Blue Mars beta

Good example, Robby. Argent - there is no developer work to be seen in BM yet. It is open to those who want to develop cities & create content to begin doing so. Because everything is done out-world you don't see it until it's complete and uploaded. So, yeah, this is as Robby said - programmer art - notoriously bad but in this case not too bad at all.

I would think that most people are keeping their plans somewhat a secret at this point.

We are in complete agreement on this : )

You gotta admit though that the original idea of having Joe Blow rezz simple geometric objects (cube, sphere...etc.) and build a world out of it was cheeky, amazing, audacious, mischevious, revolutionary and well look where it has gotten us!

Perhaps the idea has taken us as far as it can.

On the other hand, the build tools needed to create stuff for Blue Mars really do notch up the required level of expertise for builders. I know of very gifted SL creators who are terrified of accessible (read: free) 3d tools like blender, and Blue Mars will be the poorer if these people can't contribute their creative energies.

This is yet another instance in which increased power carries with it its own limitation: sure the tools are powerful, but they are harder to use.

Absolutely! Second Life is revolutionary in many ways, and this is (imho) one of the most important. Without it, I wouldn't be here!

Back in 2006, while perusing my Mono-related RSS feeds, I ran across a Google TechTalk video where they were talking about Microthreading Mono, and they were showing off the building and scripting capabilities of Second Life. When they said anyone could do it, I signed up immediately, and WOW!!! To say I was totally floored would be a drastic understatement.

Even so, Second Life still has much room for improvement, and I hope that the new management is willing to be as daring and visionary.

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That is very true. While I do have some knowledge of how to use such tools, primarily because I use them for Second Life content creation, I'm not at all what you'd call very skilled or especially talented. I may find that there is no room for me to compete in Blue Mars, and no place for me other than as a spectator, but I darned well want to find out now rather than wait

With the advent of sculpted prims, more and more of Second Life's content creators are gaining experience with said tools, and I expect that to increase dramatically over time. The big difference, obviously, is that Second Life is not restricted to such tools, and that is every bit as much of a strength as you've said.

P.S.: Dunno if I necessarily agree with "harder to use". At least, that's not been my experience, but I don't use Blender so I may be biased. But I get your point.

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But you have stated that you will not be joining BM anyway (you don't consider it to be a virtual world), nor are you interested in joining the beta to find out, so why enquire about ferret avatars and waste people's time finding out for you?

Rock

Without denying the steep learning curve for the more powerful programs, I know some people have had success importing objects from Google SketchUp into CryEngine. It's free and it's easy.

http://sketchup.google.com/

Here's the basics on how to do that from the CryMod forums, which are oriented towards the Crysis game. It might be a bit different for Blue Mars, but should give you an idea about what is involved:

http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=19058

oooo thanks, Virrginia!

I think it's worth noting that even Second Life content creators are increasingly turning to those same tools, and I doubt that trend will reverse in the foreseeable future. I would even argue that such tools (PrimComposer, Domino's scripts, etc) are *better* than the in-world tools for Second Life content creation, even for strictly prim-based building, but that's my own experience. YMMV

Agreed.

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Rock has done this with Blue Mars specifically, which he discusses here: http://life-on-mars.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=objects&action=display&thread=39

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No way - they are different to use but not harder. In fact building in a real 3d program is actually easier once you know the program. There are many in SL who are terrified of the building tools or the terraforming tools. This is just fear of the unknown. It is not a limitation. At least not for people who aren't intimidated by new software.

Yep, that was me. I am loving Sketchup, it is so intuitive, and the video tutorials are simple, and easy to follow.

Sketchup exports kmz files, which is just a zipped kml file (Keyhole Markup Language, used for Google Earth, but also containing the Collada *.dae model file ), although I use a pre-processor first to condition the dae file, I am working on creating a plug-in for BM that will allow the direct import of the kmz zip file itself.

I recommend downloading Sketchup and just watch the first four video tutorials (Parts 1-4) here: http://sketchup.google.com/training/videos/new_to_gsu.html

But be careful you might get hooked

Rock
Now, if we could get Collada files into SL......

Heh, if we could do that, I doubt I'd be nearly as interested in Blue Mars

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I think sketchup (or something like it) will be just the ticket to make building accessible. Get that plugin done!

is it worth considering the pro version? 495 is a bit of an investment

No Poppet. The differences between the free version and the Pro version (apart from US$495) is that the Pro version exports to far more file types, and has Dynamic Components, neither of which are necessary for BM, and FBXConverter (free) allows you to export to all the main file standards anyway. I use FBXConverter to preprocess my *.dae file before importing it into BM.

Save the US$495.

Rock

QFT. With truth painted two meters high here.

Several years ago, Philip said "It is my hope, developers will use the SL platform to design new games and applications"

This failed alongside the "corporate" policy because content cannot be exported from SL and the technology itself is out-dated.

Besides that, SL is "bundled" with features which are completely useless to most developers. Someone designing a first person shooter has no need to search for land sales, join groups, classifieds, attend events or know about popular places.

In BM, developers have no need for "bloatware" and as such would prefer to only use tools specific to the task.

I use OpenSim as a training tool for RL firefighters and HAZMAT teams, where I am Governor. Using SL was an embarassment. Griefers, Welcome Area childishness, failed teleports, broken inventories, locked out logins, slow rezzing (among other things) etc, all made SL looked bad to working professionals.

Well, if you feel that you've gone as far as you can in SL, and it's unprofessional and there are better things out there. . .Why not sell off your micro parcels?

Did anyone mention yet that the Blue Mars developer forums actually work?

hehe, yeah, don't kill me, it was a good time to make the joke

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But I heard only qualified people can use them

Well, I don't know about *qualified*, but that's probably nearly as many people as can use these ones right now

In all seriousness, I've never seen any Forums that were as big a mess as these ones are right now. It just reinforces the idea that there is a very good reason that only registered Second Life users can even try (operative word) to view them.

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You lucky bastard, you never used an RCPM or RIBBS system.

I must be lucky indeed, since I don't even know what those are

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Argent is showing his age. Remote CP/M predates even MSDOS.

Rock

Blue Mars will use the Lua scripting language. Does anyone here have any experience of using Lua? Who uses it? How does it compare with LSL?