Sunday, July 28, 2013

Is SecondLife Turning Into The Next Gaming Development Platform of Choice ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Ok this may seem a bit far fetched on my part, but look at all the pieces being correctly placed on the Chess Board.

    Rod Humble has a well established, and successful background, Phillip Rosedale is a visionary, Mitch Kapor is a brilliant and wealthy investor.

     Add into the mix a really great SL Viewer Developer Lead, Oz Linden, and let me tell ya, this guy has a fantastic, ongoing relationship with the various contributing Open Source Third  Party Developers

    I have not been to any of the SL Server meetings yet. Mostly this is because I am afraid to venture onto the BETA Grids again.

    Every time I come back fron a Beta Grid it is a pain in the ass. My Inventory gets all out of whack. This may because I am a Staunch FireStorm User, and refuse to work with the official SL Viewer release.

    Other than that, it seems as if the LL Server team finally figured out CCNA 201 ~ Load Balancing  !! And now after / hmmm let me see now, I been complaining about this issue since 2006.

     Lordy ~ Lordy  / Praise Be ~ We can now finally use our Sail Boats, Airplanes, Spaceship's and what ever type of Vehicle you happen to have, and actually cross between Simm Boarders with out going completely Hay~Wire !

    This Is Very KOOL !!!

    Now you couple this with the various acquisitions by the Lab, and the ability for a lot of very creative independent, talented, low budget game developer's having the ability to enter a ready made intergrated design and test platform.

        Who's the Fox ?

SecondLife Could easily become the next Game Development Platform of choice, especially for Indie's.

JayR Cela :_)

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Virtual Reality Worlds Poised For Come Back : And So Am I

By Avatar JayR Cela

     Well I finally seem to be in a better state of health than I was a year ago, I have a number of project's I would like to get involved with again in the virtual world community.

     So stay tuned !

JayR Cela

I'mmmmmmmmmmmmm Baaaaack :_)))))

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

SecondLife : As An Indie Game Platform : Is it Possible ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Yeah I think so, and so does Rod Humble, LL has been on a well directed buying spree lately.

     Taking a look at recent acquisitions, by the Lab, and I'm not about to name them all, lot's of other Blog's have covered that.

    Over all if you look at the Big Picture, Linden Lab is not going away !

     I have said this before, and I'm saying it again, considering all of the complexities involved with designing a playable and fun game is not a trivial task, SecondLife as a game design platform makes perfect sense to me.

    There are a lot of really fantastic Mini-Games in SL

     Keep Your Eye's On The SL Destination Guide

http://secondlife.com/destinations?lang=en-US

JayR Cela :_)

Sunday, July 14, 2013

SecondLife : Exodus Viewer Drops RLV Support : Avatar Slavery Not On The List Of Important Things To Do !

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Considering all the crap going on lately in SL with the Server updates, acquisitions of smaller gaming start-up companies, I think we are seeing some rather minor death-troughs. RLV support seems to be one of them. I'm no expert on what this add-in to the SL platform really does besides add additional features geared towards sexual RP.

    I have however been writing this blog for a number of years, and it should come as no surprise to anyone I absolutely detest slavery in SL, or RL. There is no excuse to think that any living human being belongs to anyone as their slave.

     After reading Katherine's latest blog post about the Exodus Viewer, ( and her wording is a bit vague,but ) the message is clear, it no longer deserves support.

   Way to go Kath + 100, it's time to drop this freakishly obscene code from the viewer.

JayR

http://exodusviewer.com/

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Virtual Worlds : Keeping Your Computer Clean : Dust Bunny's

Bay Avatar JayR Cela

    This post may seem trivial, but in all honesty it is important to keep your computer free from accumulating dust. In other word's you occasionally need to take it apart and clean the dam thing !

    I don't know about you, but living in Detroit and in a once highly industrialized area, I get a lot of dust, crap in the air floating around. Not only does it screw up your lungs, it also can really clog up your computer too. Allowing extreme heat build up, this is not good.

    If you have a laptop, your pretty much screwed, just take it to a shop you trust, preferably a Mom & Pop Independently Locally Owned Computer Place and ask them to thoroughly clean the machine inside and out from DUST !!

    Don't even ask me how to clean a laptop or tablet, in my opinion they are throw away pieces of junk.

    If you own a desktop, I can help

    The #1 thing to remember is don't spin the bearings of any fan's, stick a screwdriver or something in there to keep the fan from spinning, Power Supply, Video Card etc...

     You can buy a can of Dust Off from a number of places, basically it is just compressed air in a can. Personally I use an air compressor, with a touch controlled nozzle. About once a year I thoroughly blow out all the crap that magically seems to accumulate.

    Disconnect and open your computer, then just blow all of the Dust Bunny's  out of there.

    You will both be happier / LOL :_)

JayR :_)

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

SecondLife : New Server Side Roll~Out's Complete : Your Video Drivers ? : Should You Up~Date ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

    All right I know that updating a video driver can be a hit or miss deal when it comes to dealing with SecondLife, and a number of other programs as well.

   Yeah it's a good idea to at least visit your GPU's website to see what's happening.

    Here are some link's

http://www.nvidia.com/page/home.html

http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/AMDSupportHub.aspx

    If you are on an Intel Graphic's chip~set you might have some problems, this link should be Kool.

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect/graphics

Ok, I hope this helps out.

JayR Cela :_)

SecondLife : So Hows The New Server Roll~Out's ? : They Seem To Be Working Fine

By Avatar JayR Cela

     I gotta say this seem's to be the cleanest SL Server & Viewer transition I have ever seen the Lab pull off ever. As far as I can tell everything seems to work fine with my FireStormn Installation on Win7.

    However,  My Linux Version is Extremely Slow. 

    That's a real bummer, I use mostly Open GL for just about everything. Is more and likely a problem on my end / a wrong Lib or something.

JayR :_)

Sunday, July 7, 2013

SecondLife : Singularity Viewer : "Cutting It Close" July 9th SSA Loom's : Plenty of Alpha Builds in the Pipeline

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Well I must admit I really enjoy using the Singularity Viewer for SL. It's not as top heavy on older computers and generally feels faster than most V3 based viewers. Recently a ton of activity can be noticed on the SV web site Nightly Build  ( ALPHA ) page.

https://files.streamgrid.net/singularity/



















   

    I expect they will be ready by sometime this week for an official release.

JayR Cela :_)

SecondLife : FireStorm 4.4.2.x : A Laundry List Of Improvements

By Avatar JayR Cela

    If you think that FS 4.4.2.x is just an interim place holder in the grand scheme of things, as far as SL is concerned  you are correct. If the Lab keeps to it's current server side roll-outs schedule, we should see another version within the next month or so. However the current version of FS has an extremely long list of improvement's that should satisfy just about everyone, including Phoenix users.

    One feature in-particular really makes me a very happy camper indeed. You now have the ability to send windowed floaters to the lower bottom left portion of your screen instead of the utterly annoying upper left corner, where they will be displayed in a horizontal rather than the former setting stacking them in a vertical fashion. Currently this feature is only available as a Debug Setting.

    Open your Advanced Menu > go-to Debug Settings then > FSLegacyMinimize and set the value to TRUE. There are 2 ways to do this, either from the main Log In Screen, or once you are in world.





    Wither you are a long time FS user, or new to this viewer, I would highly recommend that you take a look at the Release Notes page available here. http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/firestorm_release_4.4.2.34167_change_log

JayR Cela :_)

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Alternate Virtual Worlds : My First Experience : "Alternate Reality" by "Philip Price" : Paradise Programming : Datasoft

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Ok, my first alternate reality fantasy game was somewhat popular depending upon who you hung around with in 1985. The Games name was Alternate Reality by a guy named Philip Price, who created a small company named Paradise Programming, and the game was picked up by distributor Datasoft.

    My computer of choice back in those days was an Atari 800XL with dual 5 1/2" 512k or 360k floppy's / LOL / I can't remember that far back, I do recall using a paper hole puncher on one corner of the floppy's outer casing in order to make the opposite side of the disk R / W capable. / Haa-Haaa :_)

    This game was about as open ended as technologically possible at the time. Hell we had a whopping 64K of memory, or 48K depending on who you talked to at that time to toy around with. WOW !! :_))

    Who know's ancient technology is a lost art ! Everyone is into Finger Flipping Phones. ( FFP'S ) I-Phones ~ Androids and such these days.

    I just think this would be a Very Kool re-issue on a more modern platform.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality_(series)



















   

    This game was so much fun, I played it more often than the original Zelda

JayR Cela :_)

FireStorm 4.4.2.x : Muting Specific Group IM's ~ Notices

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Another feature built into the 4.4.x FS series ( actually a carry over from Phoenix ) viewers, is the ability to selectively mute group chats, Im's, notices....

   It's easy enough to implement, but may require some patience with extra large and chatty groups, especially if you are in the middle of doing something like recreating your LSL Bridge. :_)



    Ok let's say I would like to dissable the FSHelp chat group from popping up all the time, I'll first need to call up my Groups settings menu. And in this case wait a rather long while as the entire group membership loads. Call up the Group Info option, you can start that process by clicking on the
( Members and Rules )  Tab .











    Ok, next you want to un-check these 2 boxes : Receive Group Notices & Receive Group Instant Messages they are located under the General Tab.




























    We are almost done. The final step is to open your preferences and go to Chat > Firestorm and put a check mark next to 'When receive group notices' is disabled, disable group chat as well.  



















   

    That should do it.

JayR Cela :_)

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

FireStorm 4.4.2.x : SecondLife : BackUp Setting's : Can You Share Them ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

YES !   :_)

    Well one of the greatest feature's that FS 4.4.x.x series brought to users was the User -Setting Preference's BackUp feature. Basically you create a file folder somewhere on your system other than the main FS installation directory, name it appropriately [FSBackup or whatever you feel like at the time.

    This folder can be shared with friends via e-mail  ( it's only about 156kb or so ) and it will have to be massaged a bit, once its on another installation. Obviously the user name and location of the cache, and text log files will need some attention, the point I am making is this.

    This is a Fantastic Feature !

    As a matter of fact there are a number of very useful tool's intended for an advanced user, that you can edit availability depending upon the target audience.

    This kinda reminds me a bit of hacking away at Game Mod's

 What I really like about the FS BackUp utility, is that you can customize virtually anything that this viewer has to offer, this  should be added to the Base LL version of SL.

    I seriously doubt if that will ever happen :_)

    Any way's I have successfully moved my FS BackUp files from several computers via, G-Mail, PenDrive, and LAN, no problems what so-ever between Win7 and my custom Linux build, or with any one else for that matter.
 
JayR Cela :_)

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

SecondLife : FireStorm 4.4.2.x Emergency Up Date : 4.4.1.x Log In's Blocked !

By Avatar JayR Cela

    If you are a FireStorm user you probably all ready know that an emergency up date was issued today by the FS team. It has to do with the viewers crash report's being sent to LL instead of the FS servers, and to make matter's even worse the report's are being sent every 30 seconds as opposed to the usual 10 minute norm. Unfortunately this also affects Open Sim FS users as well.
   
    You can read more about this at http://www.firestormviewer.org/  or directly download it from here
http://www.firestormviewer.org/downloads/

    It should be noted that if you are upgrading from 4.4.1.x there is no need for a clean install, 4.4.0.x  user's however will !!

JayR Cela :_)

Monday, July 1, 2013

SecondLife : 8 Day's Left To Up-Grade Your SL Viewer : Who's Ready ~ Who's Not ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

    The clock is ticking folk's, last week LL made it official that July 9th is the day the entire SecondLife Grid will be SSB (SSA) enabled, if you have not upgraded your viewer yet, ya better get around to it soon. As far as the available Third Party Viewer Support for SSB, things are looking so-so.

    Catznip, Cool VL, FireStorm, Kokua, NiranV are ready for the change over. Dolphin and  Exodus are   apparently not ready. Singularity I'm not sure about, its last Blog update is dated April 22, so who knows. The same goes for Dolphin last Blog update March 1, Exodus April 21

JayR Cela