Category: Myst/Uru

Well, it was not two days after I post a listing of thanks to my SL friends that they end up finding a way to bring Telador back – after a fashion…

It’s now called ‘Myst Online Uru’ island (I guess it hit the 20 character limit). Last notice I got from group D’ni was that it will open in a couple days – Almost in sync with the Grand Opening in the real MOUL. I need to check and send a note along to Hamlet if needed. :)

As I speculated (via Alan) in the IC Journal, this may be a way for Turner/GameTap to allow access to more international players (in particular, those that can’t have access to Uru at all since UU was shutdown last week – for whatever reason).

I obviously am placing my feet firmly back into Second Life due to this, though I will not back out of marching for the Parade next month.

I’m asking myself now – what can come of having an island in SL?

1) The Age Building groups have the possibility – via libsecondlife – to create ‘rough 3d sketches’ using the primitives system in SL and import them to Blender for finishing. I’m following the possibility to export an entire sim’s worth of data for conversion into a near-finished Age.

2) In SL tradition, we’ll have one of the more interesting SL cross-world events to occur. Normally that’s between SL and RL. In this case it could be between SL and D’ni.

3) I once again have a reason to be a walking, free promotion of Uru within SL. :)

We will have to see…

–TSK

Tweek had a really good post the other day, and warrants a bit more than a comment from me.

I’m one of those people who’ve been a loner much of their life; In my case this was a self-defense mechanisn as I fell into codependency too easily when interacting with people. Though that trend is generally reversing as I mature socially, my life the past few years has taught me that doing things both alone *and* together at different times is an experience all its own.

Take, for example, the island of Numbakulla in Second Life. It’s home to what’s essentially a single-player, play-at-your-pace adventure game. But the island allows more than one person at a time, so interesting interactions (not unlike Uru Live today) occur. Players swap info and hints for areas they’ve cleared, for the betterment of both. They work in teams, either fanning out to learn about the environment quicker, or exploring as a tight group (this is no small feat in this game; The SL architecture can be setup to only show messages at the player level). And some – like myself – just visit for the beauty of it all; One couple even got ‘married’ on the island over a year ago!

Getting back to Uru… Though I’m one of those who’ve clearly stated themselves to primarily be in the ‘alone’ camp, I do feel that group activities – be it forced or not – still be out there. That does not mean I’ll not participate; I’ve been to Delin by myself, poked at the door once or twice, and just smiled and drank in the age instead. I figure, that if I really want what the age ‘physically’ has to offer, I’ll join a group that’s interested and help them.

Let’s not forget, however, that places like Delin are supposed to be ‘rest’ ages, and were initially designed to be enjoyed by the soul, not as some waystop for a clue or trophy…

–TSK

In looking at the last few day’s postings over at the Official Linden Lab Weblog, I’m not as much worried about concurrency or City lag with Uru Live.

For those who have not heard, LL did a major and highly-anticipated update last Wednesday; The big change was to visibility, and it was twofold: 1) avatars can now remove themselves from all forms of tracking, including online status, and 2) all island/estate sims will show on the master map, despite any settings disabling access.

In theory, these changes (or at least the second one anyway) are designed to reduce load on their master databases. So I have to marvel at the irony that the problems of the past few days since rollout are due to an overloaded database. :P

*sigh* Sadly typical, but they don’t have a large dedicated (perhaps fanatical) user base willing to test on a regular basis, like Uru Live apparently has.

Last I heard LL is looking to leverage parts of the libsecondlife project for load testing their Beta/Preview grid; Best of luck to them.

In other news, I’ve been AWOL from all IRC channels for a couple days now; It’s been pretty busy at work, and with vacations in full swing as of next week it’s promising to get even more interesting.

–TSK

You know, about a year ago I was fervently advocating Uru within Second Life, trying to get people interested enough to convert in some way and prove there are alternatives.

Recently, I’m beginning to re-think that strategy, and have held my tongue there (though continue to outwardly show that I’m clearly an Uru person).

From the rampant arguments among its residents and the ways that Linden Labs are not acting proactively enough, on what appears to be a sinking grid, this is *not* the masses that I want over in the Cavern.

The folks I know who would appreciate the wonder of that world are mostly people I’ve met there the past couple years, and have supported over that time. Now I want to help them emmigrate elsewhere – perhaps be able to get their creations integrated into an Age someplace within Uru Live.

Enter the libsecondlife open source project. They’re working on decoding the client/server protocol used by the system (with the support of the Linden Lab staff). As of yesterday I’ve been added to the project team; My contribution will likely be in the form of documentation more than coding – I understand a lot of the basics of what happens but don’t have the knowledge or time to work on the details therein.

One of its sub-projects is the ability to accurately export build data for use elsewhere (in particular they are exporting to an XML format that’s readable by a *Blender* offline build plugin). You can take the next logical step, and use the data from that Blender import to create optimized meshes for use within the PyPRP plugin used for Uru Age Building.

There are several challenges to this; A non-obvious one is a matter of scale since LL uses metric while Uru uses the English scales. The really big one is the fact that object packets are not yet fully understood, so an accurate export is not yet possible.

This is something I care enough about that I’m willing to sacrifice the time I’d use working on Uru modding (like the Pahts Shell) to assist in the project. Because one of my concerns is that I won’t be able to see my dreams of true emmigration be possible before the Second Life Grid collapses under its own weight.

Anyway, onward bound…
–TSK