Virtual Virtual Shooter

Hi, I am new to Second Life, and I think the concept is really good. I am a programmer in real life, and I have spent alot of my time in SL playing with scripting.

Last night I invested some money and brought 1024m^2 of land, and my plan is to build a "Virtual Virtual Shooter"... basically similar to the laser gun games in arcades with moving and pop-up targets of various scoring structures.

The reason I am posting here is to gage wether anyone would play such a game (presuming it was well designed), or wether I am wasting my money/time. 1024m^2 of land is enough room & prims for me to build 2 "screens", I suspect each screen would only be able to support 3 or 4 people at a time... there is land for sale around my block for reasonable price, and I am wondering wether I should buy it up, but I wanted to gage peoples thoughts on such a game as it is not that 'complex' (more than casino games, but with less 'insentive')... but such games can be quite fun.

Also as a side note, how much does location matter... the only 'high traffic' land I could afford is quite a distance (~800m) from the nearest teleporter... my theory though is that if I pay to advertise the site people should be able to get to it ok if they are looking for it.

Any thoughts, ideas would be well accepted as I am intersted in making a game that is fun... and as long as it atleast "pays" for itself, that is enough for me... not really in it for the $L

I would play a game like that, assuming it was designed well enough.

I say go for it. I agree about needing more land, but I don't think the location is too important. 800m from the telehub is pretty far, but personally I'd make the journey. Semi-intelligent monsters would be great if you can come up with a script like that.

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

I think for now I will just build a 2 screen version on my currently held land... if it proves to be popular/semi-popular I will expand my land (even if it means moving)...

The style of game doesn't lend itself to traditional AI, but it will have a form of AI which I will tentitively call challange AI... designed to make the game more challanging/fun... but I won't go in to it, because it might spoil the game and render the challenge redundant...

But in short it will have a form of intelligence (presumming I can get it to work in SL script)

Sounds cool. Nothing wrong with starting it as an experiment.

Just an update of sorts...

I decided to make a bigger investment in land... I figured if it works, it works, if it fails... it fails but was fun process.

I have now started building a complex to house the game... the complex is built on an L shaped 1536m^2 property, and I have and additional 2048m^2 of land in the area as a "prim investment" to up the amount of prims I can place.

I am still building the complex, it is currently two stories high, I plan for it to be 3 stories (mabey 4)... the first floor is a lobby... in the lobby I am going to build three virtual shooters / target practice style games (pop up, moving targets, some that "fire" back)... the other stories are accessible only by teleported and form an arena in which I am building an obsticle course for a laser tag style game...

I hope to have the beta version of the laser tag game, and the single player game finished over the weekend... when I get them up and running I will post them in the forumn to call for beta testers.

Very neat idea. By the way, it looks like point-to-point teleporting is coming soon, which would make telehub distance moot.

Lasertag is already been done by a linden
its opensource, been working with friends on it for awhile

Laser tag it self is a simple concept, and there are tons of 'open source' guns in the game which, if they aren't already laser tag, can easily be modded to be so... but just because it exists, doesn't mean it can't be more refined and put in an original setting.

I have seen an arena (By Darce Harker) that is a giant space ship style arena, which is pretty cool...

The experimental arenas I have been playing with are 'blackout' arenas, where your sense are confused some by being encased in blackness... and you have to run around on a multilevel metal walk way system. Some of the other features I want to add in, for additional challange, and to make cheating harder are:

- being expelled from the arena if you touch the darkness for more than a reasonable time (ie the roof would allow touching longer than the floor.
- roaming laser beams that will paralise players temporarily, or alert other players to their presence.

Also I am experimenting with targeted shooting (head shots, arm shots, etc)...

But mostly the laser tag game is just me experimenting with the game and scripting language... my real goal is to build an immersive single player laser game.

Unfortunately I probably won't make any more real progress on either for atleast a fornight, because I have a lot of real world work to do in the lead up to the end of the year. But I hope to devote the needed time over my holiday break.

i built a nice lasertag arena, that looks a bit like tron in some ways, with blackened stuffs, but i havent yet finished the scripts

They have Laser Tag in Rizal|Sports sim.....

but u cant play there
We have laserquest (lasertag) now up and running at Bahamas..no need for host, u can play for free or put money in the pot and play for money
Only the arena we are building on atm, but u can play!