulling you can get chairs, parasols, bones. Arrshu shows how to be creative to the last square of the 32 x 32 grid.
Arrshu does the sculpties not in BLENDER but in ROKKAKU DAIOU, which means HEXA SUPER (Hexagone!)
This software cannot be found outside of Japan, search only gives craks and key generators!
An english version available is METASEQ, freeware and shareware.

The second problem of the sculpties is the image you use for its surface. To minimize distortion you have to stay on the 32 x 32 grid.
But there is a last detail, as explained by Arrshu. The holes in the sculpty. The sculpty is not only like an apple, but also like a banana! The poles of the sphere have to be left open, because of the coordinate knot which happens to be in these special points. Apparently the combination of Second Life and BLENDER does not treat the poles or the holes very precise: the holes disrupt the exact 32 x 32 grid, spoiling colours over the edges. ROKKAKU, as told by Arrshu has solved this problem and is exact.

Nearby the shop is a “rose bed”, also a sculpty work, this time of Draceina Pinion.
This was really an experience! In the flower there are two positions to lie down. And you are totally surrounded by the red petals, giving an incredibly warm feeling. 5 invited Swann Jie to come around and we got a few marvellous silly pictures of the two of us….
Literally 5 could not stop taking pictures because 5 was totally drunk because of the colours!



Oooouh, 5 has written too long a story!



Will be continued! Sooo much to tell!

skin fun

First some basic facts:
Basically a skin is the deepest texture layer of an avatar. Clothes, like shirts and trousers are covering this basic layer. T-shirts for instance are easy to make and cover the upper body.
Clothes can be taken off; the basic skin can never be pulled of. Skin is the most fundamental layer.
Even when a skin is replaced, it replaces the last one. No avatar is without skin; also this skin cannot be transparent. The most simple is the Linden skin layer.
So skins you can choose to wear are replacements of this basic layer.
Does everyone need a skin? Every avatar has a skin to start with. It is a basic model. Other free skins with features, make-up, tattoos, are easily found and freebies. “Opium” -skins are found everywhere, and are not bad.
When do you really need a skin: actually only if you plan to show it, that is if you don’t want to wear too much clothes! What is the point of buying an expensive skin, and then covering it with clothes?

Skins are different form “shape”, and the added features like eyebrows, beards and whiskers.

Normal skins: drawing and painted (by computer), abstractions of skins. Some skins are only partial, for instance upper body. These skins can be altered, in darkness lightness or color.
Photoskins: photoskins are based on real photos. This leaves the abstraction of an avatar a bit behind. Photo skins can be too real. Photoskins can have very convincing shiny effects, only turning around such a skin reveals that these gleams are fixed and parts of the skin, not reflection effects.
The third category: fantasy…try throwing a texture in the texture boxes for upper and lower body parts, this is great fun!


Colors:
When do you see the color of a skin: well, when you don’t have much on as clothes.
So with good prim hair (can be found free) and make-up (make-up too, it comes often as a part of free skins) a basic skin can be very sufficient, because you don’t see much of it.
But then showing yourself (haha what is yourself here?)
Going around in shorts or in tops which leave the shoulders free can already be embarrassing in a basic skin. The area of the neck and the décolleté are rather poorly represented. The subtle play of shadows fails quickly and gives nasty effects.

Adjusting the color. Trying to get “black”.
Going around tanned can be done by adjusting the top slider in the appearance menu of skins.
Some skins give the possibility of going really dark, but then there appears to be a problem: the whole detailing fails and the avatar looks like a dark blob on the screen: see the picture.

That might be the reason why the black African skin is not too much around in Second Life. Is Second Life an all white affair? That would be terrible! Asian skins are around, but these are mainly fair skins too. (The Asian effect resides also very much in the “shape” of course, the way the eyes are placed and the detailing of the face.)

So what about the African skin?
This idea of finding out about the darker colored skin became a small obsession. It is very difficult to find these dark African skins doing “normal” shopping. Also the Second Life finder doesn’t help much. The SLExchange finder neither.
White skins seem to be “normal”…???

Searching the internet gave me 2 clues, which were linked. Two blogs in which the same question was posed: what is wrong with wearing a dark skin?

Two problems: the first the one is already stated; the screen colors go very well with fair colored skins, the darker have this problem of becoming dull. (This is the same for movies and television.)

The second seems to be pure discrimination! Here are the blogs referred to:

http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2006/02/the_skin_youre_.html
http://brace-coral.livejournal.com/50040.html

Avery good reason to try to buy such a skin!
In the blogs there were references to shops. Only two shops offer well made real dark African black skins. (Although pretty good abstract skins are freely available too, but you have to search quite a bit for these darker skins.)

In the end 5 bought such a skin. A photoskin of Midnight at 1500 L$, wow!

The face is realy realistic, in contrast with the absract SL head. Ears for instance, hmmm maybe even too realistic. The specials are the shining surfaces, quite a lot of work for the designer to get this right! The features cannot be changed in the appearance menu, not darker lighter, etc. The shape can be changed of course, this textures always fits around.


Then 5 had a nice skin, what a problem!
5 always went around in a gothic outfit, which covered all of the body! As stated above, if you have a skin like that, you have to show it, wearing only a few well chosen articles…so the whole habit of clothing is changed by a skin!

Worse: a good, nice skin (real beauty) wants to show itself, it seems to have a will of its own. 5 never knew this before!

Actually, as could be foreseen, other things attached to the avatar, for instance the prim hair can make quite a difference too. As seen in the images a black skin becomes really African, when the head isn’t covered by a fancy hair piece.

To accompany this blog a difficult question had to be answered: how to show the differences between the skins? Well, not by showing only the face. Ok that is the reason for this general striptease!

5 is showing of in different skins, the names are covering some all to intimate parts (5 hopes) You can see clearly the difference between the skins, abstract, basic and photo. And then the influence of the hair and eyes can be appreciated. This being able to feel “a bit” in other persons skin is one of the most fabulous features of Second Life for me.

Last question: walking around in a black skin: is 5 discriminated? Not at all! Friends walking out on 5? Not at all!










Shops:
Offering the photo skin, also a couple of good male skins (see the upper part of the picture):
Chip Midnight: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Freelon/50/62/23
Offering an abstract, but very good skin: (below in picture)
Ayesha Bisiani: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Skin%20Within/120/139/28


















Bojana Vella showed me Allessandra Island,
with two great dark skins (1200 L$)

Later i found this shop: Archan, 990 L$ with shape included...

SL connects to RL (scripting)

Second Life is a world in itself. A world, what is a world? Something which exists in itself and provides the means for its inhabitants to exist like humans. A world has to have enough variety, being a whole, being “closed” in itself. Being closed means here that things in “the world” stay in this world, it is more or less self contained.
Stay ''mainly'' into itself, because only RL is in this sense a world: we cannot get outside of reality, example: the world of music.
All worlds we make up finally reside in reality somehow. Also Second Life!

Unlike Real Life, this Second Life has connections to another world, outside of it, which is, of course Real Life. Quite a few! Besides its own structure, of rendering, objects and avatars here is input of images, sounds, even video, and on the constructive level of course input of ideas and energy of its residents. What would be SL if there were not any avatars having their proper behaviour, well, we see that sometimes: emptiness, void, silence!
Avatars in this world have motives and are independent of each other.
A drive for a lot of people is the money; Linden money can be exchanged in real money and the other way around, this is a connection too! But for some, money is not everything! Some avatars like to program.
Using the Linden script you can enter information in this 3D world, and get it out again. Not as thoughts or memories, but as real hard data!
Linden script has a special function for this, the httprequest. It is a call to a page on the internet, or a page connected to a server. This is it:

key llHTTPRequest(string url, list parameters, string body)

where url is the web address, parameters can simple be [HTTP_METHOD,"GET"], and the body left empty, that is to say the empty string “”.

This request gives a reply, being the text of the web or php page called back into Second Life as a string, a text, and this response can be monitored by the method

http_response(key request_id, integer status, list metadata, string body)

Well and this server can be connected to other “worlds”. The world of internet for instance. Doing statistics of visitors can be stored on a server. Also a microphone can be installed in SL, recording what has been said in its neighbourhood. This microphone can store the recordings on a server.
Connections to servers can be made from a PC, using progs made for instance in C# (or whatever language also allows to make a http-request, say, FLASH, DIRECTOR). So information retrieved from the server can be stored and used on the PC.
This same PC program can make a Bluetooth connection. These connections have two directions. So a cell-phone can tell something to this PC program, telling it the server, and an object in Second Life can ask the server what happened, so through Bluetooth, PC, and server a Second Life object can be commanded.
The other way around is the second direction:
Some object give information on movement, speed and angle to the server, the server is asked for speed and angle by a PC prog and this prog provides a small robot for motor speed and steering angle using a Bluetooth connection. The small robot being for instance a NXT, the Lego robot. And this all works!



Five March was flying around with a sender and this flying around caused the robot to move!
Very funny, but imagine, sometimes it doesn’t work! What can be the reason? In the end it turned out that quite a few owners of land don’t give permission to run scripts! So the http request doesn’t work, and the robot bumps into a wall!
This robot can be steered also using an in between script called GlovePie with a wii remote control. So this means again that the wii remote control can easily get information into Second Life, moving object.
Connecting worlds is wonderful. It is where the cold technical world becomes social.

Big fun also is: I am writing two blogs, one about the NXT and the other is about Second Life. Now these two blogs have met!

Second SL

Looking for an anchor 5 saw something very funny in strange place. Advertised as pirates ships and sea battle games Siege Guild offers all kinds of exploding barrels and bear traps.
(Interactive battles! Plunder and sink for real!!!)

How nice! But suddenly 5 came across a miniature landscape, in quite primitive shapes with a miniature medieval ship in a pool!
This is Second Life in Second Life! Playing the Lindens in the Linden world. 5 could think of mind boggling possibilities: you could ask Linden-Linden dollars to rent this ship, so LL$....
In this square of Second Life squared a battle would rage if it was allowed to gamble, or wager! Because the LL$ is at the moment not yet linked to the real $, it would be possible. Miniature slot machines would appear on this battleship which would provide a relief for the avatars accustomed to spending enormous amounts of money on the virtual slot machines which disappeared miraculously from SL.
Other features would fit in: you would be released from the bear trap sooner if you paid quickly a few LL$. The owner of Siege Guild would be rich fast, only his richness would consist of money which is only to be spend in his miniature kingdom. As soon as he linked his LL$ to the L$ which is linked to the $, the laws which apply to the state where the servers are situated would apply to the Second Life of the Linden would apply to the miniature kingdom of Siege Guild. So the microscopic slot machines would be banned, just like his big brothers and sisters. The miniature economy of Siege Guild would change dramatically from casino financed to selling microscopic miniature worlds inside the miniature world. In this SSSL’s for a moment or two, slot machines would be allowed and the economy would blast it’s way forwards.

So not only “Plunder and sink for real” in the virtual world but also layers of economies and whole geologies of laws applying down from one world on the other.
PS very nicely textured balloons in the neighbourhood!

Horses in SL?

Who can predicts what happens during your life? Who would think ever to be tempted to buy a horse? Indeed, who could have imagined ever dreaming of a virtual horse?
Well, of course it is not me, Five, who is dreaming about horses, oh no!

It is Nugget Kidd, the man of the desert, always searching gold, where everybody has long left any hope. He was looking at some horses, which were roaming free in the desert of Virgin Island. Actually you can walk right through these horses, but be careful: they sometimes leave some droppings, no: quite a few!

But then came horses with people riding them, happy to have a whole sim to take their horses for a ride. And indeed these are beautiful animals. It is not only fun to look at, the animals have a wonderful structure. If you are looking through the right glasses, you can see that they have not four but even eight, yes eight legs. Miraculous how many legs you need to wonder about on horseback in a virtual world. Strange feature also is that the people riding the horses are really having a lot of fun, are relaxed and take their time to have a chat. (Of course they want to show off too, but well, who wouldn't?)

Five, always inquisitive, went on a tour to see other horses. You even can find a horse to do a rodeo act with. But really in town the horses are a bit strange. Then Five asked, do the horses really belong to this world? This Second Life world is a showcase of design, clean, clear cut, bright and shiny, fast moving Futuristic helicopters and spaceships are around every corner, so are smart sport cars. Even though we don’t need any transportation, being able to teleport and fly around. And may be even more important: never becoming tired of carrying the inventory with thousands of articles contained in it! A world of: no eating, no illness no hunger, ok now Five has found another one: no carrying things on your back, no hauling of suitcases. Brilliant!

Back to the horses. The horses a bit weird in the city, really transform the desert to nature, even more than trees and grasses, which always look a bit funny, a bit like the plants of quite a few hundredmillion years ago, the ferns, for instance. The vegetation of Second Life really is a bit prehistorical.

The horses whinny, they make dust, they make clattering sounds characteristic of westerns about horses. Five wouldn't even know if these sounds are realistic, but they are indeed like the ones you hear in the movies. It is a pity you cannot try one out. Not that the owners are refusing it. You cannot lend one because of the permissions: only the owner can ride them. Permissions rule the Second Life world! The owner would have to give them away to lend them for a ride, and who would give his horse away? “A kingdom for a horse!” wasn’t it?

Well Five bets that if Nugget finds gold somewhere that he also will soon be able to ride a horse. Although it is becoming dangerous out there in the sim, because there is settlement of some tribes of Indians, and quite a few fierce amazons are riding around too!

The real reason we cannot eat in SL

No eating in Second Life! Not really! No drinking either, no coffee, no beer. Ok there are animations, even of the famous whiskey bottle you are getting from all your friends: after sipping a bit, a lot, you will fall down! There are bars in SL, there are restaurants. Drinking champagne in Paris of around 1900! You can buy whole courses and eat them, forks and knives included. But it is all…….a bit dry? A far reminiscent of real food, of real pleasure drinking coffee or tea with friends, eating chocolates, or a cake.
No eating means no hunger. And this thought is more positive: a world without hunger! How many crimes are not committed because of hunger? It can even hardly be called a crime, stealing when you are hungry. Myths are built around it, Robin Hood! Stealing from the rich, to give to the poor!
No crimes of this sort in Second Life. No stealing either, not of this kind.
No eating because the avatar doesn’t need food? No real stomach! (No real brains either by the way…). No not at all: this is not the real reason.
The real reason we cannot eat in Second Life is hidden in the deep structure of this virtual world: the permissions! In Second Life every object has a creator and an owner. These might be the same, but when a creator sells his creations, the owner changes. Creator and owner can always be found by right clicking on something, then choosing ‘more’. A menu opens which indicates creator and owner.
Not only the objects you see in SL have a creator and an owner, also the sounds, the animations, the textures and the scripts, hidden inside the objects. When constructing something, you want to sell, or give away you must be careful to get the setting of all the permissions right.
For every part these permissions must be set, especially if you want somebody else to be able to work with your stuff. If you buy something, there are a few possibilities:
“no copy”, this means you have only one “copy” of the item, when rezzed, it disappears from your inventory - “copy” means you can rezz it, take it back and you already have two copies.
“no transfer”, you cannot sell this, nor give it away, only rezz it, or delete it.
“no modify”, you cannot rescale it, you cannot remove a script.
Ok, so an object and all its part have permissions set or not, influencing the process of transferring and being transferred. A bit dry this stuff isn’t it?
We now return to the eating: what is eating in real life: buying, preparing, eating, enjoying, munching, digesting…a shear infinite process of changing ownership mixing and remixing things, when you think about it from the world of Second Life!
Should real food and all its parts have all those permissions on them, we, real people would be starving before being able to eat the tiniest bit of a pizza. We would suffocate before being able to get a breath of fresh air!
So reality, or call it God, has thought this over and decided that there are no permissions or absolute ownership in real life. It would simple block the whole process of living, of changing, of processing, of evolution.
We now know the real reason we don’t eat in Second Life, the permissions! And we know why absolute ownership in real life is not possible: it would not permit ….life!

Paula34 versus Craig666

A friend of Five March called Nugget Kidd wrote us this report:

“ I was on a walking tour in the desert, trying out my new longcoat, being robbed of my boots, when suddenly in front of a cabin I found a terrible car. Terrible because it didn’t fit in the scenery, terrible also because you cannot even transport a tray of beer in it. The only thing that can be called a car is a pick-up….But I am drifting away. Sorry, I continue: A beautiful lady on a horse passed by….this even happens at my age…she asked me to remove this car. Of course, for a gorgeous vamp, we stupid desert rats will do everything.

But in SL the ownership of things is quite strict; I couldn’t even scratch the bloody thing. Well, we live in an age of communication, so I asked the owner with IM to remove it. Craig666 was his name. With a number like that, I should have known not to bother and just wait for the owner of the desert….He told me to remove it myself…he was “on a job”. Poor fellow, probably camping in a chair or something. Hm, I repeated my question, sent him a few teleport invitations. And then he came around, of course mad to be disturbed. Yes this is SL, we can find out who left his rubble behind! No hiding your spoiling nature sir! He came with his girlfriend. Started pushing me around, putting caves in the desert, oooh all the usual stuff. Then he disappeared.

It goes without saying he left even more of his stuff around. Paula34 came from her horse and begged me to be permitted to use her weapons! Oh no, not for the moment Paula34! But she would love to defend the desert! She was afraid too, apparently she had got a warning from the owner of the desert not to shoot in the desert. Paula34 preferred riding on her beautiful horse, more than shooting, so she restrained herself. But then Craig666, yes the number is the famous one from the apocalypse came back. He made a tour through the freebie shops I suppose and had his inventory filled with bombs fire, pushing devices. He was again accompanied by his girlfriend. He had to show off!

HA ha, and then I figured that, ok when he is showing off like that, why not Paula34 ? While I was pushed around, I told Paula34 to go ahead! This also is an advantage in SL: even in the greatest danger we can have a sip at our coffee, and chat around to others. How happy Paula34 was! She got out her guns, even bigger then the ones from Craig666 and apparently they had a lot of fun! Afterwards Paul34 and I became friends! She showed me even bigger guns. Ladies with guns, fighting in design clothes on high heels in the desert, it all happens in Second Life! But now she was afraid! Will I be banned now? Well, that’s the advantage of being able to drink … a lot of coffee. I think it will all be affine.

Later on we met in the desert, the owner Amiryu Hosoi, of Virgin Island, me, and even Craig666 showed up. Yes that’s true of SL too: even after a lot of firework, we stay talking. And that’s important. Just after the virtual fight, we were gone to other places, Craig666 had been sneaking back to the desert and cleaned up his mess. That’s funny! But one thing I don’t understand, he said something which sounded strange in my ears: he said: “my name is haas”, I wonder very much what that could mean………."

Thx Nugget, for your story.....and have fun with your new friend!

Five, imagine!

Five March and Contrechoc are getting along fine nowadays, Five is developing in an interesting character. Contrechoc is often amazed by the way Five handles things. Five is no copy of Contrechoc. A character in Second Life is never a copy of the person behind the screen. Just as a book never tells the real life of a writer, even if it is autobiographical, nor a drawing or a painting is a real copy of the artist, even if it is a self portrait. Five thinks lots of people playing the game of Second Life are mistaken in thinking that they, as real people, are walking, talking and doing things in Second Life...

Kees Spermon, artist, showed this in his works, etchings, with titles as “As if -”, or “A Voice...imagine”. Actually he was referring to Samuel Beckett. Becketts piece “Waiting for Godot” could easily be seen forming a great theme for a few sims in Second Life. Really this theater piece, radiating loneliness, is still crowded compared to most islands and places you see in Second Life! Beckett’s piece can be seen here in streaming video.

“A voice.... imagine!”. Five remembered this title of Kees Spermon because of a neighbor, called “Alles Brenner”, a German name, meaning “Burner of all”. (In fact he is called “AllesBeta Brenner”, but always look at the roots of a name if it signifies something, after all we can choose these names in Second Life.)

If you look at it from the side of the Enneagram (based on ideas of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, (see for instance Enneagram of Personality), speaking of 9 different personality types, “Burner of All” is a salesman. Five is the artist, dreamer. These types of this personality circle don’t get along very well. But although simplified this scheme also tells, that when experience grows with time, the types eventually become blurred, and all types can understand and live with the others. (Five is still talking to Burner of All, for him communication on this level is more difficult, but he manages too, we have to stay human don’t we?)

Well, as his type, “Burner of ALL” tries to sell; he has built a giant mall, and offers spaces to rent. He also built a sort of old German town, also consisting only of shops to rent. As could be expected, this neighbor doesn’t like the art experiments carried out on the land of Five. Last week he decided to put a giant screen with the new name of his mall right in front of the land of Five. This name new name for his so called "paradise" is “Imagine!”.

But now, because of this huge sign, it seems to be the billboard of Five’s land. Five was amazed, but quickly realized that this sign will attract more visitors to the Contrechoc land, than to the mall, which seems to belong to something different, because it is so small compared to this sign! And no it becomes clear why Five introduced this blog with the artist Kees Spermon, his title “Imagine… a voice”, coming from Samuel Beckett! It all comes together: the “Imagine” of the superb etching, the main idea of art “imagination”, and the meaning of this character “Burner of All”, which could also mean tabula rasa, the whipping out of the past, just to create the new. And really in these shopping places we encounter the solitude presented in the texts of Beckket, “as if” predicting the emptiness of Second Life. Creativity goes both ways, it destroys as fast as it offers new ideas. New art is making older art pale, before it quickly gets pale itself. All art being put in it’s right place only after a few centuries. Five and AllesBeta Brenner are getting along, they are as ever on speaking terms. Exchanging experiences, learning from each other. And apparently, they are doing an interesting game of ping-pong with titles. That is the central thought of the Enneagramm: learn from the other types of personality to enrich yourself, to become a whole, and to become a large together!

Five programms a game!

Come and See, it is the

Nugget Gulch Goldmine Game

beta version just starting! Amiryu Hosoi and Five’s first game in Second Life.
It all happens on the Virgin Islands.
Find the shack to start, watch out for the dynamite indoors and the boulders coming down from the mountains outdoors, not to speak of the wild horses roaming freely about.….
Rain is not the problem, and a drink might be found high in the sky.
Get the gear, a sophisticated detector and an even more futuristic HUD and start searching in a dusty environment, a desert, where wild animals lure behind the bushes…
Try to find gold! Put it on the scales to get your bonus. Get your name on the high score list!

Exploring is fun, experimenting is fun, but sometimes it is even more fun to make an real effort to construct something, a game! Five programs in SL in the Linden script. Hm, that’s quite an experience. Because not only object are involved but also ‘people’ not everything can be controlled, programmed quite so easily as in normal programming. On Contrechoc a few programmed counters are installed to see how many people, yes people, are visiting this place. These are ‘real’ people, even if they are not interested in art (Five laughs out loudly!), and the visitors are not search-robots like the ones visiting the websites and boosting the counters on these internet pages. Also on Contrechoc some items are programmed to be temp-rezzed, that is to say the objects are only temporarily in the SL world and are replaced just before they are deleted, so creating the illusion of being there all the time. Five considers this as a peaceful way of using the rather aggressive feature in SL of making guns and shooting on other avatars. And of course the dodecahedron is constructed in script. It would have been impossible otherwise, all these cray angles!

Only if that’s it, programming in SL is without much of a challenge. So once upon a time Five met Amiryu Hosoi with her idea of a game in her sim. Five thought the game idea was too easy to be true, and in fact if it was made in the environment of, for instance, Director it would have been.

But things got a bit complicated with connections between data from the dBases and events in SL, the fact that several players are playing at the same time, and that some gear, needed for the game had to communicate between themselves, the dBase and the world.
But what am I talking about. How can I suppose you to be interested in the details of the making of a game? Play the game! Have fun!

Five in Slum City

Five visits Sandboxes regularly these days. Actually, when writing about sandboxes for a former blogg, Five was a little bit disappointed about what was being “on show”. A few weeks ago, there were amazing things to be ssen! But you have to be lucky! This time Five was more fortunate, because somebody was making a very odd looking car. It looks bizarre, because the textures are those from a cardboard construction set which you can cut, fold and glue together. The explanations and sizes are clearly visible in nice bright colors on the white background on the surface of the car. And just this is the fun! Indeed this way of constructing a car, in SL is really quite fascinating. Normally people are trying to hide the fact that the objects in this world are put together, with this car, the owner/maker Youma Muir (remember this name!) shows clearly that all is but cardboard, only virtual. This is questioning the belief of people, this urge to make something “real” even when everybody is quite aware that SL isn’t too real. Although we could conclude from the success of SL the opposite: that our conviction of existing in a “real” reality can be fooled quite easily. Think about what SL will look like in a few years with more powerful computers and servers, you can already see examples of it in more sophisticated computer games. Humans will be drawn in and be convinced that these worlds are as real as the world of our own. More and more features of the “real” will be added. And in fact, who can argue against it, if you can live, sell, earn, dance, communicate in these worlds? At the moment the distinctions are still very visible, but just that is what makes it attractive at the moment: the not really real…..


When something out of the ordinary happens Five studies the profile of the person involved. One thing often leads to more and Five’s appetite of exploring is big! (A real hunger in SL!) And bingo, the menu of the profile of Youma Muir on “interesting places” was filled up! The first one Five tried was Slum City .

Here Five landed in a fast food place. Remember the Japanese resto, a few blogg’s ago? The textures here are not as abundant, and maybe a bit more of grease and filthy things could be added. The small table is superb though and watch the bottle, fallen of the table, and pouring it’s liquid on the ground, seen through the gray surface of this table. Outside you see the shop with the yellow…what is this called in English? (Seen the pigeon, which really leaves a virtual dropping?)

But you will recognize it, just as the very rusty old car. Inside the shop a super job of textures, really a place you don’t want to visit being in a hurry. But here in SL it is a miracle. Chris Llanfair, who happened to stroll around told Five that it took Archadia Asylum weeks to make it and Five believed him ! Chris was looking in Fives profile and immediately asked about the local and the global.

But this story is for another blogg. Slum City is high in the sky, but this doesn’t really bother the creators to create a whole cargo ship, with beautiful textures on the containers. Just around the corner even a church, with a very nice light falling through a stained glass window above the entrance. Strange, just in this sim, they have attacked the problem of dirt and decay. In all 3D environments, dirt or dust is the most “expensive” there is. That’s why these virtual worlds are looking so unnaturally clean. In Slum City a bit of the feeling of dirt is regained. Lol, couldn’t we exchange a bit of the dust of our RL with the too cleanliness of SL! Dust, sand, grease, filth, decay is available in abundance in Real Life, we fight our whole life against it. The battle is so engraved in our soul that we miss this kind of mess in virtual worlds. Or is it that mess and chaos are the substrate, the fertile soil for the few good ideas we produce? Ok you sense a paradox here in Five’s existence: on the one hand Five distinguishes quite clearly between RL and SL, not liking the outright copying of things from RL to SL, for instance in the domain of the arts, on the other hand Five likes well done realistic textures and has an urge for mess and dust! Well that’s Five alright! It’s like the car with which this blogg started, compared to the very convincing rusted car in here Slum City…..


PS Did Five tell you about the manhole opposite the rusty old car? More to discover, Five won't whisper about it!

Five returns to the Sandbox (in search for art)

Where are the times when Five hadn’t enough land, or friends with land to experiment with building. Five’s first experiments, on lights for a dj, where done in the garden of a travelling agency. Sitting in a chair to earn the first Linden dollars Five even made the five sided table and chairs you can still see in Contrechoc. Suddenly the owner appeared, and everything was gone!

Some evening we tested the dj devices in a sandbox and a French dj called Anamkhai Sodwind came along. It was in a sandbox, where you can experiment, because you don’t disturb other people and enough prims are available. The only problem is that these places clean up regularly, so beware, you might loose hours of work, just like that. Second Life is unstable compared to Real Life, but Second Life is stable relative to Sandboxes! This French dj, which could easily be identified by his very funny portable dj set, looked at our work and got out of his inventory an enormous dj-disco set. After a few somersaults, he was able to talk to us…. Really amazing! Later on he put down a sort of enormous building.

This is the fun of the sandbox, you can see people experiment on the most simple level, see for instance the couple working on their first bed…well even with their bed they have a bit to learn, never even arriving at using it properly....but also watch real specialists at work.

They conjure up their most exquisite work like that, and put it back in their pocket! Some sandboxes are in connection with a sim with a theme. For instance the sandbox of Elvenmoor. Here you can meet people working in the theme of the Elven, which is quite fun. Palaces, castles, enormous decorated swords, but also enchanted woods in a box can be seen there, if you are lucky.

A special place for me is Serenity Woods. Here Five presented for the first time, projecting the image of SL in RL ! Also the surroundings of Serenity Woods are worth taking a look at. Trees! Living in trees, working in trees, hm, Five likes very much to “think” in trees... Tree houses are seen a lot around here, some are very inventive! The sandbox typically is surrounded by wood logs. With a sort of Startreck teleporter you can also try out the floating platform.

Polkadot is more of the next age: you must get there using funny rockets. You can choose different platforms, floating in the air. Since this is connected to an airport, you must not be surprised to encounter enormous airplanes over here. Very funny to explore are the levels between the platforms, but you must have a ninja feather or something like it, because on this height normal flying is not possible.

In the last blogg about art we were left with the problem of looking for art in SL. The Sandboxes are really the greenhouses of Second Life building and creating. But you must be lucky! Not always interesting things are around and you only meet guys from the jumble sale, trying to sell you things you can get free in the places offering freebies….