Logo

FlipperPA Peregrine · 12-09-2008, 07:56 PM

I'm not sure how many of y'all made it into the Metaplace beta. Some cool ideas, but basically Raph going with the Ultima Online motif.

Here's a screenshot:

Here are all my thoughts:
Checking Out MetaPlace | Peregrine Salon, LLC

Here's the best paragraph <grin>:

Quote:

I’m sure this will be successful for the intended audience of casual users, but for hardcore geeks like me, I got bored fairly quickly. One thing I have questioned about Second Life in the past is the in-world building tools, with their inaccuracy, limitations, and whether or not things would be better created off-line. I believe I’m flip-flopping on this opinion; I have come to realize most Second Life content creators are social, collaborative creators. You create together in real-time. I started building at a Second Life resident run course in 2003, being taught by Siobhan Taylor. I honed my scripting skills by hanging out with other residents who had been in world longer than me, like Eggy Lippmann and Catherine Omega, who were more than generous with their time and advice on the ins, the outs, and the quirks of LSL. The instant gratification Second Life offers of being able to make something… then announce to your friends, “HEY, look what I MADE!” is parallel to the joy every developer gets.

Has anyone else checked it out? Not for our target market, but there's some good ideas there... SIMPLE INTERFACE.

Regards,

-Flip

Lordfly Digeridoo · 12-09-2008, 07:58 PM

Get me a beta invite!

Macphisto Angelus · 12-09-2008, 07:59 PM

My first thought was where to put the rollercoaster and the snack bar ala Roller Coaster Tycoon.

Aki Shichiroji · 12-09-2008, 08:01 PM

I'm in there as Aki Shichiroji. I got an invite some time last week, spent about an hour in there and really haven't taken the time to explore further. As much as it might be more usable and accessible to general audiences, I personally find the system of content creation more akin to buying modules for one's 'world' and maybe making a few custom tiles here and there. The maker of one of the promoted 'worlds' freely admitted using graphics from published sources too... so I have to wonder just how much legitimacy any such little world can garner.

I imagine the casual gaming crowd might find it cool... the younger Gaia crowd might also enjoy.

But coming from a SL user and content creator, I really just found Metaplace way too limiting.

**Cristiano** · 12-09-2008, 08:03 PM

The art direction is so cute I want to eat it.

Aimee Weber · 12-09-2008, 08:18 PM

Too cute!

Thoughts on the new Metaplace Beta-metaaimee.jpg

FlipperPA Peregrine · 12-09-2008, 08:21 PM

re: http://www.peregrinesalon.com/2008/1...out-metaplace/

I'll see what I can do about getting invites - definitely an interesting experience.

FlipperPA Peregrine · 12-09-2008, 08:29 PM

Okay, I got ten invites (to start). If anyone wants to be invited, shoot me a PM through SLU with your email address, and you'll receive an invite shortly after.

Or email direct... flipper [@t] peregrinesalon [dawwwt] com

Regards,

-Flip

Charlemagne Allen · 12-09-2008, 09:24 PM

Can I blow stuff up in that game? Me wants to see those little guys go flying!

/me cackles and rubs hands in villainy manner

CaleVinson · 12-10-2008, 12:27 AM

I finally got my invite a week or so ago. I was going to write something up once I'd had more experience with it, but since this thread is here .....

I have a somewhat different perspective from many of the comments above. I've bored people with this before, so I'll try to be brief - for me, SL is an excellent tool for the construction of mostly non-interactive "movie-set" worlds. This is in no way meant to be a "slam" of SL, I simply think that with current technology no single application can do everything.

On *first inspection*, Metaplace seems to me to have greater scope for strongly interactive worlds. In part, this is by "cheating" - its visual representation and associated demands is years behind SL. But in part this seems by design. Rather than invent their own scripting language, they've adopted one that has been used in a lot of games - Lua. "t[i]" is so much nicer than "llList2Float(t,i)".

I can bind scripted commands to any key, and, *judging by the documentation*, construct my own UIs (with standard features like sliders and text boxes) via script. Perhaps most importantly, as far as I can tell, they have not privileged the "player" representation over all others. For example, in SL, only players are truly animated (yes, yes, there are clunky script-based animation systems but you know what I mean), in MP players and non-players have the same type of graphical representation (albeit 2D sprites

).

I haven't seen any non-casual games in SL that actually worked as games. Projects like the "I Am Legend" sims were wonderful testimonies to both the scripting and building skills of the project staff, *and* to the awefulness of SL as a game engine. Its early days, and I could be wrong, but I think one could build quite a playable Diablo clone in MP.

CaleVinson · 12-10-2008, 12:37 AM

Holy crap .......

I just looked at the bottom of this thread and saw:

Quote:

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 3 (2 members and 1 guests)
CaleVinson, Raph Koster

Raph Koster · 12-10-2008, 12:52 AM

Hello everyone! Thanks for checking out MP.

Metaplace is indeed quite different from Second Life, and I do think that in some ways they are either complementary or orthogonal, depending on your point of view. We could definitely use a "Second Life User's Guide to Metaplace" I suspect!

To address some of the comments from the thread:

One thing I have questioned about Second Life in the past is the in-world building tools, with their inaccuracy, limitations, and whether or not things would be better created off-line.

MP has real-time collaborative building, including realtime script editing and collaborative worldbuilding. It's true that we don't do in-world art creation, but that is a result of choosing to have art sourced via URLs using standard formats rather than using a custom modelling format. But the instant gratification of making something and showing it off is definitely present.

Get me a beta invite!

Sure, send me an email.

My first thought was where to put the rollercoaster and the snack bar ala Roller Coaster Tycoon

Actually -- games like Rollercoaster Tycoon and the Sims are in fact direct inspirations for us. They manage to make building appealing to a huge audience, far wider than high-end tools do. So we drew a lot of lessons from that approach, making interfaces easy and "snap-together" building possible. It doesn't mean that it precludes higher-end usage, but we hope that it opens up the wonderful power of VWs to a much wider audience.

I personally find the system of content creation more akin to buying modules for one's 'world' and maybe making a few custom tiles here and there. The maker of one of the promoted 'worlds' freely admitted using graphics from published sources too... so I have to wonder just how much legitimacy any such little world can garner.

Purchasing modules can serve high or low-end uses. Low end users use it to buy furniture, much like they do in SL.

High-end users use it to share things like entire physics libraries. So it very much depends on what you are looking for. Right now, the amount of furniture items far outweighs the amount of script libraries, and I expect it to get more so that way, not less, simply because of typical user demands. Most people don't need a physics system.

coming from a SL user and content creator, I really just found Metaplace way too limiting.

I am fairly sure the only things that SL does that Metaplace cannot are centered around 3d... hence the lack of better avatar customization, for example (although we do plan to do much more on this front).

2d for us was a conscious and carefully thought out choice. Given that we privileged accessibility over so many other possible targets, we had to carefully evaluate 3d vs 2d. We know how to do 3d, we've done it many times before. But we wanted to be available with one click and no download; there are no viable 3d web-embedded solutions that meet that criteria. We also wanted content creation to be incredibly simple, and 3d is currently still a huge barrier of entry for that for the vast majority of people.

That said, Metaplace is designed to scale both up and down. I have already seen it run in a plain text client; we have plans for it to grow to full 3d as well. That said, definitely something that SL has that we don't right now.

But in terms of the capabilities of scripting, for example, I believe MP is quite competitive, albeit with a slightly different emphasis.

Among the examples of less "typical" worlds that users have made:

a port of ELIZA
a bridge to Moodle, the open source distance learning platform, so that MP worlds can return grades to the system
a social graph visualization world
a language learning system using real-time machine translation to mirror all chat so you can follow along in a foreign language
a Shakespeare world that reads the plays in XML from a remote website and puts on automated performances using bots

That's not counting the many games; as CaleVinson notes, MP was designed in large part to support entertainment content, and therefore we have an array of arcade, RPG, and puzzle games people have made.

Too cute!

We tried to pick an art style that would be reasonably aggreable to a wide demographic. It tilts younger than the typical SL demo, for sure, but overall it seems to work well for a range of ages and art style preferences. But it's not for everyone, certainly.

That said -- EVERYTHING in the art in MP is replaceable. It varies from world to world, sometimes completely. Any impression you form solely from the default art set is misleading in that the flexibility is far greater than that.

Can I blow stuff up in that game? Me wants to see those little guys go flying!

Yes. There's light cycles, pirate ships, snipers, swords... people have made many things blow up.

I can bind scripted commands to any key, and, *judging by the documentation*, construct my own UIs

That is correct. EVERYTHING that you see on screen is streamed. The keybindings, the HUD, everything in the UI, all the art. A Metaplace world could look like a Meebo chat room, or like Diablo, or like Bejeweled.

as far as I can tell, they have not privileged the "player" representation over all others

That is correct. There are Metaplace worlds where the player is just a camera, for example. And all animation capabilities for the player exist for any object. The player is simply one object definition that happens to be applied by default. The "world" and "the room" are also just object definitions, by the way.

Its early days, and I could be wrong, but I think one could build quite a playable Diablo clone in MP.

Oh definitely. Peregrine is dead on when he cites UO -- the goal is that users could literally make a full MMO like UO in MP. I would think that something like Maple Story (MP supports multiple camera angles as well) is also possible.

Any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Also, unlike Peregrine, I have infinite invites.

Macphisto Angelus · 12-10-2008, 01:02 AM

Heh.. Raph,
Don't take my Roller Coaster Tycoon comment as a slam. I own them and expansions and played tons of Microsoft's Zoo Tycoon to boot. If they inspired what you are doing I am on board to try it out. I sent Flip a PM right after his post trying to snag one of those 10 invites.

I will PM you too if the other falls through due to me being too slow.

Welcome to SLU.

Raph Koster · 12-10-2008, 01:06 AM

I just sent someone else an invite... And we happen to be discussing SL vs MP on the global chat in there right now, if you get in quickly. I am monitoring the thread, so just PM me if you want an invite sooner than Flipper will get you one.

Macphisto Angelus · 12-10-2008, 01:10 AM

PM sent. Thank you!

Looks like I am gonna enter a new world to try out..

EDIT: WOW that was fast. I am in!

Aimee Weber · 12-10-2008, 01:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raph Koster

Too cute!

We tried to pick an art style that would be reasonably aggreable to a wide demographic. It tilts younger than the typical SL demo, for sure, but overall it seems to work well for a range of ages and art style preferences. But it's not for everyone, certainly.

Actually, I didn't mean it as negative criticism ("This is too cute for me, I don't like it.") but rather the informal use of the phrase ("OMG, this is like, TOO CUTE! I totally love it!")

Raph Koster · 12-10-2008, 01:19 AM

Glad to hear it, Aimee!

Do you need an invite?

Some other folks from the thread are showing up, so I thought I could do a little Q&A within MP for SL users.

CaleVinson · 12-10-2008, 01:52 AM

In typical fashion, I forgot to mention another aspect of MP as a potentially good platform for strongly interactive worlds - its has script-callable routines for *path-finding*. Your doggy may "only" be a 2D sprite, but he's a 2D sprite that knows how to walk around trees.

(Again, *not* a slam of SL, and perhaps a partial "cheat" in MP - 2D pathfinding is a heck of a lot easier than pathfinding through a 3D "polygon soup".)

Tati · 12-10-2008, 01:52 AM

That place looks nice. It does remind me of Ragnarok Online and Maple Story.

edit: oh, can't PM Raph for some reason so I'll just wait for all your pretty pictures from inworld.

Aki Shichiroji · 12-10-2008, 02:00 AM

Hi Raph - thanks for addressing my points.

Your presentation, character options, building capabilities are all really well thought out and are obviously appealing to a mainstream audience. I think you'll do very well, and hope to continue seeing things progress in the near future. Sure, your options are limiting, but as a somewhat light-weight and more accessible means of connecting people within a representation of a meeting place, you have succeeded nicely.

For me, it's not so much a 2d/3d issue as it is an ease of content creation issue. I should probably frame my perspective as coming from someone who is not only a content creator in SL, but someone who has a visual communications, illustration and character design background as well.

One of the extremely liberating aspects of SL I've found is the fact that for the most part, it is very intuitive to go about roughing out ideas right there and then - much as one might sketch on paper, and then afterwards rendering additional detail and texture. This makes for a rapid & different means for idea generation that isn't necessarily possible with the highly 'finished' and isometric graphics that are needed for Metaplace. I guess what I'm saying is the current tools made available by Metaplace are such that there are limitations placed on spontanaety (as well as immersion), to a certain extent... and that just happens to not be the way i prefer to work... so for the moment, it's just not something that appeals to me for consistent use over and above the time i already spend elsewhere.

On the other hand, I do enjoy the fact that you have added video capability, and think the scripting capabilities are very helpful and potentially very powerful. For instance, would I be correct in assuming it may be possible to integrate additional applications with your system? I ask because this is an area where SL continues to be unable to deliver.

I *would* very much like to know if there'd be any possibility of bringing in quality whiteboard apps, perhaps similar in tool and usability to Paint Chat. Porting in of things like google docs, pdfs, etc, with added annotation capability would also be of interest. Same with individual websites, etc.

Raph Koster · 12-10-2008, 02:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aki Shichiroji

One of the extremely liberating aspects of SL I've found is the fact that for the most part, it is very intuitive to go about roughing out ideas right there and then - much as one might sketch on paper, and then afterwards rendering additional detail and texture. This makes for a rapid & different means for idea generation that isn't necessarily possible with the highly 'finished' and isometric graphics that are needed for Metaplace.

I can see that. Most users who want to block stuff out just grab quickie art off the Net. (we have integrated Yahoo image search and Google 3d Warehouse import, for example). But I think you raise a very valid point.

Quote:

On the other hand, I do enjoy the fact that you have added video capability, and think the scripting capabilities are very helpful and potentially very powerful. For instance, would I be correct in assuming it may be possible to integrate additional applications with your system? I ask because this is an area where SL continues to be unable to deliver.

I *would* very much like to know if there'd be any possibility of bringing in quality whiteboard apps, perhaps similar in tool and usability to Paint Chat. Porting in of things like google docs, pdfs, etc, with added annotation capability would also be of interest. Same with individual websites, etc.

Actually, there's a user working on bridging to Google Docs -- I think he started with spreadsheets. Because every MP server is a web server and a web browser, we are very open to that sort of integration. If it's a web service with an API you can probably use it.

**Joshua Nightshade** · 12-10-2008, 02:50 AM

Raph can I haz a beta invite?

Briar Bing · 12-10-2008, 02:56 AM

Very slick. Well worth a look guys.

Raph just gave myself and a couple others a guided tour.

I'm excited.

*goes back and pokes around some more*

**Lo Jacobs** · 12-10-2008, 02:57 AM

Raph, me too please! Thank you!

Briar Bing · 12-10-2008, 03:08 AM

He just went to bed a bit ago, but I'm sure he will send them out to you in the morning.

12-09-2008, 07:58 PM	#2 (permalink)
Lordfly Digeridoo Grid.Living I kicked your dog. TO THE MOON. Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Michigan Posts: 3,905 My Mood: SL Join Date: 7/21/2003 Business: Grid.Living Awards: 1	Get me a beta invite! __________________ http://www.lordfly.com/

12-09-2008, 07:59 PM	#3 (permalink)
Macphisto Angelus Is a bastage! It puts the lotion on it's skin!! Join Date: May 2008 Location: Cali Posts: 3,078 My Mood: SL Join Date: 10-21-2004	My first thought was where to put the rollercoaster and the snack bar ala Roller Coaster Tycoon. __________________ If life is just a joke, why aren't we laughing?

12-09-2008, 08:18 PM	#6 (permalink)
Aimee Weber Queen of the Metaverse Queen of the Metaverse Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 10,734 My Mood:	Too cute! __________________ All the cool kids are following me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/aimee

12-09-2008, 09:24 PM	#9 (permalink)
Charlemagne Allen Adorable. Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 6,383 My Mood: SL Join Date: February 2007 Blog Entries: 1	Can I blow stuff up in that game? Me wants to see those little guys go flying! /me cackles and rubs hands in villainy manner __________________ Charlemagne Allen: YOU'RE A RACIST! Charlemagne Allen: I HAVE CHATLOGS! smokergirl Lowenhar: HOMOPHOBE smokergirl Lowenhar: CONTENT THIEF Charlemagne Allen: RELIGION SUCKS DONKEY BALLS! smokergirl Lowenhar: KISS MY ASS YOU CLOSE MINDED HYPOCRIT Charlemagne Allen: YOU WERE AN ESCORT FOR BARN ANIMALS! Charlemagne Allen: ZOMG BIG SIG! Pretty things: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlemagneallen/

12-10-2008, 12:52 AM	#12 (permalink)
Raph Koster Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 24	Hello everyone! Thanks for checking out MP. Metaplace is indeed quite different from Second Life, and I do think that in some ways they are either complementary or orthogonal, depending on your point of view. We could definitely use a "Second Life User's Guide to Metaplace" I suspect! To address some of the comments from the thread: One thing I have questioned about Second Life in the past is the in-world building tools, with their inaccuracy, limitations, and whether or not things would be better created off-line. MP has real-time collaborative building, including realtime script editing and collaborative worldbuilding. It's true that we don't do in-world art creation, but that is a result of choosing to have art sourced via URLs using standard formats rather than using a custom modelling format. But the instant gratification of making something and showing it off is definitely present. Get me a beta invite! Sure, send me an email. My first thought was where to put the rollercoaster and the snack bar ala Roller Coaster Tycoon Actually -- games like Rollercoaster Tycoon and the Sims are in fact direct inspirations for us. They manage to make building appealing to a huge audience, far wider than high-end tools do. So we drew a lot of lessons from that approach, making interfaces easy and "snap-together" building possible. It doesn't mean that it precludes higher-end usage, but we hope that it opens up the wonderful power of VWs to a much wider audience. I personally find the system of content creation more akin to buying modules for one's 'world' and maybe making a few custom tiles here and there. The maker of one of the promoted 'worlds' freely admitted using graphics from published sources too... so I have to wonder just how much legitimacy any such little world can garner. Purchasing modules can serve high or low-end uses. Low end users use it to buy furniture, much like they do in SL. High-end users use it to share things like entire physics libraries. So it very much depends on what you are looking for. Right now, the amount of furniture items far outweighs the amount of script libraries, and I expect it to get more so that way, not less, simply because of typical user demands. Most people don't need a physics system. coming from a SL user and content creator, I really just found Metaplace way too limiting. I am fairly sure the only things that SL does that Metaplace cannot are centered around 3d... hence the lack of better avatar customization, for example (although we do plan to do much more on this front). 2d for us was a conscious and carefully thought out choice. Given that we privileged accessibility over so many other possible targets, we had to carefully evaluate 3d vs 2d. We know how to do 3d, we've done it many times before. But we wanted to be available with one click and no download; there are no viable 3d web-embedded solutions that meet that criteria. We also wanted content creation to be incredibly simple, and 3d is currently still a huge barrier of entry for that for the vast majority of people. That said, Metaplace is designed to scale both up and down. I have already seen it run in a plain text client; we have plans for it to grow to full 3d as well. That said, definitely something that SL has that we don't right now. But in terms of the capabilities of scripting, for example, I believe MP is quite competitive, albeit with a slightly different emphasis. Among the examples of less "typical" worlds that users have made: a port of ELIZA a bridge to Moodle, the open source distance learning platform, so that MP worlds can return grades to the system a social graph visualization world a language learning system using real-time machine translation to mirror all chat so you can follow along in a foreign language a Shakespeare world that reads the plays in XML from a remote website and puts on automated performances using bots That's not counting the many games; as CaleVinson notes, MP was designed in large part to support entertainment content, and therefore we have an array of arcade, RPG, and puzzle games people have made. Too cute! We tried to pick an art style that would be reasonably aggreable to a wide demographic. It tilts younger than the typical SL demo, for sure, but overall it seems to work well for a range of ages and art style preferences. But it's not for everyone, certainly. That said -- EVERYTHING in the art in MP is replaceable. It varies from world to world, sometimes completely. Any impression you form solely from the default art set is misleading in that the flexibility is far greater than that. Can I blow stuff up in that game? Me wants to see those little guys go flying! Yes. There's light cycles, pirate ships, snipers, swords... people have made many things blow up. I can bind scripted commands to any key, and, judging by the documentation, construct my own UIs That is correct. EVERYTHING that you see on screen is streamed. The keybindings, the HUD, everything in the UI, all the art. A Metaplace world could look like a Meebo chat room, or like Diablo, or like Bejeweled. as far as I can tell, they have not privileged the "player" representation over all others That is correct. There are Metaplace worlds where the player is just a camera, for example. And all animation capabilities for the player exist for any object. The player is simply one object definition that happens to be applied by default. The "world" and "the room" are also just object definitions, by the way. Its early days, and I could be wrong, but I think one could build quite a playable Diablo clone in MP. Oh definitely. Peregrine is dead on when he cites UO -- the goal is that users could literally make a full MMO like UO in MP. I would think that something like Maple Story (MP supports multiple camera angles as well) is also possible. Any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Also, unlike Peregrine, I have infinite invites.

12-09-2008, 08:01 PM	#4 (permalink)
Aki Shichiroji Exotic Made-up Monster Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Toronto Posts: 2,891 My Mood: SL Join Date: 7/22/2006 Business: Organica	I'm in there as Aki Shichiroji. I got an invite some time last week, spent about an hour in there and really haven't taken the time to explore further. As much as it might be more usable and accessible to general audiences, I personally find the system of content creation more akin to buying modules for one's 'world' and maybe making a few custom tiles here and there. The maker of one of the promoted 'worlds' freely admitted using graphics from published sources too... so I have to wonder just how much legitimacy any such little world can garner. I imagine the casual gaming crowd might find it cool... the younger Gaia crowd might also enjoy. But coming from a SL user and content creator, I really just found Metaplace way too limiting.

12-09-2008, 08:21 PM	#7 (permalink)
FlipperPA Peregrine Evil Incarnate! Recursion is beautiful! Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 7,085 My Mood: SL Join Date: 2003-11-14 Business: Peregrine Salon	re: http://www.peregrinesalon.com/2008/1...out-metaplace/ I'll see what I can do about getting invites - definitely an interesting experience.

12-09-2008, 08:29 PM	#8 (permalink)
FlipperPA Peregrine Evil Incarnate! Recursion is beautiful! Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 7,085 My Mood: SL Join Date: 2003-11-14 Business: Peregrine Salon	Okay, I got ten invites (to start). If anyone wants to be invited, shoot me a PM through SLU with your email address, and you'll receive an invite shortly after. Or email direct... flipper [@t] peregrinesalon [dawwwt] com Regards, -Flip

12-10-2008, 12:27 AM	#10 (permalink)
CaleVinson Hypersonic Absolutist Fully Zeno certified Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 1,506	I finally got my invite a week or so ago. I was going to write something up once I'd had more experience with it, but since this thread is here ..... I have a somewhat different perspective from many of the comments above. I've bored people with this before, so I'll try to be brief - for me, SL is an excellent tool for the construction of mostly non-interactive "movie-set" worlds. This is in no way meant to be a "slam" of SL, I simply think that with current technology no single application can do everything. On first inspection, Metaplace seems to me to have greater scope for strongly interactive worlds. In part, this is by "cheating" - its visual representation and associated demands is years behind SL. But in part this seems by design. Rather than invent their own scripting language, they've adopted one that has been used in a lot of games - Lua. "t[i]" is so much nicer than "llList2Float(t,i)". I can bind scripted commands to any key, and, judging by the documentation, construct my own UIs (with standard features like sliders and text boxes) via script. Perhaps most importantly, as far as I can tell, they have not privileged the "player" representation over all others. For example, in SL, only players are truly animated (yes, yes, there are clunky script-based animation systems but you know what I mean), in MP players and non-players have the same type of graphical representation (albeit 2D sprites ). I haven't seen any non-casual games in SL that actually worked as games. Projects like the "I Am Legend" sims were wonderful testimonies to both the scripting and building skills of the project staff, and to the awefulness of SL as a game engine. Its early days, and I could be wrong, but I think one could build quite a playable Diablo clone in MP.

12-10-2008, 01:02 AM	#13 (permalink)
Macphisto Angelus Is a bastage! It puts the lotion on it's skin!! Join Date: May 2008 Location: Cali Posts: 3,078 My Mood: SL Join Date: 10-21-2004	Heh.. Raph, Don't take my Roller Coaster Tycoon comment as a slam. I own them and expansions and played tons of Microsoft's Zoo Tycoon to boot. If they inspired what you are doing I am on board to try it out. I sent Flip a PM right after his post trying to snag one of those 10 invites. I will PM you too if the other falls through due to me being too slow. Welcome to SLU.

12-10-2008, 01:06 AM	#14 (permalink)
Raph Koster Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 24	I just sent someone else an invite... And we happen to be discussing SL vs MP on the global chat in there right now, if you get in quickly. I am monitoring the thread, so just PM me if you want an invite sooner than Flipper will get you one.

12-10-2008, 01:10 AM	#15 (permalink)
Macphisto Angelus Is a bastage! It puts the lotion on it's skin!! Join Date: May 2008 Location: Cali Posts: 3,078 My Mood: SL Join Date: 10-21-2004	PM sent. Thank you! Looks like I am gonna enter a new world to try out.. EDIT: WOW that was fast. I am in! Last edited by Macphisto Angelus; 12-10-2008 at 01:15 AM.

12-10-2008, 01:19 AM	#17 (permalink)
Raph Koster Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 24	Glad to hear it, Aimee! Do you need an invite? Some other folks from the thread are showing up, so I thought I could do a little Q&A within MP for SL users.

12-10-2008, 01:52 AM	#18 (permalink)
CaleVinson Hypersonic Absolutist Fully Zeno certified Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 1,506	In typical fashion, I forgot to mention another aspect of MP as a potentially good platform for strongly interactive worlds - its has script-callable routines for path-finding. Your doggy may "only" be a 2D sprite, but he's a 2D sprite that knows how to walk around trees. (Again, not a slam of SL, and perhaps a partial "cheat" in MP - 2D pathfinding is a heck of a lot easier than pathfinding through a 3D "polygon soup".)

12-10-2008, 01:52 AM	#19 (permalink)
Tati Seize the day by the throat Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 551 My Mood: SL Join Date: 5/30/2007	That place looks nice. It does remind me of Ragnarok Online and Maple Story. edit: oh, can't PM Raph for some reason so I'll just wait for all your pretty pictures from inworld. __________________ If you're going thru Hell.. .. Keep Going.

12-10-2008, 02:00 AM	#20 (permalink)
Aki Shichiroji Exotic Made-up Monster Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Toronto Posts: 2,891 My Mood: SL Join Date: 7/22/2006 Business: Organica	Hi Raph - thanks for addressing my points. Your presentation, character options, building capabilities are all really well thought out and are obviously appealing to a mainstream audience. I think you'll do very well, and hope to continue seeing things progress in the near future. Sure, your options are limiting, but as a somewhat light-weight and more accessible means of connecting people within a representation of a meeting place, you have succeeded nicely. For me, it's not so much a 2d/3d issue as it is an ease of content creation issue. I should probably frame my perspective as coming from someone who is not only a content creator in SL, but someone who has a visual communications, illustration and character design background as well. One of the extremely liberating aspects of SL I've found is the fact that for the most part, it is very intuitive to go about roughing out ideas right there and then - much as one might sketch on paper, and then afterwards rendering additional detail and texture. This makes for a rapid & different means for idea generation that isn't necessarily possible with the highly 'finished' and isometric graphics that are needed for Metaplace. I guess what I'm saying is the current tools made available by Metaplace are such that there are limitations placed on spontanaety (as well as immersion), to a certain extent... and that just happens to not be the way i prefer to work... so for the moment, it's just not something that appeals to me for consistent use over and above the time i already spend elsewhere. On the other hand, I do enjoy the fact that you have added video capability, and think the scripting capabilities are very helpful and potentially very powerful. For instance, would I be correct in assuming it may be possible to integrate additional applications with your system? I ask because this is an area where SL continues to be unable to deliver. I would very much like to know if there'd be any possibility of bringing in quality whiteboard apps, perhaps similar in tool and usability to Paint Chat. Porting in of things like google docs, pdfs, etc, with added annotation capability would also be of interest. Same with individual websites, etc.

12-10-2008, 02:56 AM	#23 (permalink)
Briar Bing Thorny yet fuzzy Oh, I zigs and I zags; I tos and I fros Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 2,694 My Mood: SL Join Date: May 2003	Very slick. Well worth a look guys. Raph just gave myself and a couple others a guided tour. I'm excited. goes back and pokes around some more __________________ The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. --Dorothy Parker

12-10-2008, 02:57 AM	#24 (permalink)
Lo Jacobs Kitten Fuzz *SLU Supporter* Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Chicago by way of Los Angeles Posts: 4,176 SL Join Date: May 2004 Blog Entries: 17 Awards: 1	Raph, me too please! Thank you! __________________ SORRY FOR PARTY ROCKING

12-10-2008, 03:08 AM	#25 (permalink)
Briar Bing Thorny yet fuzzy Oh, I zigs and I zags; I tos and I fros Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 2,694 My Mood: SL Join Date: May 2003	He just went to bed a bit ago, but I'm sure he will send them out to you in the morning.

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