DanielRavenNest

Now that pricing is out and the other new features of this latest update, I've decided to go ahead with this project and see what happens:

Sandbox City Blue Mars

"Sandbox City" is a project to develop a cooperative building area in Blue Mars. It is named both for the "Blue Mars Sandbox" editor, and sandbox areas within Second Life, which are places to build and test items. The goal is to provide a free place for creators to get their feet wet, learn how Blue Mars works, and display and share their creations, then move on to bigger and better things if they want.

I'm pretty open to suggestions, but the idea is to start out in developer mode, where the city files are shared directly with builders, and if we get enough people participating, to go live on the Blue Mars servers. Following the Second Life sandbox model, some areas will be free to use, until someone else needs the space and your build gets kicked out by theirs. Other areas will be dedicated spaces with a rental fee, to use for long term projects or living space. Those fees are what will cover going live on the servers if we get that far.

Part of the thinking behind this is that a Blue Mars city is typically 16-64 SL map regions in size. Also you can create more detailed and higher quality items, but the software to do that has more to learn and it takes longer to do a complicated item. So it's very hard for one person to do it all. In order to fill up a city, it makes sense to gather a group, and for people to specialize in what they do best.

Another part of the thinking is to have the Sandbox be an unthemed area, where the minimum of restrictions on what you can do will be in place. The only rules will be what Blue Mars sets as a whole, and some kind of general "don't break it" provision - ie don't load something that will crash the city.

I'm as new to this as everyone else, so don't expect me to have all the answers yet. We will learn as we go.

Daniel

Quiplash

I would be interested in this idea, Daniel. I am starting off from scratch with Blue Mars, and all the various developer tools. Having a place to share with other learners would be great, since I'm nowhere near owning/renting any sort of store.

Beebo Brink

I'm right behind Quiplash, Daniel. I'm low on the learning curve, and it's not so easy to jump inworld in any meaningful way when you're not ready to set up shop yet. If I can get a toehold on the tools, and feel like I'm making progress, I'd kick in $$ to support such a sandbox.

And thanks for taking the lead on this!

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eku Zhong

I would be very interested too. I took a look at the pricing and we thought about a village just to have a space to develop in .. but being in a communal sort of area where we can help each other might be a wonderful idea.

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Beebo Brink

Yes, the communal aspect is very appealing at such an early stage of both the platform and my own learning curve.

Cristiano

This is a great idea

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DanielRavenNest

Thank you everyone. Another part of my motivation is that when I was new to SL, I spent a lot of time at New Citizen's Inc, where I learned the basics of building and how other things in SL work.

I want to return the favor so to speak. I've already put together some notes & tutorials, so the next person does not have to spend the three months that I spent banging my head against the wall trying to figure it out LOL.

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Update Sat nite:

There is a Blue Mars Textures starter pack on the blog now:
Sandbox City Blue Mars

These have been converted to the .dds file format that they use, so they can be dropped into your item material slot directly.

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So anyway, here it is.... a big freaking empty city :-). I set up the basic terrain today. Next step is laying out some roads, so there are reference points.

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Desmond Shang

Daniel, I'm going to be putting some sketchup models and examples on my blue mars website at some point here.

Feel free to reference them ~ it may be a great way to get people building all over.

It may be a few days before I get to it, though.

DanielRavenNest

Sandbox City Blue Mars: Sandbox Area Layout and Prices

Put in roads, and markers to define 4096m "blocks". These will be the starter sandbox spaces for people to use. Although you are not required to use multiples of 4m for parcels, it was easier to lay out straight lines and use a size that SL people are used to thinking in terms of.

I also put in the required entities to log in to the city (spawn point and default camera). Next will be to actually split out block files so that people can work on them individually.

How do people feel about landscaping? I can put in some trees and stuff, or just leave it up to you to decorate as you like. For that matter I can change just about anything I know how to change (like use different ground textures) on request.

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infiniview Merit

Great idea Daniel!

The idea of a sandbox there seemed counterintuituve to me at first since the bulk of the building is offworld. I got accepted into the beta but did not spend much time there mostly because I need a new comp for BM. But with the long learning curve and the number of people that will want to learn to build it is a great idea for building community.

One thing I have been wondering but have not gotten the answer to yet is, can normal residents apply textures to things. Or do they all have to have some level of dev status to do that? And can textures be applied inworld?

I have the merchant dev status, but it is on hold for now. Do you think there will be a market for inworld sales of textures?

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DanielRavenNest

Mind you, I don't know the limits of what is possible yet, but it seems like your basic items like unscripted clothes and furniture will be (no copy)(no mod) in SL speak. I have asked about transfer, and not gotten a good answer about that.

It may be possible to script a color or texture change to an item, but I have yet to see even a scripted door that opens. Until a couple of days ago, scripting was limited to City Developers, so not much has been done yet.

*Any* of the developer tools can change textures, so I think anyone who wants to do more than place canned furniture in a canned house will get dev status, and learn how the block editor works. Given a .cgf model made by someone else, that is not really any harder than editing an SL item.

So I don't think there will be an in-world market for textures. What they need to set up is a developer market for all the bits and pieces (textures, 3D models, etc). Perhaps a pay in world system, but actually deliver the item via an outside source.

Desmond Shang

Consider this a contribution, if it helps!

4. Tech Stuff! How to build for Blue Mars! (Steampunk Victorian Caledonia on Blue Mars!)

Quiplash

Because I am a faculty member at a university, I can play around with time-limited academic learning versions of Maya 2010 and 3ds Max 2010, and of course the free tools like Blender and Sketchup. What I would love to learn from other people are which tools they prefer to use to construct different sorts of items, and why they chose that tool.

I only just cracked the cover on my 3ds Max book, I thought I'd start there first. My plan over the holidays is to get my feet wet in at least one, or perhaps two, of these tools.

Desmond Shang

Sketchup is the fastest to learn, then 3DS Max (easy), then Maya (which is hard and I can't do); and then finally, Blender is a biblical form of punishment. Just one opinion

DanielRavenNest

I prefer 3DS Max to sketchup because it is more capable and has better integration with Blue Mars format and other plugins. I'm also an engineer by training, and like the multiple viewports, and ability to spread my toolbars and panels across two monitors. On the other hand, its got a pretty deep learning curve if you want to use it well, so if you are time limited that might be an issue.

@ Desmond - Blender 2.50 is supposed to have a major revamp of the user interface. When that gets out I was going to give it a try and see how it compares to 3dsMax

Just4yucks Miami

It sure sounds like most developer-oriented sales should happen off-world, since that is where the developing itself will take place. So merchants selling developer-level products will presumably set up show rooms in world, so that customers can see how the items look there. Then the customers could go to the commerce website to actually buy the items. This model would also have the advantage of avoiding the BM sales fees.

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virrginia tombola

I can't speak to Blender, but truthfully, Maya is NOT that much harder than Max. I have Max, but Maya comes easier to me, no doubt because I learnt it first (and it's what my school teaches).

Truth to be told, you could study any of the high end programs for a year and still not understand them completely. At the same time, with Maya, if you follow the tutorials in their help section, you can be building basic models within an hour. Taking static models from Maya to Blue Mars has been relatively easy (wasn't at first, but is now).

Now, mind you, I wouldn't buy Maya JUST for Blue Mars. My current car cost less than Maya does. But if you're shopping for a 3D program, I can't think of a more versatile and powerful package.

DanielRavenNest

http://sandboxcitymars.blogspot.com/...up-blocks.html

The way Blue Mars works multi-person projects is by splitting out Blocks from a city file, exporting them, sending them to another person to build on, then importing it back into the city.

For the past couple of days I have been struggling to make my test blocks work properly. Unfortunately the Blue Mars developer wiki is incomplete on that subject. Have gotten it to work, sorta, with some open questions and bugs. The instructions are here:

• View topic - Block Export and Import Instructions

(if that is not viewable, let me know and I will repost it)

Once I am sure the process is working right, then I can open up blocks for people to use.

Here is my Block 1, with a couple of cubes imported from a separate block file. All the blue lines are helpers you can turn on to see where roads and the boundaries of blocks are located, kinda like View > Property Lines in SL. It also displays the names of objects on the screen)

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Desmond Shang

Daniel,

Make an area shape, then go to the Blue Mars pulldown menu and choose 'make selection into block' or something really closely worded like that. It will create a new data layer. Don't put spaces in the name of it.

Then with that layer selected (as it still should be) go to the blue mars pulldown menu again and choose 'export layer as block' or something like that. This will generate a .bld file.

The .bld file should be put in the Mydata directory, on the local machines of people working with your project ~ the mydata directory in the blue mars tools directory structure. Once it's in the Mydata directory, they can open it with the block editor.

What they will get is your terrain so they can see what they are doing, and a white line around their parcel.

They can save their .bld file to play with later, or make different versions. But to get data back to you, they should export to .b2c format (block to city).

That's what they send to you. Then what you do, is import all the .b2c files from people with the city editor, into your city. Then you can do a server push of the whole city. Run 'export to engine' and then from the blue mars menu, export a .cty file. That's what you'd push up to the blue mars servers to publish the city.

Hope that helps!

DanielRavenNest

Thanks Desmond, I figured out that much from the posted wiki pages, but when I tried it, I got various errors at first. It seems very picky about where files are located, and at least on my Windows 7 machine, the Block Editor cannot make material setting changes stick (you can edit them, but they revert when I open the file the next time).

Part of my real life background is writing software documentation, and I want to be able to write complete instructions for people to use, rather than general hints :-)

DanielRavenNest

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