Dear, oh deer

So, have you ever wandered through a forest, enjoying the tranquility of it all, when you start thinking wow, i sure would love to live here. just be one of the cute forest creatures and spend my time here in this mystical world.?

What would you do to be part of that world? as say.. a deer? where you can meet other deer and frolick about in an Endless Forest.

how about downloading a screensaver? an online multi-player screensaver?

yes, you heard me right, boys and girls (and whatever else there may be here )

The Endless Forest is an online multi-player screensaver (i've yet to try it myself, so i think it's probably more "game" than "screensaver" where players take on the role of a deer. but wait.. communication is done through normal deer-like communicae. a deer call, a hop of joy, sniff, listen and the ability to rub against a tree. that's it.

yet, after taking a quick peek at the official site (link below), i'm much more impressed than i was after reading the GiN (Game industry News) interview. it's worth noting the graphics are beautiful, not groundbreaking, but still a visual treat. and your deer's face is.. well.. it's more human than deer.

i highly suggest that if you want to check it out, get there before next month when The Twin Gods are scheduled to appear. i'll leave it to you to find out who they are.

here's the review on GiN.

and

here's a link to the official The Endless Forest site.

looks like an odd little expereience and after reading more about it, it seems the future will see The Endless Forest open up to a much more robust experience!

BUT, my point here is about the technology they use to create the game, Quest3D. following the link to the Quest3D site just made me drool! imagine if the world of SL looked like that! if we had something like that to build with.. wow, just wow.

to everyone else, check out their site here.

i can't help but think it has been mentioned in these forums before. but a quick search only brings up one mention of it and without anything much further discussed on it.

i'm sure The Endless Forest will prove to be somewhat amusing, but now i'm stuck pondering a world where Quest3D and SL are joined together, creating possibilities way above and beyond what we have now.

Oooh, can you urinate to leave messages for others who aren't online at the time?

When it's rutting season, can you attack hapless hunters?

I wonder if it's possible to grief?

I think I might go on a mission to see if I can be first to be banished from The Endless Forest. So if you try it out and get butted by a deer called Kris... hi!

I took a look.

It's a fascinating, beautiful concept... for about half an hour, perhaps.

Perhaps a whole hour if you are really sensitive, in touch with your inner spirit, or coming down off a 'sad-drunk' episode.

After which... it's rather... humourous.

"I'm a deer!"

Hoppity... hoppity...

*gee what goofy thing can I do with this to maximise amusement...*


Forgive me please. Evil Desmond took over for a moment...

I'd reiterate Cybin's call to visit the Quest3d website if that kinda thing remotely interests you. It looks mind blowing.

Check out some of the demos - many of which are interactive. Like the 'Disaster Configurator' which simulates fires, floods and bombs which you can configure the scenario on. And a virtual bar with avatars where you can chat and dance with other people. Some really fascinating demos of a very impressive looking piece of software.

Now I just need someone to buy me the Enterprise Edition with networking and database connectivity and I will get to start recreating SL!

*cough*

http://www.quest3d.com/index.php?id=15

http://www.quest3d.com/index.php?id=148

If a man speaks in the forest, and a woman isn't there to hear...


Is he still wrong?

/me joins up. Aegan is the name

Could we please not talk about deer? My significant other hit a deer on his way to work Friday morning, and rolled his truck. He's fine, but the truck, currently our only means of transportation, wasn't as fortunate.

Deer are our "bane of existance."

::Is dismayed by the lack of Oregon Trail appreciation::

Hmmm...

Storyline idea: Crazy (insert race here) tourists! They walk around and take pictures of random crap, and you can gore them to death if they're not on the trail!

A funny story about deer and virtual worlds....

Back when text-based worlds like MUDs and such were coming up, someone programmed a sort of chaotic Life-type reproductive forest scenario and set it loose on the grid. You would have deer wandering from room to room at random, and if a male and female entered the same room at the same time, baby deer later, etc. It was all controled by numbers and probability.

In theory.

So the first time one of the female virtual deer got pregnant, the players gathered for the scripted event, eager to see how this virtual procreation thing finally worked. The deer miscarried, then committed suicide, much to the horror of the bystanders. TRAUMA.

Never mind the continued problem of young virtual bucks trying to mate with players set female who happened to be in the room when nature randomly picked their location to roam.

I think they shut the system down fairly quickly.

I played this pseudo-game for a good while last night, exploring, trying it out, thinking about the concept and just how far it can be pushed before the novelty wears off. I mean, here I am a human-faced deer creature and I know that the other moving deers I encounter are real people, probably half-way across the world, possibly speaking a language... And all there is to do is sniff, listen, hop, and scratch myself against a tree... But sure enough, there was this odd zen-simplicity to it all. I didn't need to go collect gold, I had no quest, I had no mission, no purpose, I simple was. Unfortunately for me this means it also got tiring after a while, after running around and bumping into another deer or two, finding really nothing of interest to do... I'll possibly even be revisiting this again as I get bored (They talk about a "Abiogenesis" system to spontaneously introduce random events on their forums also that might make it a bit more interesting)... Another thing that seems like it would have and could have been a brilliant idea, but then... well, you know.

but i dont want to be a deer.........

I did, but it wouldn't let me. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

I don't like it.. I like the concept, sort of, I don't like it tho..

They way they've intergrated it into a screensaver is really confusing.. The start up and logging in brought my PC to a standstill.. And even without that, I got bored with it after 30 seconds.. Sorry little deers..

It's interesting seeing what it's like interacting with people with such limited things you can do. Pretty boring though (might be good stoned, but I can't try that atm).

It does make a pretty screensaver after the camera starts rotating though.

I think I've started a trend for sleeping on the big flat rock - started out there all on my own a few days ago, now it's almost full. (Or maybe I just don't watch it often enough to see the other deer there )

It was buggy getting it started but seems okay now. Lack of communication is interesting, sort of forces you to see how animals interact, but definately limiting as a human.

It is 12:45 SLT, I am going to go in for a little bit, if you recognize me, come up and [hop, call, call, hop] and I know you know me. My name is attached.

I finally got it to download, after trying several times and having to update my DirectX... fascinating. Wierd to not have any verbal communication at all. Attached is a bad drawing of my pictogram. If you ran into me there, hi.

Oh, yeah.

This is me, not that I'm awake in it much.