estelle parnall

I have a shop in Beach City. Hmm..lets see...15 shelves...window dressing...draw distance greater than 10m by the look.....oh and a bit of signage.

There are actually 6 shops selling stuff, possibly 7 if El Electron has set up.

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Angela Talamasca

Awesome. Someone who did it right! Will check it out next time I visit. :-)

Eta ~ for all the grief I give Daniel, imo he's done his city right as well. And that's not to mention how very awesomely helpful he is when it comes to setting things up in blue mars. ^_~

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Argent Stonecutter

People complain about LL's LoD and decluttering algorithms dropping prims and objects. They don't know how good they have it.

Are AR forcing people to micromanage stuff they shouldn't need to because Crysis does it that way, or are they just evil? I mean, can't they tweak these kinds of anal-retentive settings so that setting them to "0" means "let the computer figure it out" and then make 0 the default?

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Argent Stonecutter -- Skyhook Station -- Coonspiracy Store

"And now I'm going to show you something really cool."


The previous is a cybernetic datum published - in direct contravention of DoD Regulation #229RR3X3 - as being conducive to the physical, psychological and/or social well-being of the population.

Hypatia Callisto

Crysis doesn't force you to do anything at all. They just throw you the editor and say "here you are, have fun". Not only that, you get the game source code.

Of course, its set up as an FPS and not as a virtual world, but I'm quickly learning that there are many tweaks of gold hanging out at CryMod to change a mod to be *usable* to most things you want.

It should improve once we get Cryengine 3 out for standalone.

I would still recommend Blue Mars for distribution to other folks, at the moment. But, unsure if that situation is going to last forever. I'm not keen on being restrained by a service provider any longer. That goes for more than Blue Mars, by the way, it also goes for SL.

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"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

DanielRavenNest

The CryEngine2 *game engine* has a massive number of settings you can adjust (over 2000, but I don't have an exact count). You don't have to mess with most of them, and just leave them at the defaults, if they are acceptable. The Crysis *game* which runs on the CryEngine uses one particular set of defaults. Blue Mars has a different set, plus modifications.

What is going on is that the "virtual world" adaption of the CryEngine platform is about half done. They have added things like a money system, cross-level instant messaging, etc. Regular players and developers get to try out the new features as soon as they are implemented, and give them feedback.

Some of the features work great the first time (try clothes before buy is an example), others need more work. We tell them what's wrong, and they eventually fix it, or tell us why its not possible. To me, this is a healthy development process, going back and forth between the coders and eventual users.

The coders in general are good at what they do, I have talked to most of them I think at one point or another. They do NOT however have deep VW player experience. So things that are obvious to us, like setting store items to be seen from at least the street outside as a default, are not obvious to them until we tell them.

Argent Stonecutter

Then if they really want to make something that's like a virtual world, they need to hire some programmers with that experience, and give them authority and commit privileges. And they need to do this a couple of years ago.

I'm not sure that's what they should be doing, though. I think their platform has a lot more potential in other areas.

I'm also not sure these days that my first paragraph doesn't apply to Linden Lab, too. At least as far as the authority bit goes.

Hypatia Callisto

Crytek really GETS it about users though. Really really, really really does. They started user communities for 3d gaming, have hired most of their people from the user community.

When I was reading the article about them in Brand Eins (sorry, in German), they had already been talking to James Cameron, already stating IN THE PRESS here that they are aiming their platform to be a virtual world for Hollywood creators, to blur the lines between virtual world, games, and motion pictures.

They have a really grand vision. I haven't seen such vision in a really long time. It's exciting.

WarKirby Magojiro

discussion on the past few pages makes BM sound intriguing, but not polished enough to spend time on yet.

I'll check this forum again in another 3 months or so. ^^

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RandoymRandt

I think this is a great idea, perhaps worth getting an account and popping in so you can notice the differences in three months.




This thread had me laughing a wee bit. I do appreciate however (and thank you) that many of you understand you're looking at a half finished product.

SL is a ten year old technology. Blue really isn't even born yet. I've thought many times about how difficult it is to develop worlds like this without an extended public beta. Not sure there is a good answer, except, and I readily say this, Blue has been very bad about explaining their direction and intent as they move OUT of beta. People rightly assume you will always be downloading cities independently and that the user controls will be just the same forever. I can't say if they'll be awesome later, but I can say they are no where even near finished.

Argent Stonecutter

This. To the point where I'm pretty much convinced AR have no direction and are completely winging it week-to-week ever since they realized that instead of attracting game developers they've got themselves a pack of hardcore roleplayers they have NO idea what to do with.

At least LL started out with a vision that wasn't <PI, 0, -PI/3> away from ours.

Angela Talamasca

Well, they may know what they want to do with us. It just might not be legal.

Kidding! LOL

Hypatia Callisto

Lots of people like saying this, but it doesn't make it true. SL is more like a lot of bits strapped together with scotch tape. Some of the bits strapped together are pretty darn new, in fact newer than what Blue Mars supports. The architecture in many areas is not that old. SL's biggest issues are in areas that Blue Mars barely or simply does not support yet. Like group chat, vehicles, teleportation, etc.

Blue Mars has an advantage that they are using a middleware (Cryengine 2) that is pretty complete - they aren't having to strap as many pieces together with scotch tape. Like SL has to with OpenGL 3.1 (in deferred rendering - which is only partially supported by CE2 and fully by CE3) and Havok 7 (Havok being an industry leader for physics middleware, and soon to debut on the SL grid with Server 1.40)

Second Life probably has one of the better OpenGL rendered engines out there, homebrew. They just have to give Runitai the ability to finish his work on it.

Cristalle

Finally managed to actually log in.

I soooo longed for a minimap.

I didn't mind the walking/running so much although the running could be much faster. Some kind of functioning vehicles will be nice!

I went bowling. The 4 and 7 pins hate me.

Argent Stonecutter

I wish we'd go back to Runitai's rendering engine. I really miss his waves.

Atashi Yue

Well, he's still with LL at least.