Byngo is Booming Again

After several weeks of angst among the byngo fanatics, it looks like the game is flourishing again. There was a period of withdrawal that had some lovers of the game panting for its return. To satisfy the Linden Lab, the creator of the game, Dazzo Staheli, has redesigned the Super B Bonus game so that there is a decision making element. I watched as some of the players tried out the new game, and learned how to play it properly. After several days of trial it looks like the nearly finished product is back on line at all the byngo places in Second Life. 

Dazzo is hoping that this is the end of the changes. I talked to two of the byngo place owners. Both seem to like it. Bold Baddingham said, ”It's going good, Super B bonus plays a lot differently. But once people of gotten used to it, I’d say feedback is great, players like it. It`s more of a challenge to play. There a sense of achievement even if you don’t win in a lot of cases.” Felgood812 Solo remarked, “Well they seem to like it. ... just one I talked to don’t like it. .... too hard for her but everyone else does. ... just a little slow getting them back here to play.” 

I also talked to several players.  Alyssa Darwinian told me, “Yes I have played it, but only once. And I was confused. I did not know about the changes and when my game was over after only 1 line I was bummed. I have since read the new rules, which I should have done before playing the game, and it looks like it is going to be fun.  I see myself back to playing the game as much as ever. And I used to play all the time, which means everyday (laughter).” and Cassie  Broadfoot told me she loved it and likes that it “requires more concentration and strategy,” and has already won quite a few times. 

If you like to play bingo in real-life try byngo in SL. Check out the Byngo Bonus group for more information and places to play. 

Editor's note: Be sure to check out Gemma's earlier article about the Byngo controversy Here. 

Gemma Cleanslate

Stepping Large in Second Life

It seems like there’s a large variety of avatars in second life besides human avatars like we are in the real world. Furries have a wide range of real life and mythical animals to anthromorphize as. There are robots around as well like transformers or maybe an android or two. For the more spiritual I have seen some avatars as angels.

When I met with Ceri Quixote at her shop Quixote’s Dream at the landmark of the same name she showed me there are still ways to make your avatar unique in SL.  Her shop sold skins for women as different colors but that’s not what was different about her. When I warped to her shop my avatar at max height was maybe less than half her height or maybe a third.

Ceri Quixote makes Colossus avatars in Second Life. She told me she wanted to push the envelope in Second Life to what she could make with mesh which has been incorporated in SL recently with viewers like Phoenix and Firestorm. Her current avatar was just the tip of the iceberg.

Ceri and I ported to a sandbox to see the main course. When she put on her avatar, she was a giant like perhaps a giant from jack and the beanstalk. My griffin self was a mere speck compared to her massive or gargantuan avatar. I was sure to take a couple photos.

I joked with Ceri that in addition to invading Tokyo like Godzilla she could easily pick up guys. She laughed at the joke. Also Ceri will make the large avatar for not only women, but men as well.

Sadly the massive avatar was not for sale. However the regular Colossus avatar will be on sale at the end of May. Ceri said she was still fine tuning the scripts and outfits for men and women.

I asked Ceri being a furry myself, does she have any furry avatars she would want to incorporate into her colossal avatar?

Ceri Quixote: I've always been partial to bunnies - the Kani avatar is one of the first I bought in SL. So bunny fans in the furry community will have an XL option soon.

I asked, if I wanted to buy one what the price would it be? "1,500L" I said, that’s a good price. I paid more for a popular feral avatar.

I asked Ceri, what if she was tall like her super-sized avatar, what she would do?

Ceri Quixote: If I were that tall in real life? I'd probably travel as much as possible.

An easy feat if she was the 50 foot woman, like the B movie.

So if want to impress your friends with a cool new avatar and you’re tired of the same old furry or human or robot options. Be on the lookout for Ceri’s new look so you can step large in Second Life.

By Grease Coakes

Editor's Note, Hamlet Au found this Youtube of the Colussus, by Deceptions Digital. There's also another by "OldMountainWizard."

Lindens Launch 100 Pathfinding Sims

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gone viral on Second Life's main grid. A new technology called pathfinding embeds AI in SL servers. On over 100 sims, AI characters can navigate intelligently among avatars, terrain, walkways, and obstacles, with behaviors such as pursuit, wander, evade, patrol, and navigate to location.

Any of these behaviors can be invoked with 2 lines of Linden Scripting Language (LSL)… to automatically move mesh or classic prim objects… possibly replacing hundreds of lines of vehicle animation code. Is this just a reduction in user code or something more? Yes, much more.

Pathfinding is a new mobility ecosystem. Pathfinding can calculate all feasible pathways across land and prims (e.g. bridges), generating a navimesh (picture 1). Pathfinding characters (aka Non Player Characters or NPC) use AI searches to find navigable pathways to their target avatar, object, or location. Throw up a roadblock? No problem, they will find another way round. There is enough randomness and simulated nervousness in the solution, that NPCs have distinctively organic motions.

Yeah, but what about lag? Everyone asks. Okies. I ran stress tests with my animated NPCs on the Snack Sandbox regions. Kitty is a 4 legged animated critter that walks. Funky Munky is a humanoid NPC that strides and does a funny skit. I took baseline performance stats, then starting rezzing wandering NPCs simwide; hundreds of them.

As I watched the lag numbers; a startling result! At first, only 2 numbers trended with added NPCs, Physics Time went up and Spare Time went down. All other numbers flatlined... no effect. Just over 100 NPCs and Spare Time hit zero; the first noticeable lag. Amp that up to 200 NPCs, and yes, we are driving frame time up as well, but linearly, not aggressively. Even more surprising, virtually no NPCs crashed. After rezzing 200 kitties, I only lost 2 and the population held steady for several hours. Conclusion: multiply your Spare Time by 5 and that's how many animated NPCs you could rez on your sim without any noticeable lag.

That means, Lindens created a very reliable and efficient infrastructure, but only for NPCs. Of course, all this AI is beta test, and sim crashes happen often outside the sandbox. You know this when you can't move or chat… you've got crash! The sim does an auto-rollback, including your inventory; and sometimes you relog to a place you left hours ago! Time Warp! Coolies!

The Lindens should be congratulated for these achievements... but that's not enough. User generated NPCs should support animations, in other words, NPCs with moving limbs that walk and gesture. I used the very popular prim animation script by Ferd for my NPCs. My teaching NPCs worked for weeks… umm… until Wednesday, when Lindens rolled out a new server beta that broke all my prim animations and everyone else's. Ugh! Fix that bug!

To date, Lindens test pathfinding with the default cubes that you rez when you start building (Picture 2). This testing scales to other non-articulated NPCs such as rubber duckies, plastic bunny toys, and snails. Clever use of flexiprims gives you a few more options (Picture 3). Let's see, hmmm, NPC can only travel on land and float but not animate… maybe ghosts? daleks? spaghetti monsters?

To fill the vast depopulated regions of SL with engaging content, citizens of SL need animated NPCs… i.e. NPC people and realistic, animated NPC critters. I'm just saying... pathfinding has tremendous potential. Linden Prayers that it lives up to expectations!

Picture 4: Any, Lorca Linden, Maestro Linden, and Falcon Linden, "the genius behind pathfinding AI. Dude! ... You ROCK!" 

The Pathfinder Users Group (PUG) meets Thursdays at 4pm SL time on Aditi test grid at the PathTest megaregions (use the Map to find us!). Chat log from this meeting: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Pathfinding_in_Second_Life/2012-05-03


Any1 Gynoid

Original published on CNN 

The Kattoan Avatars

I haven't been inworld much, playing Minecraft and other games and all, but when I heard that Kinzart Kreetures had a new variety of Hyena out (Kinzart being one of the places I avatar shop often at), I came across something... unusual. Something I hadn't seen before, and after being on Second Life for five plus years, anything unique or that stands out is rare for me.

Enter the Kattoans. These are small avatars that look like, well, a mammal, at first look. I wasn't quite sure what they were. They're mesh avatars with a wide variety of colors. I grabbed a lime green one and was referred to as a muppet, so I grabbed an almond-color one as well. I was impressed with the avatar overall, and could actually envision a tiny civilization of these guys elsewhere. They're only a little bit bigger than the largest of the Meeroos, and I could -easily- see them as befriending the 'roos for companionship.

I tracked down the avatar creator, one Athau-xan, also known as 1000 Carlos, and we sat down to a brief interview.

Xymbers Slade, "These are some pretty neat avs, 1K. Where did you come up with the idea? (smile)"

Athau-xan, "Most of my inspiration came from Spiral Knights, mainly. I also threw together a couple different art-styles from around the N64-era."

Xymbers Slade, "Can't say I've heard of that... sounds like an anime. It's still very unusual and it was enough to draw my attention away from the hyenas I was after for the time being. Were they difficult to create? I hear mesh isn't the friendliest thing to work with."

Athau-xan, "They weren't too difficult to make. How long it actually took me to make them is hard to say, as I just worked on them a little bit whenever I had spare time. I purposely kept them really low polycount because, artistically, it looked better, and I wanted them to use as little resources on the sim as possible."

Xymbers Slade, "What exactly are they supposed to be, besides a very unique race? Kind of like... I don't know, a groundhog or something? Or a fuzzy rodent of some kind, perhaps?"

Athau-xan, "I'm not quite sure myself really, something like a mix between a rodent and a mole I guess."

Xymbers Slade, "Is there anything you wanted to do with them but couldn't thanks to Second Life, well... being Second Life?"

Athau-xan, "I would've liked to make the body separate pieces, which I could. but unfortunately SL likes to make really bad seams where parts are split, and I didn't really want the avatar covered in seams."

Xymbers Slade, "I don't know a thing about building, so I'll take your word for it. I see over there the sign for the 'Republic of Kattoa.' Do you have a grand design for them in mind or are you letting the incoming community build on its own?"

Athau-xan, "I do have my own future plans for the Kattoans. Such as perhaps an entire sim dedicated to them in the long run. I'll eventually release a builders kit when I get around to it so the community can create their own ideas for them."

Xymbers Slade, "Do you also do commissions? I know I'd like to see, say, a set of knight's armor, or something."

Athau-xan, "I am currently not accepting commisions, and I don't expect to start in the forseeable future, but I do have a knight set planned, among plenty of other outfits."

Xymbers Slade, "Ok, is Okarthel the only spot you have these available, or have you got a main store somewhere?"

Athau-xan, "Currently Okarthel is the only location to find Kattoans. I do plan on getting my own simulator for them eventually, but I cannot say when that will happen."

Xymbers Slade, "Sims ain't cheap, but I'll get behind this if one does pop up."

I could see these critters clearly in my head in their own little civilization running around. It is very rare that one can see something just "spring to life" in one's head like that. These guys are small enough to even ride the My Little Pony avatars I did a piece on a while ago, and I can see several potential possibilities in my head that this could really take off and give other avatar makers a run for their money. At about 350 $L, plus the cheap cost of outfits, they're far cheaper than most avatars I've come across. They come in a wide variety of colors and currently four mesh outfits are also available as separate purchases. One of them, the civilian outfit, being free.

Four Dragon Hoards out of five --- only because I want to give it room to grow and see where it goes. This is something I can really get behind. They can currently be found in a corner of the Okarthel sim.

Xymbers Slade

The JessicaBelle Aeronautic Projects Airbase

JessicaBelle Dayafter, whom made the news some months ago with the release of her FW190 fighter-bomber, has an airbase. Located on a platform high over the Potomac Center sim, it is open to all, and is fun for either hanging out, target practice, or both.

The platform is made of of four regions: the airport, the ground target field, the sea target field, and a green space which for the moment had just grass and trees. The airport's largest building is the hangar, which houses one of each of her aircraft: the German Focke-Wulf-190 fighter bomber, the American Grumman Wildcat fighter-bomber, and the Junkers Ju 87 G2 Stuka. The FW-190 and Wildcat can strike at ground targets through either bombs or rockets. The Stuka is a "Kanonenvogel" model, equipped to fire either bombs or anti-tank cannons. All fire machine guns, with the Stuka also having a rear-mounted gun. The planes are on sale for 1,000 Lindens each. To see what the plans have to offer, there is a rezzer besides the hangar that allows visitors to "try before you buy."

To test out the airplanes before buying, or target practice in general, there are a number of targets up to demolish. The airfield itself has a nubbier of parked planes which can be fired upon. After their hitpoints reach zero, the explode and are reduced to smoldering wrecks. They self-repair after a few minutes. Outside the airfield is a water area with a couple ships. Blasting them with bombs, rockets, rounds, etc. will result in an explosion followed by the stricken ship sinking. In another corner are fuel tanks and tents. Blowing up the tanks can be fun as the explosion sends the top hurtling in the air, spinning.

There's also a robo-plane, marked with the word "Target" that sits on the ground until touched. Once airborne, it flies around at random, until shot down.

The other building at the airport is the lounge. The building has a pool table people can play at, or get a drink at the nearby bar. There's also a map on the wall showing the various airports of the Second Life Mainland (and there are a *lot* of them). Upstairs is JessicaBelle's office. For fun, there's a "Death Star" that people can press, which releases hordes of buzzing particle TIE fighters.

The JessicaBelle Aeronautic Projects Airbase is located at Rainbows of Hope, Potomac Center (203, 170, 1001).

Bixyl Shuftan

A Look at Minecraft

So I haven't been around much on SL. Other things have occupied my time for the moment (Google things like Dungeon Crawl and Dungeon Hack for examples). Things such as Minecraft, the game of mining resources and building things.

It's essentially SL in 8-bit, where things are a lot more "basic." When you first start the game, a landscape is generated, and this stretches infinitely in all directions, generating randomly as you walk. The more you walk, the more is generated. The world is made up of blocks of all kinds, each line of blocks being marked as a "layer" (Layer 63 is sea level, 128 is the highest and 0 is bedrock, unbreakable). You wander the procedurally-generated landscape, digging into the dirt and gravel to build yourself a little domain (which can be little or not so little, depending on what you want) and look for resources such as seeds, wheat, iron and coal to make things like torches, dyes for colored wool, iron for tools, and water and lava for basic decoration. Digging deeper into the ground exposes ravines, mines, caves and strongholds, all with basic things to loot (such as chests) and things to destroy (monster spawners).

Along the way you can lure cows and sheep to a "farm" to raise wool and steak (your character does need to eat), build an enchanting table for enchanting items, and build a Nether Portal out of a material called "Obsidian" to explore a procedurally generated "Hell" version of Minecraft. All the while you need to defend yourself for when the monsters come out at night --- zombies, spiders, skeletons with bows, and the deadliest of them all, a walking bomb known as the Creeper. They get close and go off, and boom, you die. When you die your gear remains in-world for five minutes, so if you were hundreds or thousands of blocks away from your place of death and spawn at "home," and you lose a lot of time spent and resources. It can be frustrating.

There's also a feature where you can connect to play multiplayer, and servers exist for creation, combat, and almost all in between. So you can build sprawling pixel art several dozens of layers high, or go hunting for other players' homes/bases dug into the mountainside and try and loot them, fighting in PvP. If you're good, you manage to loot a month or two's worth of real-time efforts in gathering resources like iron, coal and gold (and the more valuable things, such as Lapis Lazuli, Redstone, Obsidian and Diamonds). If you're bad, you don't have the reflexes to take on a bunch of players at once when you're a lone wolf out in the wilderness and you lose up to two real time months or more of gathered resources as your base gets heavily griefed (as mine was recently) in a nine-on-one gang stomp.

Minecraft gave me a new appreciation for the builders of SL (blocks and prims, very similar); I might even get into more building of things in SL now --- and not get my stuff destroyed by players less than half my age!

I'm going to give Minecraft a firm Three Dragon Hoards out of five --- it inspires creativity yet limits you to an 8-bit feel and resources, so you have to get creative on how to use what you do have to the best of its ability. It would have been five but I took one away for the brattiness of some of the players (turns out the server I chose is full of 12 year olds, literally, and I don't want to deal with those kinds of temper tantrums if things go bad for -them-); and I took another one away because of its cost... while a basic version of Minecraft can be played on their website if you sign up, the full version is pretty pricey (at about $30).

Xymbers Slade

The Sea of Aley

What an amazing build I have been visiting in LEA. That is The Linden Endowment of the Arts and is an official Linden Community Partnership program whose purpose is to help new artists, cultivate art in SL, and foster creativity, innovation, and collaboration within the art community. I took that from the wiki.

This is not the first LEA exhibits I have visited but it is certainly one of the most enjoyable. Aley has put all her wonderful underwater foliage, ancient ruin buildings, sunken ships and boats, a volcano, and more down there for you to explore. She has also placed ancient treasure chests that you can plunder for many of her wonderful creations. You will also find Nemo-themed vehicles through out the display.

I am not big on hunts because I get discouraged too quickly, but this one is such fun. You walk among the ruins, the lovely sea plants, and search for the treasure chests. Every time I go there I find something new. There are mermaids, divers, amazing fish and other sea life. I was lucky enough to run into a flying fish, and that fish turned out to be the artist creator of this amazing exhibit.

Aley told me about herself. This is not her first life in Second Life. She has had about five avatars and has left SL several times, but is always drawn back. You may recall Arcadia Asylum, well, that is Aley. Arcadia was her first account and at that time she worked in hobo and grunge. I first saw that work near in the Hobo Railway Infohub, a railway stop in Caletta. I had been there before I realized it was her work. You can still find her early and present works all free at the Library and Museum at http://slurl.com/secondlife/cheonma/191/152/74 .

That is one more thing I learned. Everything Aley makes is free and transferable and she considers it open source. She loves to see others use her creations and even improve on them if that is possible. ”I love the most when people make better stuff from all the junk,” she said. Aley was great fun to talk to. She took me to see the new mer house that she has put in the sea recently. It is cute an delightful.

Regarding her works, she says, “everything in SL is very transitory, but the web saves it all. This account I started a sort of clockwork punk theme then totally sidetracked into aquatics.” She would love to see her aquatic work all over the Second Life seas. It is too bad it cannot be placed in the Blake seas to be admired by all, she told me, “Well I have been trapped in SL for some 7 years now so my only goal is just to litter the grid with my prims. I tried to escape SL 3 times.“

I love it! You really need to visit the spectacular Sea of Aley. When you arrive you will be on land. just jump in and have a great time. She is sharing the sim with her friend Mcarp. I will tell you about that part next (before you jump, in there is one treasure chest on land in the lighthouse). http://slurl.com/secondlife/LEA11/112/106/21

Gemma Cleanslate