Blue Mars beta

I want a copy of THAT script!!

Rock

Given that I have always argued against imposing any limits on the abilities of any residents of SL... I would absolutely object to that. I'm already uneasy (to say the least) about the Adult Content restrictions, and would much rather see SL closed to new unverified residents instead. It's impossible to make everyone equal, but the creation of any kind of arbitrary caste system is abhorrent.

There isn't just BM, there is whatever supplants BM, and whatever supplants THAT, and on and on forever. Any platform will be outdated in less than five years. Systems should be designed with that in mind, and made somehow modular so that new content and technologies can be slotted in as they become available. Whoever figures out how to do that, will have found a way to survive and grow.


ADDED: rather than reinventing the wheel every few years, and trying to be the next new thing that kills off the old, if someone were to develop a way to move content from SL to BM (or any new and superior platform), then there would be a problem. Right now, it would be a massive effort to migrate, and an even more massive effort to rebuild.

The Internet is a wild crying kid that grows very fast and needs a lot of attention.

Many things we do here (NOT ALL ) will be gone sooner or later - the question is what should we do that stays forever?

Think about our crazy Yadni Monde and it's "SL diray YadNis World - Le Monde de YadNi" - his works and builds - most have gone - only a few are still there but it is a question of time until all will be gone.

Have a look at his place and the timeline
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Leda/217/20/53

The same question goes for LindenLab. Maybe there is something that will never disapear....

They do not dare to think about to idle or they will be gone pretty soon. The game industry is pretty big (HD) business

In your opinion only. That may not care if others resell your things, but I got news for you.... it pisses alot of people off, including me.

The honor system went out the window years ago. Have you ever seen the business in a box? Shining example of this so-called "honesty". People resell my freebee dance machine everyday, with wildly false claims about them. Meanwhile, creators of much better dance machines have to compete with these scoundrels.

Who's the winner here? Certainly not the consumer, because they paid good money for free crap. (Yes, my dance machine is crap, that's why it's free)

Reselling freebees is not honest by any stretch of the imagination.

P.T. Barnham said it best. That level of honesty, is not really honesty. People resell others creations as their own because they are inept AND greedy. I fail to see how honesty fits into that formula. Bilking newbies out their cash, when they could have gotten something for free in the welcome area is nothing less than reprehensible.

The purpose of copyright law is not "avoid pissing off creators", it's "encourage the development of te arts and sciences". The purpose of the rights system in Second Life is not "avoid pissing off creators", it's "support a working economy that makes money for Linden Lab (and incidentally for creators)".

I'm "pissed off" when people sell flight feather or tinycam with restricted rights and then I get the complaints. But I'm pretty sure that if I didn't sell them full perm, I wouldn't sell as many, so even with that abuse I'm better off with an imperfect system than with a perfect one. And so I "unpiss myself off", don't worry about whether everyone in the market is "honest", and whistle Bobby McFerrin tunes all the way to the bank.

Some creators care more about whether anyone is infringing on their rights and how much money they actually make. They will likely gravitate to Blue Mars. Whether a more aggressive rights system actually makes them more money or not is an open question... it doesn't seem to in the field of music publishing, but maybe 3d virtual goods are different. It could also be that having a more open system, loopholes and all, will attract more customers and more money. But either way, you are objectively better off (ie, you make more money) if you make a decision based on more than just whether you're "pissed off".

I signed up because I likes making stuffs, and the stuffs making tools is spiffamous.

Hey, I didn't say that was the only reason you might sign up.

Fair enough

/me tosses the ferret an apologetic biscuit.

You can only patch a pair of jeans so many times until you no longer have jeans, but a patchworked pair of pants. You certainly wouldn't wear them anywhere special.

Patching doesn't necessarily make things great, usually only maginally useable. Often at the expense of something else. For example, that's why in-world transactions needlessly disappeared. It went out the window for voice. From a user level, I fail to understand why LL substituted something I used daily, for something I never use, ever.

In reality, we have lost as much as we have gained. Online status gone, provisional land sales gone, ratings, chat still borked, search borked, First Land gone, events and events listings are a cesspool of abuse. Landbots, traffic bots, sheep bots ...., exploration died when the ban lines went up.

These are all "patch" features... lovely huh?

It's all about "shiny" and allure to new residents at our cost. Nothing more

The most popular operating system in the world still contains patches to check whether it's running a DOS application from the mid '80s that mistakenly interpreted an error code as a file handle, and if it is return the error code it returned in 1986 that happened to be a valid file handle.

The second most popular operating system in the world is still using an API designed 15 years before that.

No, it went out the window for the All search. Not that I'm a fan of Voice, mind you, but let's put the blame where it belongs. They decided to dump a bunch of stuff the client was doing and push it to the web, and update the web support in the game, so some time in the future they could use that to bring it in again. "some time" has never happened.

You're mixing up technical changes with policy changes that have nothing to do with tradeoffs in the platform. Again, I'm not saying these are good things, but they're not "patch features".

And Havok4, Windlight, and Mono are not "Patch Features". They're substantial changes. HTTP textures involve significant cleanup and streamlining of the rendering pipeline. Linden Labs is not just "patching", and while I don't agree with all the policy and technical choices they've made they're DEFINITELY nowhere near the over-patched clothing you're comparing them to.

There is no way you can, with a straight face, tell me that the interest in Blue Mars is NOT about "shiny".

We could argue all day and night about specific details, but let us look at the big picture for a moment. My impression, is BM is seriously examining the IP rights of it's creators from the outset, where everything in SL has been after the fact. You or I don't need a ton of bricks to fall on our heads to realize SL has been a cesspool of scams. Adcutting, extortion, griefing, event abuse, bots, banline abuse.... need I go on?

I fail to understand how anyone can criticize a development team, who's aim to avoid this misbehavior at the outset. Games are just that ... games, often far from perfect. They are not for everyone. People choose what they choose for entertainment. SL is not for everyone either. This does not mean that BM will be exclusively guarding individual rights, it is still up to the individual. In BM, if you want to create objects with full permissions to give/sell, you are free to do so. The only minor difference being, there will be a fee for importing the finished object. In SL we pay fees for texture and animation imports, which seems to be a widely accepted policy already, even though unless you run an OpenSim or attend the beta grid, you might pay several times until you get it right. In BM, you create offline until it's as you like it, so there is usually only one import. It's often difficult to be creative in SL, because of the distractions, some of which (like unsolicited group invites) can be very annoying, even to the point where creativity is totally snubbed. Ever worked in a sandbox lately? It's like a big neon sign over your head saying "Abuse Me". Abuse reports do nothing to improve the stability of the grid. In fact, hinders it, by diverting human resources to manage it's own inadequacies.

I disagree. Second Life's rights scheme was very carefully designed to achieve a goal, and it in fact achieved that goal. It may benefit from changes as a result of changes outside the rights system, but that does NOT mean that LL did not "seriously examine the IP rights of the creators" or that it was merely patched in ex-post-facto.

The goals of the SL rights system involve a difference balance of rights between creators and consumers than you would prefer, or for that matter than *I* would prefer, but that doesn't mean they deserve the opprobrium you're laying out here.

Anyway, you don't want to argue about details, so I'll stop there.

The scammers and thieves and opportunists will go where the money is. It is actually a sign of health that they are here in SL. If Blue Mars takes off, they will migrate there.

It far too simplistic to think that a shiny new platform won't end up the same way. Plus, as I have been arguing, to thrive more than the first shiny new couple of years, a platform has to be able to evolve. To call evolution "patching" is a bit too simplistic.

And it just isn't all that much better anyhow: maybe a view more joints in the models, some bouncy hair, I did not see any build features that I have not seen in SL, it did not excite me at all like I get in SL when I visit places other people like me have made. The water effects are nice, but I think, ultimately, doable in SL.

The crime problems with SL you point to are largely governance problems, not with development. If LL were able/willing to put more resources and effort in to enforcing policy then a lot of the problems would be far less.

Success in combating crime (all types including griefing, fraud, scams, copyright violations, DoS etc.) will be determined by the strength of BM's governance team. That determination will be based on several factors:

1. If BM succeeds in getting the participation numbers.
This will affect several things that are all very important.
The amount of attempted crime and the ability to effectively police that crime. BM may decide that hiring more governance staff is justified where LL may not have, they also may cut costs here just as LL may have.

2. How determined they are to govern and police their world when dealing with large numbers of customers and/or violators. LL at times seemed to have a hands off approach, shown or at least been accused of showing favouritism and are definitely turning a blind eye to certain practices. The BM governance team may do better, they may not. Willingness to hire more staff as the customer base grows will be a big indication as to whether their governance will scale.

3. How well the economy of BM flourishes. A successful economy attracts more crime than an unsuccessful one. If there is less profit to be had in the crime then less crime will occur and of course the converse is also true.

The BM team have yet to prove they can do as well or better in these areas for at least similar numbers of customers.
Pointing LL's governance problems now and hailing BM as better is very premature.

Sure, BM has a long way to go. I will however, they are using alot of developers from other platforms.

Once again, I will repeat this process was used by Blizzard to examine the pitfalls of Everquest. The difference between WoW and EQ is astounding as result. Many of the frustrations of EQ were eliminated or greatly reduced using this system. WoW's retention rate is exceedingly high and server stability/load balancing et al is managed quite well.

People still play Everquest though, and that's fine. Our guild in WoW, was our guild in Everquest, so we go back ten years in our experiences. EQ was a good experience for our guild, but we didn't migrate to WoW on a wing and a prayer. Several of our guildies, including myself participated in WoW beta and as such, collectively decided it was a much better gaming experience. Four years down the road, we still feel that way.

My only fear with BM, is the Vanguard experience. Brad McQuaid, who was the lead developer and concept father, broke away from Sony/Verant to hook up with Microsoft in developing the next generation MMORPG. This unholy alliance paved the way to disaster. Development sensibilities gave way to marketing strategies and nary the twain met.

Brad was too hung up on inter-dependancy between the classes, insisted teleports, gates and portals were un-necessary to give the appearance of a huge world and long journeys.

He was also dead-set against instancing. He refused to accept that mob-training, kill stealing and spawn camping were serious drawbacks from other games. Moreover, some of his critical mistakes were graphics which were far to elaborate to be meaningful as content or practical on today's hardware Some cities had millions of primitives and alphas. It was impossible to move, no less function. Crossing chunks (sims in SL) had the same issues as we commonly experience in SL, except with harsh death penalties..... not for your own deeds, but for developmental failures. The long journey to your destination was not a quest with fate or monsters insomuch as it was a fight with the codebase. The boat would often dump your corpse into a deep ocean on a sim crossing. Rather than rez on the other side, you'd appear in the graveyard without your gear and a half of a level of your experience gone. He also flatly refused to develop a scripting language, for reasons many developers fail to grasp. Weapon and armor stats etc, were hard coded in the client, so even the most subtle changes involved recompiling the entire client. Marketing pressures caused Vanguard to go live with incomplete content, serious irrepairable bugs and major hardware/lag issues.

Vanguard was a failure, because they refused to learn from the lessons of the past.

WoW succeeded because they did.

Argent, you should get paid as LL first lawyer However, every company invest more into good managers than in good lawyer. I agree with some of your arguments of patching an existing operation system but that is like - again- the comparison of an apple and a lemon. Something can be patched here like I said above. But you cannot compare an operation system that is build in one company with SL that has been built by many people. You cannot remodel their work. I may see ways to offer new servers where the new system will work while the old objects will be on old servers left alone - who would care then? We can put all the freebies there?

We do not know how this BM will really feel. We know how it could look because we know the environment feeling from other high end games. Right now we have an image in front of us. Two cars. Our old car (SL) with all the old maschine bugs, griefing bumbs and those deep scratches from thieves everywhere - on the other side this brand new car with a cover that protects from any touch.

So wait until the day comes and the grand opening invites for the first test trip.

This.

The SL permissions system is a joke. I cannot say too much about the BM approach, because of the NDA, but the need to avoid all the mistakes of SL concerning creator's rights (and there was an awful lot to get through) was the #1 concern, and will be an ongoing top priority.

I feel truly sorry for the chap in the other thread that has lost all his inventory, something that cannot happen in BM. Everything that I am uploading into BM resides on my own PC, which for me is one of the major advantages over in-world building, using proprietory tools, as in SL.

Rock

I will repeat, it is not because of the development team that the BM team will prove to fight crime better or worse than LL, it will be with the governance team. You cannot solve crime by the use of technology, that way lies the arms race that nobody wins. Governance and enforcement is the key.

WoW did not become a success because they successfully defeated crime with development. Crime happened there and still happens there but what is different is that are able to enforce things better. Part of why that is is because it is a game with goals and a purpose and not a virtual world, part of it is better governance and enforcement.
You cannot really compare WoW to SL or BM though because they are far different types of system and WoW is far more restricted in what you are able to do. when you have a far more restricted system, crime is also restricted.

I will agree though that learning from others mistakes is a good thing, and in fact *if* the BM governance team learn from the mistakes of LL then that will make far more of an impact upon success than anything their other teams can affect.

I'm not a lawyer. I am, however, a programmer who has contributed patches to the Second Life client and who has decades of experience in real-time control systems. You say you're not a programmer, but somehow you're more certain than I am that SL has reached its peak and it's all downhill from here.

Sure you can. Software projects that have been built by many people tend to be more flexible and adaptable than ones that have been built by a single company. Compare, for example, UNIX and its descendants with Windows.

Yet another reason I think it's far from premature to write off Second Life.


I see ways to offer new servers where the new system will work with all the old content. I see ways to use the old servers with a new client with a completely different graphics engine. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate... whoops, wrong story. I've watched systems change and evolve over 30 years, from command lines and the first graphical user interfaces, and today's Mac and Linux support _all the same objects and programs_ that we were running on the PDP-11s 30 years ago.

I can imagine an open source system like Second Life is becoming lasting another 30 years. I don't see that happening to the 3d equivalents of VMS and the Xerox Star system, no matter if they're "better" right now.

Yes, indeed.

The thought of building offline appeals to me, greatly. I build offline for SL often. 3DStudio or Blender for sculpties, Poser for animations and ProTools for audio files.

In developing new platforms, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel, especially when proven software is widely available.

The SL build tools are ok for the average user, but there are alot of extraordinary and above average builders who are restricted by the build tool's limitations. It is my contention, a giant prim and a tiny prim use the same math. Take for example a runway.

In SL, a 256 meter airstrip would require 26 prims @ 10m each. That would require 25x the math to calculate and as such is lag inducing. It's probably the core reason why giant prims are acceptable, provided they are not abused.

There is also an enormous volume of bad scripts running in SL. Novice coders, needless functions, memory leaks, open listens, sensors etc, all gobble system resources like candy.

We own thousands of plots in SL and can say with certainty, all sims are not created equal. User content varies widely from sim to sim and the differences between them is astounding in some cases, even with identical hardware. With that, LL is not wholly responsible for lag, whereas many users themselves are their own worst enemy.

Like you Rock, the NDA keeps me from elaborating on details, but it's very apparent outside beta, all users will likely be billed by metered CPU usage, not land tier.

To me, that makes a whole lot of sense.

Unless you are saying that all residents of BM can make backups of the things that they have purchased or been given by others, inventory loss will still be possible for the majority. All it will take is just one bug in that area.

Content creators have been able to backup their own work for a long time now in SL, it is only backup of prims that have been the difficult part, all other types mainly originate offworld anyway. Second Inventory deals with very well with backup up the prims and more. Even before that prim backup/restore bots were available. Earlier still, scripts that printed out the prim parameters for each prim or sent the same info to a web server could be used and a notecard driven device could be used to recreate them.

The real problem with inventory loss affects residents buying the content of others, not their own. Many content creators are going to want assurances that if BM offers the average Joe a local copy of his inventory then Joe cannot extract and change that content on his local machine. Nobody can give those kinds of assurances, if it is on someones local machine then it can be hacked open eventually.

Sorry, I was referring to creators only, should have made that more clear. The chap in the other thread had created a lot of stuff for his business, and had lost it all (along with stuff he had bought), so he could not resurrect his business.

I buy stuff for my creations for BM (licensed textures, for example), but that is not done inworld, and they also reside on my PC.

I shall raise as a suggestion to BM that if a city is ever deleted because of non-payment or for any reason, that the rights of tenants within that city be protected, and their purchased items should be safeguarded. I am not sure how the objects purchased by tenants can be safeguarded, if the tenant defaults, or is absent for an extended period (suggestions please).

Currently BM are responding positively to a large proportion of suggestions made by the beta developers.

Rock