The Kind Healer – Page 34 – A Gaming Ambassador from Uru

State of Play – My summary

I’m writing this from the State of Play confrence right now, in the afternoon of the second day. I’ve had an amazing time, although being 3rd shift, I’m also horribly tired.

This is a terribly truncated summary, as there are much more detailed descriptions out there. Most of them have probably posted by now as well. :)

Day one was Oct 7, Friday. There was an initial discussion about the financial possibilities of the Meteverse applications like [Second Life][1] and [There][2], as well as the MMO environments like [WoW][3]. Questions ensued regarding regulatory and legal issues, and I think was quite interesting; I even had a shot to pop a question in myself.

Most of the late morning and the afternoon was evoted to workshops. I participated in one which was discussing virtial identities, and the sharing of such. A very good real-life example – maintaining reputation across MMO environments – was used as the starting point of the second half of the workshop, which was to come up with possible solutions. Suggestions from a simple linking mechanism to more details forms which would be useable by MMO hosts for quicker authentication were discussed, and all of them viable to one degree or another. It would be quite exciting to see if any of this actually comes to frution; Time will only tell.

The evening dinner was a discussion on the expansion possibilities of the more larger metaverses, in particular [Eve Online][4] and [Second Life][1]. Both use different forms of scarce or basic starting tools and/or resources, and for the most part allows the customer base to generate the content and interact as they see fit. They also are what’s called ‘one shard’ or ‘one location’ systems – unlike an MMORPG like [WoW][3] where its one fixed content server which is repeated as many times as needed to get your customer base up to the millions. It had also turned out to be quite an interesting discussion.

For the completeness in context of this weblog, I must remind that Until Uru is also a multi-shard system; However, though the content is both fixed and (currently!) not extendable at the moment, the players there have done an amazing time generating their own with tools even more scarce than what is available in an MMO. One upcoming example, the [D’ni Olympics][5], I in fact will probably be attending based upon the possiblility of my pulling out the Honor Guard ‘uniform’ again.

At this point, I collapsed at home for over eight hours; I had very little sleep Fri morning, but was quite enjoyable. Definately going to do this again.

So I arrived back here late in the morning, about 11 AM or so. Spent most of the time so far in the main lobby; Some PCs were set up (one of them crashed already :) ), available with the Second Life environment for login.

I did have a brief chat with Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden), regarding the 1.7 Preview, and the odd fact that I noticed some driver files of theirs says they are owned by NVidia. That was for my own curiosity, but I may post it. Still thinking about it…

–Alan

[1]: http://www.secondlife.com
[2]: http://www.there.com
[3]: http://worldofwarcraft.com
[4]: http://www.eve-online.com
[5]: http://www.dni-olympics.info/

An Ending Not Quite Written

I’ve gotten word that Cyan is back, with most of the employees hired back. References here:

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2005/09/cyan_after_12_m.html
http://forums.guildofgreeters.com/index.php?showtopic=9165

The word from Rand is somewhat guarded, but not surprising: “. . . Managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat (that I can’t give details about yet) . . .” and “. . . Crazy industry. It’s giving me whiplash!”

As one of the former Live players, and an active Until Uru player, I feel this is very good news. Hopefully the project related to Lattus and Something Else will come to frution now.

Also, as a SysAdmin, I understand all too well his second comment. The computer industry, and in particular the gaming industry, has had its ups and downs, focus and re-focus, in almost a series of fads. Myst was one of the first widespread of those re-focusing points, back toward the classic Adventure genre. We’re away from that again right now, into what sadly appears to be more violent territory. Perhaps they can find a way back.

Awaiting more info, as always, patiently…

–Alan

Stepping back from SL, due to RL

After thinking about it, I do need the spare time right now to help my brother and my mother. Any off-time I actually find during this period I’ll likely spend on Myst V, or on the Greeters forums.

This is not the first time I’ve done this. However its the first time I’ve done it with land I actively need to maintain. I’ll login to Numbakulla from time to time since that only takes a few minutes; Otherwise right now I’m not seeing an issue as of yet.

Time will tell. I just hope that my mother gets better in the interim…

–Alan

Fun with SLCC Badges

In trying to get my mind off my mother Monday, I decided to work on getting a pic sent off that could be used on my ID badge at the SLCC confrence. I had gotten the email earlier in the day, and was also interested in re-stretching what skills I had in Paintshop Pro as well.

So, a couple hours and about six layers later, I had something I was reasonably happy with, and I hope reflects the fact of my links with Uru. It includes:

— A D’ni glyph of my full RL name, shaded real low to almost be like a watermark. The original was made for me by fellow Uru player Gadren.

— Shrunken pics of my Uru-TPOTS avatar, and a variant of my common forum avatar. The original picture used for the forum av was from a commissioned rendition of myself, as my favorite RPG character Sungak ‘Silverhands’ Alkandenes. (and anyone who’s seen the old sungak.net home page knows now where that came from too). The forum av is the one I use in the Uru forums, incidentally.

— And at the bottom, the SL avatar in a chair, in the setup I normally use. It of course includes my KI (Uru prop) and the shirt I made which has my RL first name on it as a D’ni glyph (also by Gadren).

I will post a link to it here, pending its approved. :)

–Alan

Inner Conflict

This weekend has been troubling for me.

The two visits I’ve taken to hospital, where my mother is at the moment, I left in tears. The nurse present the second time recommended that I not come back, since its disturbing me too much. Some of my friends agree with that assesment, in particular those who know me well.

My father, on hearing this however, asked me an important question: So what am I going to do to help when she gets out? Important indeed, and one that I discussed in private later with my brother. Some initial plans have been set, but my help will be somewhat peripheral though just as important.

The main thing is that I just cannot see her like that; It hurts me too much. Both her mother and father died slowly, her mother in particluar also from multiple strokes, and I don’t feel that it was right for them to suffer that way. How do I communicate such things to my father, as I believe strongly in such things as the Living Will and the DNR Order? Right now, I cannot.

As it stands, I’m too far away to do any real good at her home anyway, and my 3rd shift hours prevent me from doing much else at the moment as well. But there are things I can do to help, things that do not per se require me to be always present, or at least such things that I can do the work using phone calls and my PC, and an occasional drive down.

I’ll be taking a week or so off after the SLCC confrence in early Oct, and will spend some time with both my parents at that time. By then I’ll have a better idea of the situation.

-Alan