Andromeda Rage

As much as I am wary of Facebook, I see Cloud Party having some huge built-in advantages. Say you're a FB user, you have all your FB buddies... well, there's your instant virtual world social circle. No trawling through clubs and hangouts looking for cool people to talk to. I can see some of my FB-using RL friends gravitating to this (and bugging me even more to join FB...). In fact I can see "real lifers" vastly choosing this over SL... and SL becoming even more marginalized and stigmatized than it already is as some sort of porn ghetto inhabited by freaks. :/

melponeme_k

And what better way to reap the revenge on the company that psychologically experimented on its employees as well as its customers.

Penny Patton

I just don't see them choosing either unless there's some sort of draw. There needs to be functionality (the ability to create and play polished, videogame style experiences) and presentation (it needs to look good, and look like fun) to draw people in. At present it has neither of these things.

They call it "beta" but it looks more like an early alpha. I hope they plan to do a lot more work before calling it "finished".

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The Digital Pasture - SL from a cow's point of view. When the cow is also a designer.

Lord

I would disagree Penny, all you have to do is look at other worlds (IMVU, There, Twinity, etc) to know that you don't have to have the best looking world. What you do have to have is 'Ease of Use' and 'Marketing'...get the big new flow going...and then introduce 'new', 'easy to use' features in a way that keeps the users attention...and as far as content goes...as long as you have the tools in place, the content will follow and get better...and if your platform/grid is the hot one in selling virtual creations, then the creators will come...possibly to the exclusion of the less hot one.

We all remember the recent push by LL to try and integrate SL to Facebook and other social networks. We also saw their ideas to get on portable devices. They spent time and money on both and then dropped the ball on both. Even more recently, we have seen them put their money and time into developing a completely separate game, presumably to help support Second Life. Perhaps, it wasn't. Perhaps it was Rodvik knowing what was coming because they had tried to become the candidate for Facebook, were too expensive (in many different ways), and knew someone else was going to get that slot in the Facebook universe ?

When Rodvik went with the 'it's a creativity tool/space' idea, I think he already knew what it's limitations were and at first, tried to broaden its appeal to would-be suitors (like Facebook), but upon failing at that, has redirected it to being more of that 'creativity tool'...a more sophisticated, real-time, 3D, object (and game) creation environment. As such, it will need to focus on the needs of the type of user that will appreciate that sophistication and it is likely going to get much smaller in terms of the amount of resources it is using (customer numbers will drop thus, land will shrink down, thereby reducing the number of servers needed, creating less need for personnel and building space/operational costs) and get more expensive per user, as they build out that sophistication and cater to that group of people.

Hitomi Tiponi

21st April - Cloud Party send out a lot of invites to the closed Beta.
26th April - Last twitter entry by Rodvik Linden

Come on Rod - put us out of our misery, or we can find some more conspiracy theories.

Nika Talaj

Be careful what you ask for!

Hitomi Tiponi

It gets weirder:
16th May - Cloud Party goes to Open Beta
17th May - Big in-world meeting of Lindens

Couldbe Yue

I just learnt some interesting when I read that. for a second I wondered if LL were behind it and in that second I had a cold shiver go down my spine and thought if it were so, I couldn't step foot in it again because I didn't need more headfucks.

Apparently my mind has learnt the lesson LL has been trying to teach us for years, even if I don't put it into practice. As a company they just don't play well with their customers and as aversion therapy goes, they've succeeded.

I'm just going to go somewhere quiet and marvel at my reaction for a bit.

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Hitomi Tiponi

Stirs Couldbe a bit more:

Actually the new venture appears to be funded by the former SL co-founder Cory Ondrejka and Cryptic Studio's ex-CTO Bruce Rogers who both work for Facebook - but we don't know who the other investors are.

Aribeth Zelin

Well bleh, my birthday and they didn't send me an invite

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Faerycat Designs In World -Marketplace 1- Marketplace 2

Couldbe Yue

It was the connection to Cory that made that little nightmare of mine possible. Thankfully alternate identities counts out this app (or at least I hope so).

As for the next LL offering, as long as they tell me what it is so I can avoid it until the early adopters have been savaged I'll be happy.

Hitomi Tiponi

The weird thing is that they have said that they hope to enable proper logins without going through Facebook (not the current temp accounts). Don't you find that a bit odd for a company fronted by two Facebook employees?

Couldbe Yue

I'd like to hope it's because they're taking a leaf from the other well known apps there - afaik all the really big ones also moved away from a pure facebook login too.

I see that as a smart business move. They may be facebook peeps but if this is a spare time thing then the company can't really complain.

If it is LL behind this then I'll pass. LL as a company are crap, I don't need more of their shitty behaviour towards their customers in my life. (I never really got over the insults from them leading up to their apex on the motd back on 1 april 2007) and certainly I've seen nothing approaching respect for their customers since then.

DanielRavenNest

No, it works. They use a material system, which means you apply a material to a prim. The material accepts multiple texture slots. The one you are familiar with from SL is the diffuse texture. There are also normal, specular, and mask slots. So the sequence goes:

Upload texture(s) to your inventory
Create a new material that uses those textures
Select that material in the object's properties

rodvik

Indeed 8) Anyways been a bit buzy with company stuff.

Thanks for the concern from those who though bad things had happened to me. All good I assure you, just hectic.

Hopefully folks have not seen a slowing in actual SL work though (my yapping doesnt count as real work I think) things have kept rolling out.

Expect a blog in a week or so (not from me, yay!) about what we will be upto for the next quarter or so. Hopefully folks will approve.

<waves> Hope ya'll are having a fun summer!*

*hemisphere limitations may apply

Mojo Skytower

Well it's winter here in the sub-equatorial tropics!!! *







*Which means it's still hotter then wherever you are

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Penny Patton

I didn't say you need the best looking virtual world to draw people in, it's a factor but not the only one. EAse of use and marketing are both other factors. But I'm going to turn your own argument against you, IMVU and company mean that Cloud Party would need to be a better alternative to them as well as SL. Why would anyone leave a place they're already established for something that is not an improvement?

Also, IMVU is the perfect example of why presentation matters. Ask most any IMVU user which looks better, IMVU or Second Life? Most will tell you IMVU easily wins in the graphics department and that there's not even a contest.

We know that flies smack in the face of reality, but that's presentation and marketing at work.

I'd love it if this were true, that Rodvik were pushing for a more sophisticated development set for content creation...but I'm not seeing it. They delivered mesh broken and incomplete, Oz has loudly questioned the need for fundamentally basic features, and easy to improve tools and settings remain broken and stupid.

Ok, maybe Rodvik is pushing for better tools, but he's got to get that concept past existing Lindens who fail to understand it and some who seem to be outright against it.

Circle Widdershins

I mentioned this in the Cloud Party thread but it bears repeating here. I briefly chatted with Sam Thompson (CEO and programmer for Cloud Party) and he said that the Lab is nothing to do with this platform except having ex-Linden Cory as an advisor.

It is a fun platform - very light and quick. I can see lots of potential.

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Cristiano We need to make 'endless celestial sex' into a thing.

Hitomi Tiponi

Yay! Thanks for squashing the rumours Rodvik. And indeed the actual SL work (especially server side) seems to be pressing ahead - so no need to kick anyone.

Penny Patton

It's good to hear from LL now and then reaffirming that good things are happening. There's a lot of improvements people have been waiting literally years for so everyone gets nervous now when the Lab goes quiet!

^^;

melponeme_k

They let him out of the dungeon.

Ann Otoole

see. dude is just working on shit. let him at it.

Desmond Shang

Just a quick note that Cloud Party is, perhaps accidentally, the best thing that could ever happen to the Second Life platform.

Walter Knott expected to see his business (Knott's Berry Farm) devastated when Disneyland opened in 1955. He was wrong. Instead, the day Disneyland opened, there were record crowds at Knott's. And Knott's is still open today, 57 years later.

Knock~on effects. Nothing could popularise and show off the strengths of the main grid, better than an inferior Facebook version of same.

Quiplash

I hope that Desmond is right, that having some viable competition will make both parties (Second Life and Cloud Party) prosper and innovate.

However, with the 900-pound gorilla that is Facebook behind it, Cloud Party has to be taken seriously. I've just spent two hours kicking the tires and I'm impressed by what they have already done so far. Obviously there's a ways to go, but they are off to an excellent start. There's already a small stampede of SL people (to judge by the names) who are uploading meshes, testing out the physics engine, etc.

Here's a video tutorial of how to upload mesh and apply textures in Cloud Party:

And here's some first snapshots of the fledgling virtual world:







For more pictures see: https://plus.google.com/photos/10759...55310340759937

Quiplash

Here's another shot from Cloud Party. This one site is impressive as hell already.

This is Lilli's Island, created by Lilli Thompson over the past couple of months. Apparently Cloud Party is planning to rent and sell islands such as this, soon.