This week we discuss Creatorverse and Patterns, the new products coming out of Linden Lab, if Second Life is embarrassing, and more!
This week’s topics include:
- Coming Soon from Linden Lab: Creatorverse and Patterns
- New Linden Lab Product: Day-Glo Minecraft with Physics?
- Are simple games better?
- Second Life redux?
- Is Second Life embarrassing?
- Will or should Patterns subsume Second Life?
- Patterns Could Be the Next Minecraft
- New Second Life Promo Video
- Linden Lab Must Stop Underselling Second Life
- Qarl breaks down the deformer bug
Guests:
Bernhard Drax (Draxtor Despres) is a musician, new media producer, and machinima journalist.
Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden) is visual effects artist, software developer, and interactive designer extraordinaire.
Thank you to our sponsors, Botgirl’s Identity Circus and Pretty Feet!
Your comment about LL’s recent projects being little tests reminds me of Peter Molyneux’s “22 Cans” project which will be launching a series of mini games with the same intent, the end goal being to release a game combining all the information gathered about how people play.
So it’s possible.
I’m still listening but had to respond, Karl is cracking me up. Karl, if they really did what you said, and Patterns is just a front for a rebranding of Second Life that would be genius of all conspiracy theories. Sadly, none of the good ideas you presented in the podcast, like Patterns being interoperable with SL are even remotely likely to happen, because that would have been the RIGHT move. The move here would have been obvious, incorporating creatorverse and patterns into SL as well, further re-enforcing that its a platform. Creatorverse, available on IPAD Android and Second Life. But, wishful thinking, because if that was the case why would they leave that part out?
Scratch is still out there (http://web.mit.edu/~eric_r/Public/S4SL/ , today maybe as flash-thingie: http://redwood.colorado.edu/jkb/fs2lsl/ ), a bit behind time, but might be nice for click-learners
These new games seem like fun but wasted on me.
Just like Minecraft.
I am sure they are all great but I’m just too much of a visual person.
I grew up with computer games, I remember Pong and the hobbit text adventures that you had to load from a cassette tape and took 5 minutes to load a very basic picture… yes I am that old.
That is why I love Second Life, sure it is buggy, slow, laggy, etc, etc… but I get to walk around a dirty old 1920s street in Berlin with fading old advertisements, rubbish, etc.
Details, details, details.
Realism, realism, realism!
That is what does it for me, so when I see a cube game or triangle game, I may try it for a bit, may even enjoy it but it won’t keep me coming back for more.
That is also why I love a game called Mafia 2.
Sure, you have to drive around and shoot people… but oh my god what a fantastic recreation of an 1950s American city.
As someone who also created a historical city scene, I am in awe of that game and keep coming back to it.
Not to shoot and race, but to quietly drive around, enjoy the details while listening to some Rock ‘n Roll on the radio of my 1952 Buick.
And even though this game is already 2 years old, to me it is a dream of what SL may one day be able to offer us.
Anyway, great episode.
Perhaps an interesting subject for next time; Oculus Rift and SL?
the link
New Linden Lab Product: Day-Glo Minecraft with Physics?
seems to go nowhere.
I’ve been building an internation language learning community in SL since 2008. I think SL has two types of “users”:
1) People who come to enjoy by interacting with people in ways not available in other ways.
2) People who are inquisitive, creative, and often expessive or intetested in developing their own vision for reality.
Both of these people will not be intetested in LL’s new games but it might attract the previous two.
I’m one of those people that “gets” both Minecraft and Second Life. I am a fan of both titles and actively participate in them. I run a Minecraft server and have owned/rented land from time to time in the five years I’ve been in Second Life. I totally get the appeal of Patterns. I pre-ordered the title and I am looking forward to playing the game.
However, I find it a bit amusing to hear you guys struggle over why Minecraft is so appealing. It really isn’t about “limiting the palette” as Minecraft can be complicated in it’s own right. What is so great about Minecraft is the almost endless procedural world. Yes, Second Life may have the better graphics, physics, and scripting, but Second Life utterly fails in regards to the amount of space a person is limited to in comparison to Minecraft. For $20/month, anyone can start a Minecraft server that can host up to 20 people and play in a world that is larger than the surface area of Earth. There are tens of thousands of Minecraft multi-player servers all participating in some form of world building or another. In Minecraft, you can create literal communities where players come together and build their own towns and cities. Plugins are available that help players manage these communities. On top of that, there are economy based plugins and players actively engage each other through the buying and selling of services and resources. The modding community ensures that there are plenty of options when it comes to customizing your own world.
One has to look past the graphics and blocks of Minecraft to really see the potential of community building on a large scale. Sure, there are pirate ships in Second Life but the cost to own the land to house the ship is out of the reach of most Minecraft players (who tend to be kids and teens). Everything is inanimate in Minecraft but the barrier of entry to create using Minecraft is very low and people will build ships that never move except in the builders imagination. If Patterns is going to succeed, they need to open it up to the modding community and allow full multiplayer in the form of player hosted servers. Let the players create the community and let them provide the hardware to do it. It worked for Minecraft and can easily work for Patterns.
Furious -
are you aware – with the opensim software you can have a secondlife server with endless amounts of space for FREE.
i do see the appeal of a procedural world (trust me, i DO get that.) perhaps someone should code-up a world-maker for opensim…… hm.
K.
A procedural world generator for Second Life would be fantastic, but there is the problem of land in SL being very boring and you can only really vary the height of land. No caves or overhanging cliffs etc.
I look forward to exploring caves in Patterns.