Blue Mars beta

Well I do tend not to hang around, I like to explore, but I often run into folk during those explorations. We have also made appointments, in PM, in the unofficial forum, and in the irc to meet at specific places/times.

As the beta only started officially on the 1st June I am not surprised that it was a ghost town if you went there a few weeks ago.

I will be in there this evening from 1100 PDT, then from 1PM PDT I will be at the interview with Jim Sink in SL.

Rock

I know I can go to the site and see. But for others reading who may not bother otherwise:

Is the beta also for Mac machines? How about Linux?

Windows only, some FAQs imply Vista-only but people are using XP.

oo OK =) I will try to catch you in there. In fact i just planted an AV there, someone come visit me! pwease =P

Leaves me out, then.

Please get with the 21st century, game developers.

To who Rock? I'd love to be a part of this.

Handy

Check out his post here. He replied on that.

/327/70/317029/34.html#post2465232

HTH

For me, it took about six hours.

.

I also emailed and then got in. Use the link Rock gives above.

Wow, what an interview, and what a turnout.

One interesting point:

Governance: Who polices BM? Who enforces a no-nudity region for example?
Answer: It is in the application layer, so no policing is needed. If an owner of a region wants no nudity, you can strip down to your undies, but no further!

This just gets better and better!

Rock

PS: I am in BM now, 2pm PDT, for next hour.

Yes huge turnout! and so many questions being fired off all at once...

Hope they will post a transcript!

-w

That worked so well in the Teen Grid, didn't it?

No idea, I never went there.

Rock

Me too! Yes, so many questions, from all over the grid, and on the website that the stream came from too. Not one question about non-human avatars though.

Rock

Neither did I... but it is reported that people simply made undies that were textured naked.

I think they are having Library of undies that you can choose from, that you can change down to (that will not include a naked texture).

Another interesting point was that AR will NOT be building anything in BM, other than the welcome area. No continents, no manipulation of the land market, no interference. The only cities that will appear are those created by residents.

Rock

You can't even wear clothes you bought in another city of the city owner doesn't want it?

Yup, that's right. And it goes even further. You can have a special themed city - for example, only ferrets allowed, then when you arrive you will find that you can not be your usual avatar but will be able to pick from several colored varieties of ferret avatar. Or if you had a medieval themed sim, then you could only allow people to chose from a selection of apparel of your choosing. But you could also just let anybody do whatever they want, which is what most will do. But the options are there.

Sounds more like Project Wonderland than Second Life.

Just a question in that case, why would anyone buy clothes at all?
Seems like a content sales limiting feature to me.
I mean I can understand it in role-play themes areas where the theme is specific but I can see this feature getting abused so that you have to buy clothes from the owner of the city you are in for no good reason other than they want to be the ones to sell you the clothes.

I suppose this will just have to bear looking into. It sounds like a completely different ballgame to SL. I can see as many pros as cons for BM in the glowing accounts I'm reading here as well as on the other threads.

E. Drechsler
pp Ephraim Kappler

Setting clothing is an OPTION that 99% of cities won't use. But the thing is if you were setting up a game, perhaps a first person shooter. You could provide everyone with appropriate combat gear in a much better way than SL does with the handouts. And you wouldn't have to put up with jokers in tutus ruining everyone's war ambiance

Of course you can. If the city you want to visit next allows it.

Just as in SL, where region owners can set various options, it appears that the BM region owner will have a much bigger range of options to choose from. He can decide if nudity is allowed on his patch, or not, and even decide down to what level people can shed their clothes. He can, for example, decree that only certain clothes can be worn or used, uniforms for example, RP apparel, etc etc. If you don't like the rules in one city, you just find the cities that you do like. But it does mean that if you really like RP, Gorean, for example, with its dress code, it can be completely enforced by the owner of the city.

I always found it a little disconcerting whenever we had visitors to our Ancient Egyptian themed sim in SL walking around in leather japs and cowboy boots and hats, while the rest of us were dressed in theme. It would have been so nice to prevent that with an option, and teleport advisory that a dress code was in force at the selected destination.

Sweet.

Rock

BM is not targetting anyone other than developers at this time.

If those developers choose to target blingtards, inept builders, self-proclaimed social engineers, and whiney bloggers, they are totally free to do so. The only difference being, it's the city owners who hold the power, not BM (unless of course something egregious is occuring). I mean really.... who could ask for anything more? In SL, the abuse report system and G-Team are greatly flawed, subjective and a chronic waste of human resources for the purpose and are simply not necessary in new virtual worlds.

Far too many assumptions about BM are being made at this time. It's still alpha for the mostpart. It might be great, it might not, but for now, they have earned the benefit of the doubt from me, because they are addressing what appear to be serious flaws on other platforms.

Beta SL had no animation imports, no streaming audio, no sculpties.... and so on. The naysayers from AW, TSO and There said some of the same things I am seeing in this thread.

Anyone know any good recipes for crow? There will likely be plenty to be eaten a year from now.

I am not making assumptions, there will no crow for me to eat at all, I am asking questions and discussing ramifications of facts that have been posted about BM.

You have confirmed yourself that the developers get all the power and everyone else virtually no power. Now whilst I am willing to explore what this new virtual world has to offer (and in case you missed it I have now been accepted as a developer too though as yet have not had time to explore), I am still a firm believer that the consumer is critical to the success of any kind of virtual world that hopes to have an economy. Having a system that only gives any control to the developer/land owner is going to create a serfdom type class system of people with absolute power on one side and people with little to no power on the other side.
Consumers will only put up with that if it does not interfere with what they want to do, if it becomes a barrier to that then it will have an effect on the economy, concurrency and therefore the viability of BM. If the goal of Blue Mars is to only have developers, no economy and no consumers then this will be fine.

I, for one as a consumer would not buy clothing where I cannot guarantee I could choose when to wear them and again as I state in my previous post I am not talking about role-play areas, those have good reasons for restrictions generally. However if you honestly think that developers/land owners will not abuse this power in order to force consumers to buy goods from their city then you are smoking something stronger than my coffee.
There is so much talk here about the developer, unless BM is only going to be full of developers only then someone at sometime is going to have to think and talk about the consumers also.
I, as a developer will not bother creating content for a world without consumers of some kind.

I am also giving them the benefit of the doubt by signing up for a developer account. That has nothing to do with my discussing the information being passed around or asking questions.

This is not naysaying in any way, just trying to find out information and have a discussion. If you don't want to be part of that then don't join in. Posting periodically to complain about the discussion is not really contributing in any sense of the word.