If you're on Bluesky and want to connect with other SL/virtual world fans, Caspian Morningstar created this whole huge, two part starter pack. (You can also request to add your own account to the pack.)
Morningstar's packs are up to about 300 members so far, though I'd estimate there's at least 3000 SL-related accounts on Bluesky. (That's roughly the number who follow the official Bluesky Second Life account.)
I’m seriously psyched to play Thick as Thieves, an upcoming PC/console game first teased at the Game Awards a few weeks ago. It has a direct heritage to the original Thief games from the early 2000s, milestones in immersive simulation. (And as a young gamer, got me personally ebullient about interactive immersion as an emergent art form.) By putting the player in the role of a stealthy cat burglar in a steampunk city, Thief made you so keenly aware of the virtual environment (light/shadow, the ambient noisemaking potential of different materials, bored/agitated guards), you felt truly part of the 3D world around you. The original Deus Ex games soon expanded on those ideas in a cyberpunk context.
And now, developers on those games are making immersive simulation a multiplayer experience. If that’s even possible?
While Thick as Thieves' trailer bills it as a game "from" revered designer Warren Spector, lead creator of the original Deus Ex games (who also did some work on the original Thief franchise), the brunt of everyday development is actually led by veteran designers David McDonough and Greg LoPiccolo — the latter who was project leader on the original Thief game.
In recent weeks I’ve been messaging all three — on Thick as Thieves’ heritage to Thief/Deus Ex, on the challenge of making an immersive world multiplayer, and much more:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Peppa Littlepaws shoots several alluring pictures of herself in various stages of dress or undress. Take this striking scene shot in silhouette. I love the sheer fabric. It’s simply extraordinary. She took another shot in different lighting and with a different orientation.
For more of Peppa’s daring pics, click here:
While Philip Rosedale returned to developing Second Life full-time a few months ago, Linden Lab was playing with cloud streaming the virtual world well before then:
"[T]he team had already experimented a bit with this technology a couple years ago," as he told me recently. "They started playing with it a while back. So it was something that we were just able to identify as a logical next mission… the mobile app, and then this.”
Hence the streaming project's internal name, Project Zero, a way of indicating that this a foundationally new approach to experiencing the virtual world.
“Meaning," as put its it, "zero download, zero login, zero crashing, zero UI… a way to greatly amplify the number of people that are desirous of using Second Life already and basically can't."
The current version of Project Zero — which you can still try for free here, in increments of 10 minutes – is still just the standard viewer, streamed to a web browser. But in the near future, Philip tells me, the UI will greatly change, and may even include some game hooks, as the company seeks to re-engage some of the 60 million people who've created an SL account over the years, but for various reasons, have strayed from the community:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
BK, otherwise known as BrianKeith Tigerfish takes wonderful landscape shots. He also does some lovely avatar and couples pics, but I want to focus on his landscapes because he has such a strong focus on including at least one man-made element. If it’s a waterscape, you are likely to see an abandoned boat or a lighthouse. On land, old carts or bikes and old buildings are often a focal point. Take this gorgeous picture “Special Delivery, Unedited” for example, the boat and the dock are everything and fill the picture completely, two-thirds boat and one-third dock. But it tells a story with the flowers in the stern and the blankets to make the person in the stem seat feel comfortable and cozy. Certainly someone is planning a romantic evening boat ride with a bit of lantern light.
For more landscapes, click here:
UPDATE, 4:25pm SLT: Linden Lab confirms Streaks is an A/B test phase that only some users are getting — see update at the end of this post!
If you've installed the Second Life mobile app, you might want to check your Menu for a "Streaks" options. It's apparently Linden Lab's first attempt to gamify the app in the most classic way among free-to-play mobile games: Giving you in-game currency for regular log-ins.
I just noticed the Streaks option on my own installation of the app today, but SL creator Submissa69 started accessing it over last weekend. On the first day of a Streak, you're offered L$ 15 , and then if you log-in the following day, the reward goes up to L$20, and then L$25, and so on. At this point, it's not clear how large the Streaks daily reward can grow to, but if you do claim your L$, the Linden Dollars are deposited directly to your account, and the Streaks rewards resets back down to L$15.
It's not a huge reward, to be sure, but then again, it's already enough to help buy high quality items at Fifty Linden Friday and other regular community-driven discount shopping events. And in exchange for these rewards, Linden Lab can help grow activity of the mobile app — and in doing so, help make it more discoverable to App Store users in general.
Ms. Submissa isn't super-impressed by Streaks herself:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Talloulah Warra might be the queen of Resting Implacable Face. the stronger, braver, bolder cousin of RBF, a term I dislike because of the implicit demand to smile when there is no reason to smile. The title of this picture is “The heart is a muscle and I want to make it strong” from the Gang of Youth song by David Le'aupepe. You can see the flower petals are blowing away from her crown, though her crown remains firmly anchored, perhaps suggesting strength in a crisis. I like how this picture expresses a feeling of resolute fortitude no matter what crises may loom.
For more RIF, click here:
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 