Alterniverse here we come...

Life lesson - save regularly - grrrr. Lost the last attempt at this particular posting because I closed IE7 [and the bloody thing did NOT prompt me to close all tabs, just closed all at once - grrrrr] ok, here we go recreating the wit and colour of the previous posting....

I decided to stay out of 2L today and concentrate on 3L and 4L [3L is my MOO, 4L is my MUD]. I figured that getting angsty about stuff I _want_ to do but cannot is not productive, so decided to focus on 3L and brainstorm in there [I seem to think non-linearly, and my MOO is the prefect brainstorming place].
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Firstly, I decided a MAP was a plan, so I launched Confluent's "Visual Thought" [my mapping tool of choice - it is free, powerful, full of pre-made shizz and is brill at managing multi-page illustrations - my maps for 4L areas are often involved and need to span a number of pages]. Now to MUVE newbies [Multi-User Virtual Environments ... still with me?] the above illustration might look like a "Concept Map" or a "Mind Map" and although it will _also_ function as that, it is actually a GEOGRAPHICAL map of the area I wanted to build - Redbarn visitors in 2L will recognise this space. It will serve my building needs in both MOO and later in MUD, although the building processes in each are really different ... more on that later.
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I hooked into my MOO and connected to a suburb I call "The Alterniverse" - a portal of sorts that provides bridges to other spaces quite different to a normal school learning environment - this seems more natural than moving from somewhere in the school grounds [which the "backbone" of my MOO is modelled] to a space station, or under the ocean or..in this scenario, to Polstead in Suffolk in 1826. MOOs, MUDs and MUxs have been around for ages - ever since they spawned from IRC [Internet Relay Chat] - synchronous tools that allowed people from anywhere that a network reached to chat to others in real time [whatever that is]. Social worlds like 2L are really ancestors of these I guess... neways, on with the task. ***WARNING CODE ALERT***
I descended to command line level in the MOO - it is faster and I know what I am doing. I decided to do it this way to see how long it would take to make the geography navigable [all account holders in MOO can do this or use a point and click interface to build for themselves, for free, with no logical limits to the amount of geography they can create]. This command string was entered [one command at a time; each command is separated by a semicolon] but could have been scripted and pasted in on ONE operation, to instantaneously make the space - something I will do in QMOOnity when i clone the area to that MOO as well.
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emo cracks knuckles ready to begin; @dig r/r,out to The Red barn Mystery; go r; @dig f/f,out to The Farmyard; go f; @dig b/b,out to Outside the Barn; go b; @dig t/t,out to Toolshed Entrance; @dig d/d,out to The Barn Doors; @dig a/a,out to Beside The Barn; go t; @dig w/w,out to The Workbench; @dig i/i,out to Inside the Barn; go i; @dig t/t,out to A Trapdoor; @dig s/s,out to Stock Livery; go t; @dig d/d,out to Down to the Root Cellar; go d; @dig r/r,out to The Root Cellar; go d; go t; go s; @dig x/x,out to #1724 {a circuit to the barn doors}; @dig f/f,out to Feed Storage; go x; go d; go a; @dig t/t,out to Trail Across Field; go t; @dig u/u,out to Atop a Hillock; go u; @dig d/d,out to Towards a Stream; go d; @dig e/e,out to An Encampment; go e; @dig w/w,out to Inside a Wagon; @dig f/f,out to A Fireplace; go f; emote warms himself by the fire; go e; go d; go u; go t; go a; go b; go f; emo rests after a short and intense digging session. [bloody blogger will not let me insert a "downstroke char" so have put in slashes in their place]
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7 minutes later I was walking around in a fully navigable space. I used long descriptive names for the passageways to various places "To the root cellar" as well as keyboard shortcuts "r" for travellers in a hurry who do not want to click-frenzy. You can walk around now by clicking on the exit names or by typing the command "go t" to travel through the door labelled "t", say. MOO punters can get there by typing "@go alterniverse" and following the links from there.
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I uploaded to my website an MP3 I ripped of the song by Tom Waits that got me going on this quest in the first place, and embedded it in the entrance room to stream while you get your bearnings, along with an historic lithograph map of Polstead in 1828 I found in my Googling, embellished the room textually and saved. 2 minutes. I went to the farmyard room, embedded an historical lithograph of the Red Barn [the one at the top of the blog] and will re-visit this room to textually embellish and start defining the learning objects in that room as well.
now time for a cup of tea and to contemplate how to visually theme this suburb, decide what learning objects need to be there, what bots will say and how they will look...

Well hello, dolly....

... so my first mission was to find a Gypsy Wagon for the gypsy camp I wanted to build beside a river. I found a nice scripted splashing water texture, built a sorta river off the edge of my skybox, with a sorta gravelly bed, mourned the absense of a spline deform tool, settled on a straight river instead. Found a freebie particle-based fire, added 2, rotated one and now have a roaring campfile, originally surrounded by a donut [torus], later surrounded by a few rocks. Then to the wagon. I could not find anything that did not cost, so decided to take pictures of ones I had seen, then to make my own - no mean feat. Wagon V1.0 was hilarious, and the scale was all wrong - you could not get into it as the doors were too short [and I have not found a pose ball that gets the avatar to stoop, yet]. Quite pleased actually with the result - coming into the building project with a plan is a good idea - shape and scale of Wagon V2.0 is fine.
. Now if I can just find out how to GROUP objects I will be a happy panda ... gotta be straight forward I would have thought - every object-oriented graphics program I have ever used has this feature ... buggered if I can find it, prolly staring at me right in the face. Interestingly [and embarrasingly] I could not for the life of me find out how to create a "notecard" - the simplest and most commonist communication method [except for chat] used in SL. Was not in the CREATE menu, was not in the FILE or EDIT menus, flummoxed if I could find it. Lindy said "look in the INVENTORY menu" and bugger me, it is right there - what banana decided that was the logical place for it?
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The interface in 2L continues to frustrate and entertain me - my avatar has been transported into mid-air, only to plummit and splat, got trapped in objects, had others created inside me and generally go loopy when trying to move or "touch" something - my right arm sticks up sorta spazzily and my left leg shoots out perpendicular then on irregular surfaces - maybe it is a reflection of the driver, unsure what my avatar says about me, but I will put 2 or 3 of the voices in my head to the task of understanding the link. I have journeyed far and wide looking for ideas and free stuff and have stumbled across VAST areas with very few people in them - lots of retail outlets - whole SIMS [2L slang for a simulation] that are themed beautifully but are little more than shop fronts.

I want BOTS - now I do not think this is an unreasonable request but is turning out to be the single most frustrating aspect of my project - I can do it in MOO, and MUD [both of which are 19th century tools, but the 21st century 2L has nothing even like it]. I have now [many thanks to Azwaldo] got a perfectly lovely "chatter" script, and it is embeddable in objects [this takes time, here is one I prepared earlier - The COW above now talks on channel5 - please stay on the line, your meaningless dribble is important to us] but something tells me the story, that is about PEOPLE, would be better told by PEOPLE SHAPED OBJECTS. Seems 2L does not have such a thing and trust me, I have looked.
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Searching on AVATAR only provided me with 2,874,562 different emporiums to customise my own avatar [yes, a tail, purple wings, glow-in-the-dark tap shoes and enormous multi-coloured intra-species genitalia are nice up to a point ... well, until you get to the cash register, then you realise regular human shape will be fine].
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Searching on DOLL was startling, mostly because it meant I visited sex districts in search of an inflatable [this is NOT as seedy as it sounds, I want to dress it up, right, and have it play a role, right ... yeah, you are right, in retrospect it still sounds seedy]. There are a LOT of sex districts I am afraid, and judging by the things I can buy and try, I lead a very sheltered life. "Big Betty [L$28000, 8 poses, 5 outfits, 3 realistic noises, natural skintones]" will not, however, do as my murder victim [her startled "O" expression is repulsive and sorta funny at the same time] and "Long John [L$14800, 5 positions, 2 strap-ons, 3 outfits, 4 body types, 4 realistic animations]" is packing a weapon, and yes, it looks like it may go off at any time, but it is not a convincing musket. So I am back to the drawing board. There are clothes EVERYWHERE, my inventory is full of freebies - why can they not be worn by a clothers horse that is NOT an AVATAR??? The 2L development team are missing a prime opportunity here I think.
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I have a sign/bill board - useful, I have scriptable books - very useful, now I have to work out how to upload textures to skin the objects ... then the story telling can sorta begin - where are you Mrs Noisy??? Taking bloody holidays I would bet, typical!!!
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... I spent some time looking at life thru the eyes of an avatar - HAVE A READ, was interesting for me, the writer, getting inside the head of a MUD avatar, imagination is such a powerful force is it not?