Second Life performance and the state of Game Engines

Nalates recently published a post on the state of Game Engines and the performance of the Second Life platform in comparison. The article has also triggered an interesting discussion in the comments section.

Nalates thinks that the current batch of game engines in the gaming world exceed the capabilities of Second Life and she doubts that Second Life will ever catch up. Nalates shows a demo of the Unreal Engine 4 platform called "Infiltrator" and she comes to the conclusion that making something like Infiltrator in SL is currently not possible.

She says that in SL we have had the ability to use most of the tools professional game designers use; 3DS, Blender, Maya, and others for over a year. So, we could build pretty much everything one sees in games designed with the Unreal engine [...]. 

We can make the buildings, the characters… mostly, the clothes, and most of what you see in the demo video. We can even make most of the particle effects. What we can’t do is have the action displayed in the video; fast moving characters and massive explosions with shrapnel flying everywhere amid great balls of flame.

LSL - the reason why there isn't much interactive content in Second Life

I have been planning for a few months already to write a blog post why there isn't much interactive content in Second Life. Today I saw a post by Loki Eliot, usually one of the most enthusiastic game creators. I have covered some of his game creations and other activities on my blog. Two days ago he needed to relieve his heart from some frustrations that he experienced while working with Second Life as a platform. 

Loki Eliot on his sim "Escapades" (photo taken from his SL feed)

The global domination hunt - solve puzzles to win the prizes

Yesterday, when writing about the new heads-up displays (HUDs) which are the basis for second life gameplay, I couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities that the new elements such as cut screens, dialogue bubbles and an interactive inventory could bring to Second Life hunts. Only recently I have played the Love Portion 9.9 hunt from MadPea and as much as I loved the story elements I was also having a doubt: Isn't it a bit outdated to cam arround sims looking for an object? Wouldn't it be much more exiting to meet game characters instead which give you tasks to accomplish? Wouldn't it be more interesting to solve puzzles like in adventure games in order to achieve an item? Yes it probably would...

Picture taken from Quan's Travelogues

Have you ever experienced the situation that after having a good idea you find out that someone else just recently put it into practice? That's what happened to me here. Just a few hours after reflecting on a new puzzle approach to Second Life hunts, I found a blog posts about a new game called "Global Domination".

MadPea's "The Escape" and the role of HUDs for story telling

Check out another great gaming experience that is based on a heads-up display (HUD): MadPea's "Escape Room". 

There are two editions of the game. One is set in a run down motel room, the other in a Seventies design stage at its finest: Wallpaper with huge eyes, lava lamp, Kiss poster and even a record player. But whatever room you chose - once you're in, you will notice that you cannot get out of there. That's when the game starts! 

The "Escape Room" HUD serves as an interactive inventory space displaying pictures of the items that have been collected. The game itself follows the principle of "point and click" flash games that you can find on the internet. Look for interesting items in the room and click on them. You will get some items in your HUD. You can select, view and combine the collected items in your HUD and they can operate with other items in the room.

Loki's "The Cheese Fairy"

Today I want to show you a very short SL experience created by Loki Eliot. The so called Cheese Fairy quest is available AT NEMO BEACH. If you try this experimental mini-game you might get an idea about the potential of future adventure games in SL. The story is uncovered by clicking things which trigger the HUD to show encounter bubbles similar to what you find in RPG games. An entire RPG story could be stored in a HUD.

You can either watch this video I made or play it yourself in +/- 5 minutes.

When I played Loki's "Cheese Fairy" experience the first time I was really enthusiastic about it because it shows that interactive riddles and story telling is at least theoretically possible in Second Life. I had to think of the Electrobit City Sim: if players would meet such AI-characters there that send them to accomplish a quest, it would be fairly easy to transform this "exploring place" into a "real game". And that would be a great mix of old jump-and-run elements with adventure game elements. I would really love that!

Loki has also written a blog post about developing the Cheese Fairy experience. I really hope that he will continue this path in the future.

The SL Profile Feed - Linden Lab's unexplored "Shared Creative Space"

Overcoming the gap between in-world and logged-out

Linden Lab is now marketing itself as "Makers of Shared Creative Spaces". And they even might have created a "shared creative" space by accident. It could become the intersection between the in-world SL experience and the web. It could also become a multiplayer interactive online narrative. I am talking about the SL profile feed with its snapshot function. Most people haven't realized its potential and they are not even using it. But let's start from the beginning.

Can I seriously be talking about the SL profile feed - this feature that never got adopted by the SL users? The SL feed is what you get to see first when you click on someone's profile in the viewer. It's basically an overview of past status updates made by a resident. When Linden Lab acquired  Avatars United in 2010, they integrated pieces of that social network for avatars into the Second Life platform. As a result the profiles of the residents switched to a web-based layout and SL profile feeds were added. However up to now the majority of SL residents doesn't write any status updates and their feed remains empty. Most of the time you'll find automatically generated entries like "Xyx resident changed their display name to Xyx+".

Nothing shared at this moment...

So where is the potential? Well at some point Linden Lab added a little but decisive new feature: the ability to directly upload snapshots from Second Life to the feed. SL residents can now publish their in-world experiences to the web directly from the viewer itself. So far the SL experience is mostly limited to what is happening in-world. Either you are there or you miss. At best you can hope that someone is going to tell you about it.

An Introduction to Role-playing in Second Life (RPG in SL part 1)

This article is the first part of a blog post series on role-playing in Second Life.

• An Introduction to Role-playing in Second Life
• Location Scouting in Second Life
• Determining a role-play event in Second Life
• The fashionista - A Second Life Role-Play Archetype 

The history of role-playing games (RPG) goes back much further than the history of Second Life. It begins with an earlier tradition of pen-and-paper role-playing games. The first commercially available RPG, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), was inspired by fantasy literature and was published in 1974.

A role-playing game is a type of game in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization. In pen-and-paper role-play games each action succeeds or fails according to a system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, the players may improvise freely. The exciting feature about role-play games is that the direction and outcome of the game is shaped by the players in a collaborative effort in a small social gathering. In the beginning of the eighties RPGs where also released in electronic format, first as single later as multi-player games.

"The Doomed Ship" is an RGP set in a dark Sci-Fi environment.

Loki's The Well - An SL experience

Loki Elliot has a long history of game creation in Second Life such as the "Babbage Chronicles" or "The John King Experience". The name of the latter points to the genre definition for mini-games like "The Well": an experience. Just like in SL adventure games the player is interacting with characters and objects in order to advance in the story line. The SL experience differs in my eyes from an SL adventure game such as "The Guarden" by all or some of the following criteria:

• The game is rather short or consists of a longer series of short scenes
• The puzzles are not very complex - the actions triggered by game objects and characters do not change based upon steps taken earlier in the game
• there are not alternative game paths, solutions or endings

Picture taken from Loki Elliot's blog