Rock

There was a fault on the server. If you download the files again it should be OK now.

Rock

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Cristiano

I had the same problem - I was finally able to download the latest release, but every time I have tried to log in, it says the server is down. When is it actually ever open?

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* slu stuff *

Ariane

So when is Blue Mars going to be open to the public?

Last November they said January, then in January they said April, then in April they said June, then in June they said August, and now I am hearing September. At least the interval has shortened to a month.

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eku Zhong

i was in yesterday .. the new files DL just fine and dandy and pretty fast

then i got motion sickness walking around
gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

but it was a beautiful nausea.

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Pol

Seems like fairly hefty tech specs...is this going to be useable on laptops?

Lordfly Digeridoo

Unless the laptop has a dedicated video card, no.

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Pol

I ask because all of my computers at this point are laptops. I understand that integrated graphics would be a non-starter, but I do have a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo with an NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT. Should I bother to get excited about Blue Mars? Not being much of a gamer, I have zero concept of what is a decent gaming card these days.

Cristiano

It ran fine on my laptop with the same specs. However, I was not impressed by it so far.

Rock

AR have only ever made one announcement about the start date for the public beta (31st August).

I think you may be confusing the launch dates for the development beta with the launch date for the public beta.

Rock

Pol

Oh? Do tell...

Miriel Enfield

I wouldn't really trust Lordfly with specs issues, Pol. Your laptop sounds like it should be fine.

And yeah, Blue Mars has a lot of stuff about it right now that isn't impressive -- I don't mean bugs, but features that are missing or lacking or annoying (or ugly, in the case of avatars). The devs have said that they plan to change a lot of these in the future. They seem to be from the "well, it's very unfinished but it works, so here" school of betas, instead of the "it's finished but unpolished, test it for bugs and annoyances please" school. I do wish they were more open about the fact that a lot will change, since the first time I actually logged in, I was very disappointed and didn't touch it again for well over a month.

Lordfly Digeridoo

Are you implying a laptop with integrated graphics will run Blue Mars?

Miriel Enfield

No. It was just a general suggestion, since, IIRC, Hypatia has repeatedly had to correct you about the specs issue.

Pol

Like many of us here, I would love to see a real SL competitor get some traction. I'm disappointed there won't be a Mac client for Blue Mars, but I'd be willing to Boot Camp my Macbook to give it a fair shot.

Rock

Sorry for that Miriel.

The intention was never to release initially a fully featured Blue Mars and ask people to bug-report it. The strategy was always to issue a minimal-featured release, bug-test that, with all the beta testers testing the same feature set, then when the bugs were reasonable under control to issue a new release, with some extra features, and to bug-check that release, and so on until Blue mars was fully featured. An evolutionary approach.

I have really enjoyed this beta journey with BM and have learnt an awful lot about it due to this strongly focussed approach, and have never felt overwhelmed. I have also got to try things I don't think I would have tried if it was a fully-featured Blue Mars from the outset. So, I have played with the Cloth, Item and Cosmetics Editors, and am now looking forward to the Avatar Editor and Animation Editor which are due for release before the end of the year.

I also like the fact that I can suggest features as we go along, and that BM are very responsive to suggestions.

The BM economy will be launched at the end of this month, so maybe now is the time to rejoin the beta testing programme and have some fun with the free money BM are handing out

Rock

Ariane

umm,

Blue Mars gets beta, launch dates News // MMO /// Eurogamer - Games Reviews, News and More

Obviously they missed their goals.

Miriel Enfield

I've been back. (Though they're not giving me city developer tools, even though I signed the NDA -- not that I'd buy a city at the moment anyway, but I faxed that thing in, you know ) I've been trying to use the cloth editor, but not had much success: I can import the sample jacket, and that's it. I could probably edit the sample jacket a bit and then import it, but that's all. They're promising better documentation, though, so I'm waiting for that.

Edav Nomad

I just got the beta invite today and I am currently downloading it. How long does it take to download?

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Edav Nomad

I got done downloading and installing it. I went in for just for a few minutes and it was very laggy. It uses DirectX 10 or at least it does for me. Is there a way to make it use DX 9 or at least adjust the settings?

Rock

Yes, Blue Mars runs in one of 4 graphics modes (similar to SL). You can set it to 1 (low), 2 (medium), 3 (High) and 4 (Very High). For the beta the default is 4 (very high) so BM can get feedback on what different rigs will reproduce. If you post your specs here I can have a look at them for you, especially the CPU, RAM, OS, and Graphics card (but do post your experience in the BM forum so the devs can get feedback too).

You can change the default resolution if you are getting lag, look at this thread for details: Life On Mars - GFX RESOLUTION

Rock

I am using Windows XP, so I am in DirectX 9 anyway.

eku Zhong

i have no lag at all in BM.. my problem is motion sickness... waaaaaa

Ariane

I got my beta invite yesterday, and wrote about 10 paragraphs of what I thought about it on my blog which is sitting in draft mode until the NDA gets lifted. I plan to get on for a couple more hours tonight.

Hypatia Callisto

by and large, most SL folks I have talked to are negative.

by and large, a great deal of people I talk to inworld are positive.

The biggest most important thing they have to fix is the chat interface. That's a fail. But they are and I am looking forward to that.

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"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.

Hypatia Callisto

Some folks never let facts get in the way of a debate.

It's all ZOMG its not the SL killer will my biz go away for some folks. What those folks don't realise, is that it's appealing to a very different user than themselves.

Seriously though, my experiences inworld is that a large majority like that the avatar looks better in the inworld lighting. I overheard a pair of girls commenting how happy they are that their faces don't need a facelight dialed up to 1000x degrees.

I have run into a lot of developers inworld from other communities on the net who hate SL too, many with Crysis modding backgrounds. I chatted with a few guys this evening in fact and had a really interesting discussion, one of them even a Mac user inworld on his Mac Pro. It's going to be interesting.

Pie Psaltery

I just got my beta invite yesterday too. For me, downloading was easy, tho it took forever on my crappy internet connection (the same crappy internet connection that crashes me out of SL or lags me to the floor). But once loaded, I have had zero issues... no lagging, no crashing, nothing but ridiculous gorgeousness everywhere I looked.

From an end-user perspective (because altho I do some casual content creation in SL, I'm not rushing in to become a Dev in BM) I had my socks wowed off. Beautiful lighting and shadows, swaying trees and reflective water... too much pretty to even take in all at once.

Honestly, as someone who walked onto the SL platform when there were less then 2 dozens sims to the whole world, when there were no custom animations or scuplties or flexie prims or Windlight or Voice or ... much of anything ... and thought for sure in 2004 that by 2009 SL would look much much better then it does right now... I am giddy with the possiblities that BM seems to be showing me.

My opinion is that the vast majority of casual SL users who have no interest in creating much and just like SL as a pretty chat room... BM is a much more attractive chat room. A few good early adopter developers using the lessons of what people want in their virtual enviroment are going to make a shit load of money on this platform.