(LONG) SL could take over the world if...

Yes a nice lobby system is what's mainly called for (whether using the MS-xbox system or calling up something like Halflife).

I would imagine that the lobby system (what I referred to earlier as portaling) might include logging out of SL and into another game (since that is not altogether different from what happens when someone "zones" from one area to another in other games) ~ the difference being that you'd be actually leaving one application and launching another.

I am sure that as the "metaverse" gets developed, the Lindens will find ways to set SL in a background or idle mode when performance becomes an issue in accessing other applications. At the moment, though, I am able to play other games with SL running in the background without much hit on performance (with dual AMD athlon and PCIE graphics card).

But the lobby is the key to making the transition seem integral to the game, and would be fun to design, and yet another thing that perhaps an individual could customize to his or her own taste.

IF all you are now talking about is a 'lobby' to allow you to start up each game then whats the point?

Going back to your original comments about 'full' interaction, then it would be possible if the games where designed to use a common protocol/reference system to describe data entities.

There is already a standard for it. Its mainly used by (military) mission simulators to allow different types of simulators froma number of manufacturers to interact in the virtual battlespace.

I figgered it out.

Ok. Here's what you do. Log in to SL.
Do whatever you do in game and, when you're ready,
Go to Midnight City.
Stand directly in front of the Movie theatre.
Walk forward 4 paces.
Turn around 180 degrees and walk back 5 paces.
Turn 90 degrees to your left.
Walk 15 paces.
Spin around three times.
Type the words "I wanna play CoH [or whatever game it is you want to play)" three times.
Hit the Ctrl button three times
Hit the Alt button 7 times
Alternate between Ctrl and Alt, hitting both 4 times each
Then press Alt and F4 together
You'll see your desktop come up. (If it doesn't, just go to your desktop)
Here, you'll see a little picture with the name of the game you want to play
(If you don't, navigate to a place where you do.)
Double click that little picture

And you're done. The game will come up and you can play it, straight from SecondLife.

But only if you follow these instructions to the letter.

It's not really ALL I'm thinking about - but certainly an important part of it. The point is severalfold: first, to be able to connect with other people in SL and game together; second, to be able to have a robust crafting/building experience for people who play games (such as CoH) that lack any such component; third, from within the other game you are playing, to be able to have a really cool place to go when you are not adventuring (something like the apartments in Everquest II but a billion times better); fourth, to appeal to the millions of people who play mmo's and love crafting/building and draw more people to SL; fifth, to be able to make a more robust backstory/environment for any mods you develop for games like Unreal Tournament/NWN/Halflife etc. that allow you to create mods for others to play. I could keep going but I want to go make stuff.

Perhaps the most important point is simply: because it's there.

Thanks so much for the link -- I will go study it!

Wouldn't just having adventuring in SL do all this?

Ok - now, at last, I'm getting it.

What you're saying is that because most of these games have a very limited experience as far as personal content goes (I remember I once played AO and got a "luxury apartment" there, but everyone's was exactly the same, you couldn't customise at all, and you couldn't even let anyone else into it), that it would be nice if they could be linked up to the SL engine to provide that aspect.

It's a good idea but I think it'd hit far too many hitches along the way - objects made in SL couldn't be taken into the other world, same with vice versa as well. The money could also be a problem - the last time I checked IGE, you need something like 20 million AO credits to get L$1000, which means that for the AO player who can buy their new blaster gun for 300c, they aren't going to be happy when they have to spend 2 million credits on a shirt that they can only wear in their apartment.

Yes -- but "just" is not an option. Clearly our developers have their hands full with the game as it is. It takes teams as big and bigger to develop and maintain online games. Part of the idea here is for SL to do what it does best, and for us to play other games to enjoy what they do best.

I actually doubt that any one company can do a good job with both aspects of online worlds (one part being building/crafting, and the other being adventuring). If it could be done, I think Blizzard would be doing it, for example. In order for both aspects to be fully developed, I think they will probably need to be separated in some way.

Any truly good crafting/building system will have to permit customization, ultimately, or be disappointing to crafters and builders. We all see how much of a drain on resources customization is in SL (and as it happens in any other games that allow a high degree of customization), and the combat in online games is equally resource intensive. The two aspects really, at the present time, can't coexist. That is why, to me, it is not such an obstacle that SL would be disjoint from the adventure games, becuase I think it will always be that way.

I think Guild Wars is a useful model here: there is a shared online world where people do the mmo thang and then the adventuring is instanced. Instancing if done differently than it is now (which of course would take years of development, and I am not suggesting it here) could get around the problem of using custom assets in the adventure game. There'd need to be a way of compiling the set of players' gear with stats with the client of the instance (not altogether different, I think, from player made mods in games like Halflife and UT). But that is a BIIIIG job and again I am not suggesting it.

ROme wasn't built in a day, and for now it would be interesting to see what issues and opportunities would arise in trying to connect two worlds. And it will be itneresting trying to figure it out, for some of us at least.

Thats exactly why it isnt going to happen and the crux of what everyone has been saying all along.

Its not something that can be retrospecitively engineered easily, it has to be designed in from the start.

Hang in there. Brainstorming is good, but it might have helped you a bit if you had mentioned that a tiny bit earlier in the thread. :3



I think Newgate's got the idea here. But I'll try to give a better idea. But first, we have to pretend that somewhere along the line the Lindens fork over an ability to create 'worlds' offline and allow other Residents to link to when they are put online. Sort of like a 'portal', as the OP was describing it.

Anyway, the concept is very simple. Instead of trying to connect to existing games or whatever, SL's Residents instead create worlds which contain content of a game-like level in an 'offline instance' of SL. You wouldn't really be offline, but rather be contained within a locally saved environment you create. You'd still be available on friends' lists, available for Instant Messages, etc - but nobody else could join you unless by invite.

Much like a sim, only on a more detailed level, you could restrict the access to your 'instance' to a login procedure. Imagine thinking of SL in this brainstorm project as a graphical Multi User Dungeon, since we seem to be talking about games. In SL you make your avatar - either on the main grid, or in your own personal instance. You then open a portal to access other instances that are open and go through a login procedure at that instance if it's required. You can then 'get your game on' with your own personal avatar.

Of course, then you run into problems like equiping custom items, etc, on your avatar if you have a highly modified one, such as a furry model with lots of prims on the head area, and so on. However, a suggestion in this way would be that player information, along with the login info, actually contains the data for the avatar pre-portal into the game. The game you log into has it's own additional roster of information that can be stacked onto your existing info. IE - a second 'layer' of wear options. So if you did have a furry avatar, as in the given example, you could attach an aditional object to your head as well as what you logged into the game with.

However, this process could load a lot of prims and cause a lot of lag to bog down most systems if there were a lot of prims involved. This could be resolved by adding a method of seperate objects detecting prims and 'erasing' them from visiual memory temporarily as new objects are placed in layers. In our game example with the furry avatar, let's say you slap on a helmet. Well, your furry avatar has huge ears, (much like my own), and when you do stick on the helmet, they poke through and look all distorted. So there's a problem - unless somehow there is a way for one object to overwrite and make prims from one build erase prims from another build upon collision detection. IE - you stick the helmet on, and anything that sticks through it just goes away. This could be done down to a polygonal level, rather than a prim level, if other methods of building were ever implimented into SL. Subtraction, etc. In general, I'd imagine something like this simply deleting any and all portions of prims that are not visible and/or collide with one another to form intersections.

...

It's rather involved and hard to think of it in terms of what we have now, and easier to brainstorm about the future, (much like my inconsistent rambling in this post goes on about). There are going to be a lot of ideas, and, unfortunately, none of them will go very far without some sort of standard. I don't know if SL will ever reach that standard, or if some other company will snatch it out from under them before they can. SL is wonderful for it's simplicity, but it is missing so many things. It seems to me, at this point, to be trying to hard to be a commercial product rather than a service.

If I could build an avatar, and then maybe go play a game with it, I'd pay for both the service to build the avatar and create instances of my own, and any additional costs that a 'portal provider' might charge for access to their own instance, if any were made. And in the same boat, I would be able to charge for access to my own instance if I felt like it contained content worth paying for to visit.

The Lindens wouldn't have to worry about much more than login servers and messenger server, plus they'd get a monthly payment from everyone. And then, players simply do the rest.

Thanks for your feedback everyone. We will see how things develop!