Inworld

A Simboard is a mix snowboarding, skateboarding, and hoverboarding, with a sci-fi twist. The FS model lets you customize nearly anything on it, with engine settings to change physics as you see fit. The CS Simboard is designed specially for SimBall, a sci-fi game concept of a high contact sport on Simboards with weapons. Thus “CS” model, or the Combat Simboard. The rules are simple. Grab the ball and score it for your team! Avoid opponents weapons and pegs. The game strategy comes from board types, and mixing board types to work together.

2. How can someone get started to play?

There is a free basic CS board available at Vetox HQ or at many affiliate vendors near public arena's around Second Life. These allow anyone to play in the arenas. Paid-for boards will have special powers and/or weapons depending on the type bought.


3. Are there advanced tricks that one can do once they get comfortable on a Simboard?

Yes. Simboards have an open control system. This means you can mix any set of keys, up to about four at once, and get a result that changes how the board reacts. Typically the best way to think of it is that holding the E or C keys (Page up and Page down) will change the primary control which are WSAD to a new actions. Turning left or right becomes spins or rolls for example. These effects are instant and only active while holding the E or C keys down, which allows for fast action and reactions. There are also weapons, or powers, in the CS model that are active only during an arena game. By pressing Page up and Page down at the same time. These weapons are usually AOE (area of effect.) And anyone nearby will be affected.


4. What locations do you recommend for the best simboarding?

For Simball, there are new arenas that pop up every week. There are too many to keep track of at the moment! However, there is a list of recent games at this global log here. Note that this feed may soon change over to our website at www.Vetox.biz. Also, some locations can be found on all arena servers in the pop-out community panel. Currently SIA is one of the top arena's ran by SLTV in the Japanese community, run by mato Jetcity. There are also the JBall tournaments. There is also a small example arena located above the Vetox HQ store. There is a Simball Network panel located there as well. The Vetox HQ is at this location. I do not own a Sim – rather, we let the community build arenas as they see fit on land they own – another reason to own land?)  – and then network their games to the global log. Soon there will be a list of top used arenas which we will feed back to all game servers inworld.

1. What inspired Olds Airforce Base?

At the time we planned Olds, there was no specific sim for modern jet combat. That was our first aim. As we started all places for dogfighting been World War II-themed.The ground combat part came a bit later into consideration as more and more residents asked for such a feature. The general storyline of Olds AFB is that of a remote US/NATO airbase in the mediterran to counter USSR/Soviet threats in the Cold War.

Our scenario is a late 1980s-early 1990s Cold War gone hot one. The Warsaw Pact and NATO countries engage in conventional non-nuclear hostilities and Olds is one hot spot in this war because of the strategic value of the base. This all got mainly inspired by things like: The novel "In the Eye of the Storm" by Tom Clancy, the movie "Red Dawn" and actual games like "Homefront" and "World in Conflict." The idea is appealing because in Cold War times, lines drawn in the sand been alot clearer. I grew up in West germany near the border and we lived allways under the impression that "the Ivan" might come around for a stroll. There been us and there been them. Likeweise on their side. These times are over, thank god. But nontheless this makes for a very clean and clear setup for a team-based gameplay.

Another question not directly mentioned here but which i got asked A LOT is: What does the name Olds mean? Short answer: The base is named after the famous air force fighter pilot from Vietnam, Robin Olds. The gentleman maverick with the mustache!

2. What can Residents do there?

Simply put: Engage other players with modern vehicles or as infantry within the VICE combat system

In our sims we got alot of manufacturers of VICE combat vehicles and infantry arms. A whole lot freebees are aviable as well and we got demo rezzers for all sort of things. This all takes place in 9 sims which get overseen by 9 admins and mods to make the gameplay as fluent and as enjoyable as possible.

The gameplay is team based with 4 base teams:
Team 1 is the NATO forces located in the mainsim Undine States.
Team 2 is the Warsaw Pact and Arab League troops in the Sim Undine Shore and North
Team 3 is the so-called Undine Liberation Front (for short ULF) which are a little ragtag rebel force located in Aeronautica Straight.
Finally there is Team 0, or Team 4, which is open game – just want to blow off some steam and blow things up. Just lock that team and go in – but be advised you, are on your own.

These teams come into importance with our interactive flag system. The capture-the-flag system has 16 sectors with 48 flags all over the estate. An interactive map shows progress of each team on how much ground they hold.

In our sims there is a multitude of vehicles aviable and to be seen in engagements. Foremost, naturally, all kinds of jets and attack helicopters, but also tanks, artillery and natually infantry. Unlike many places our gameplay is not very infantry-centric. In our sims infantry is quite vulnerable and you really need to get some teamwork going to succeed.

3. Have you remodelled the sim since it first debuted a few years ago?

As we opened Olds we did had a desert set up. It was very low-lag for jets and helicopters but it lacked the cover for ground forces. As this part grew larger and stronger in the community we decided to "green up" Olds and now feature a rich and flush green, Mediterranean setup with plants made by the extremly talented Uni Ninetails and her brand Forrest Floor. We allready plan a new outfit which most likely be the Estate covered all in snow. But when and how this will happen remains to be seen.

4. How large would you say the modern military combat community in SL is?

I am not shy to say that Olds kicked off some dust. After Olds opened and succeeded it showed the community another way to do combat games. Subsequently other sims came up: Gungnir/Prypyat, Oceana and the large Outcast community. Times where not allways easy but as a whole the modern combat community profited from the development. There are alot of small and large groups with different topics inside Modern combat, from more role-play oriented groups to pure combat teams and simple user groups. The community is live and prosperous, and usually open-minded to newcomers and help out with freebees, advising and training.

1. How did 7Seas Fishing come about?

Originally, we had a plot of land at our beach-style sim which wasn't renting. We were thinking of pet projects we could run there ourselves, instead of simply seeking a new renter. A fishing game had been something we'd wanted to try for some time, and now we had space to do it. And, well, things snowballed from there.

The game grew from a wouldn't-it-be-cool-if momentary lark to a bit of a juggernaut. Now, it's certainly beyond the boundaries of a little plot of beachside property! Fishing areas have popped up everywhere, offering fishing contests with great prizes, or amazing custom fish you can only get at their sims.

2. What kind of fish can you capture?

We have a wide variety of fish, from realistic breeds to living puns, along with catchable wearable items and crafting parts that assemble useful gadgets. There's tons of stuff out there – and that's just the official items.

There's a UNIVERSE of community custom catches at various fishing areas. We allow anyone to piggyback off our system, to create their own fish, items, prizes, and so on for people to catch with their fishing rods. In fact, twice every year we have week long festivals to celebrate our amazing community and all the great stuff they've created!

3. You’ve recently expanded into “wearable” fish pets and even breedables. Do those tie into the original gameplay?

All our fish double as wearable pets. The idea there was that once you catch a fish, you should be able to do something with it beyond rez a really high prim object as a sort of trophy. So, our pets swim around you once worn, and can be even be renamed to make them YOUR pets.

Fish breeding is another area we've expanded into, where catching parent fish and using fish food with them (also catchable) gets you baby fish with the traits of both parents. You also can earn BP (Baby Points), which have their own Hall of Fame aside from XP (Experience Points) you get from fishing in general.

The community also have made their own breedable fish. There's tons of great customs out there to catch!

4. Part of the success of 7Seas has been the fact that any sim can add a “fishing area kit” to their sim. How does that work?

Inside every Fishing Area Kit is a Gear Vendor. That vendor then, in turn, sells Fishing Area Kits. You earn 20% of every sale you make through your vendor, which encourages folks to set them up, to recruit more fishers and more fishing area owners.

The game spreads virally as a result. While we do have a "7Seas Fishing Headquarters," it's little more than a show room floor for our game. The real fun is to be found at any of the community fishing areas out there, which we list on our website at 7SeasFishing.com.

5. What happens at level 40 (for those fishers who accumulate over 50,000 XP)?

For starters, your chances to catch more valuable fish "max out" at Level 5, which you can reach in a day or two. When we started out, we didn't want the game to be a grindy, boring MMORPG. We wanted folks to be Super Effective early on, so that they feel that fishing contests and the like are fair for all involved.

Every level from 6 onward earns you a new title, and when you reach level 40, you've hit the Hall of Fame! We list Hall of Famers on our website at 7SeasFishing.com. There's some fierce competition up there – some fishers have even become Millionaire Hall of Famers, and that's reflected in your level title. You can make your fishing rod
"Boast" your level to folks around you for bragging rights, too!

Overall, 7Seas Fishing is both a game and a community. We provide the game; our amazing fishers provide the community. We've got a lively chatroom in our 7Seas Social Chat group (free to join for all fishing rod owners) and there's fishing areas out there across a wide spectrum of cultures and interests. If you're looking for fun, you'll find it
here.

INSERT COIN ARCADE

1. Many of the games that you’ve developed have an ‘80s retro feel – comparable to the original days of the classic “arcades” of the past. Was that an intentional design choice?

Absolutely. When I first started the project, there weren't many playable games in Second Life – "gaming" was limited to casinos and bingo-like gambling machines. I felt that the other side of gaming, playing games for the sheer fun of playing games, needed to be represented. The best way to do that was to try to mimic the golden age of arcade games... the 1980s.

Originally I started with re-creations of classic games, like Pole Position, Hogan's Alley, and so on. However, early on I realized that violating copyrights was not a particularly groovy business model... and it's far more satisfying to put an original work out there, something you can claim was 100% your imagination and skill at work. So, I made retro-STYLE original games instead.

2. Can other sims buy your arcade creations to include in their locations?

Yes! My games are available individually ($250) or in discounted packs, including a complete arcade pack. All games are copyable, so you can install them in as many places as you want. Upgrades are always free, as well, for when I make optimizations or fix bugs.

I also have a simple "ticket and prize system" available, similar to redemption games you'd see at an arcade. I doubt you could make money hand over fist from these quarter pumpers, but it's a great way to cross-promote your own business, for instance... or just show off some neat toys and wearables that feel like you'd earned them from an
arcade. (No prizes are included with the kit; you have to provide your own creations.)

3. What is your most popular game?

By far, it's my "alley roller" style game, Skeeball. This is a classic carnival game, which uses SL physics to simulate rolling a ball down the table, launching it off a ramp, and into various holes worth different scores. Using original art, it maintains the classic feel of
those games.

I've also got a great "lightgun" style shoot 'em up called Zombie Meltdown, which is just OOZING with 8-bit goodness. You even get a wearable plastic lightgun, which you can see in your avatar's hands as you gun down the threat of radioactive commie zombies from the 80s!

4. Is it difficult to play these games in SL?

SL's interface and prim-based systems don't easily lend themselves to action games, it's true. That's why all my games provide simple instructions for how to play them, available just by clicking the game. It takes less than a minute to learn the basics, then you're off
to the races.

Most of my games work in first person perspective ("Mouselook" mode). With games like Cruise Control, a racing game, this is great -- you get that feel of sitting behind an arcade steering wheel. You can look down and see the coin slots and pedals! It really helps your immersion, and keeps the games simple to play, once you learn to tap that lovely "M" key to zoom into first person.

5. What’s your personal favorite?

My favorite has got to be Fist of Discomfort. It's one of the more unique games in the bunch – a screen full of ninjas pops up, and you have to click on them to kill them. But to score WELL, you have to carve an efficient path through them... the shorter the distance between two clicks, the more points you earn. Maxing out your score means you have to be quick on your feet and think of the best way to approach the fight.

What's more... it supports four players at the same time! So while you're busy trying to take out ninjas, so are your friends, and if they get to the ninjas before you do, there go your points. It's a great competitive game.

Purely by accident, as it happens. Before I joined Second Life I was heavily into the MMO-RPG scene from the '90s run on MOO-, MUD- and MUSH- based systems, which were purely text-based games because technology had not risen to the challenge yet of streaming something as complex and bandwidth-intensive as Second Life. When I say "into" the scene I mean that I created and collaborated on the creation of quite a few of them, not just played on them. The systems that we built rivaled games like WoW and EVE Online in complexity and gameplay, but you had to play them as interactive novels rather than what we now think of as MMOs.

One of the people that I "MOOed" with at the time introduced me to Second Life and I got hooked on the creation aspect of it instantly. That's the same thing that drew me to MOOs in the first place, the ability to instantly create and program things in real time, collaboratively. My very first thought about Second Life was, in fact, "Whoa, someone created a graphical MOO." because they are, in essence, identical except for the addition of graphical rendering. 

2. What’s the story behind Greedy Greedy – which is a favorite of many residents?

On several of the aforementioned MOO games that I helped develop I had created a rendition of Greedy Greedy to play among friends, primarily with the other developers. When I came to Second Life, I decided that porting Greedy Greedy would be a good way to learn the scripting language. I made the happy mistake of leaving it rezzed when I went to bed one night, and awoke to two people who had stumbled across it in the night and insisted they must have a copy of it for their own land, and thus a very long learning process began for me in how to run a business.

The origin of Greedy Greedy itself is lost to time, I grew up playing it in my family but nobody actually knows where it came from. Many people know it by many different names, including 10000, Zilch, Stugots, Farkle and Amish Dice, some with minor rule variations which I have attempted to incorporate into Greedy Greedy so everyone can play it their own favorite way.

3. Are you surprised by the ongoing success of Greedy Greedy?

A little. I didn't create it with the idea of even selling it, much less selling a lot of it. I think it owes its success to several factors. Firstly, it is a very friendly game. It doesn't eliminate players and doesn't require a steep learning curve. Secondly, it is a very social game. It doesn't require an intense focus on the game to play it well. You can play your turn, switch your focus, whether it be to Photoshop or scripting or chatting with friends, and then come back to it again later without having lost any important information, so it can be played very casually. Lastly, it is a very competitive game, and hope springs eternal. You can be the last player on the scoreboard, but at any moment you could leapfrog the competition and come out the winner. It's that anticipation of a big score that could be just around the corner. You haven't truly lost until the game is over, whereas in many games if you are trailing well behind the leader then you are basically walking dead.

4. You also recently opened a new blog dedicated to gaming in SL at http://gaming.sl. What inspired you to start that blog?

It's not really a blog, in the normal sense. The primary function of http://Gaming.SL/ is to provide support for games inworld, to give them access to features that are impossible to create with Second Life alone. Things like persistent grid-wide leaderboards and player achievements. These features require a database behind them to work, and that is something that SL isn't capable of handling on its own. The "blog" aspect of it is more of a "Here is what's new about games that use Gaming.SL technology!" and has little to do with the broader gaming culture in Second Life. One of the more popular features of Gaming.SL is the ability to provide "DLC" for games that are connected to it, although they are known as "addons" on the website. This allows games in-world to have features added to them on-the-fly by downloading new information off the website.

At the moment, this is primarily being used to allow a remarkable degree of aesthetic customization of my games. Are you a fairy? Great! You can buy a game, and then press a button and it turns into a giant mushroom patch. How about a vampire? No problem, another addon will shapeshift the game into gothic thrones around a stately table. I feel that a big part of Second Life is the immersion, and these features let players enjoy games in their own part of the grid while maintaining a higher degree of immersion into their chosen worlds. Many gaming tables in Second Life are garish and must remain so, making them an eyesore to have rezzed because they are, at the very least, out of theme with their surroundings. To me, presentation is nearly as important an issue as the gameplay itself.

• XXander Snook -Tuesday, Nov. 29
• Aeon Voom - Wednesday, Nov. 30
• Oni Horan - Tuesday, Nov. 29
• Karsten Rutledge - Tuesday, Nov. 29 and Wednesday, Nov. 30
• Aries Oh - Wednesday, Nov. 30
• Loki Eliot - Wednesday, Nov. 30

Share Your Creations

I don't actually get out much with regard to the rest of the Grid. Me and my island gang go on adventures to explore new places every first Friday of the month and we have come across some good mini games, but I find that actual interactive places with a story to tell and a task to complete is rare. We went recently to a Norse themed location called Folkvang which had a wonderful simple Chest Hunting quest “Frajas Quest,” it really added to the fun and we felt like we had accomplished something. When you say “PLAY” though, it could mean any number of things. The Steampunk Town of New Babbage is a second home for me and every autumn i return there to set up a role-play story that can last over three months. People there are proper role-players and within the great smoggy atmosphere it is so easy to start roleplaying.

Visit the Secret Underground Base inworld here.

1. What is LOGOS-cards?

LOGOS-cards is a tradable card game within Second Life. In these kinds of games you put together decks of cards, which are then used to fight with a second player to see who created a better combination. The draw of the game is that it brings exciting, turn-based tactical fighting to wherever you go in the vast world of SL. Naturally, collecting and trading cards is a big part of the experience, and the game is varied enough to allow experimentation with countless of card decks. We have released a big update at the start of the year and plan to bring more content to the game early next year as well.

2. Do they cost money?

The game itself is sold for 299L in our stores, but members have access to free demo units which they can hand out to anyone they want, so if you just want to try, you only need to ask in our group. Cards can either be bought in our store, or earned by playing games and leveling up for free.

3. What is collectible about them? Are there rare cards that are difficult to get?

Some cards are rarer then others – the card distribution is completely random. I'd like to point out one thing that I personally found fascinating about doing this: I'm one of those people who never trusts random systems. You watch what happens and always come up with your own theories about elaborate mechanisms of why this isn't random at all, and really works completely different to screw you over. Only when people started to assume the exact same thing in our system I realized how easy it is to reach such conclusions, and ever since then I cast aside all conspiracy theories whatever I play myself. Random means some people get lucky, while others don't, that is all there is to it.
If gambles aren't your thing, some of our players run card shops, where you can directly purchase whatever card you want to have for your deck.

3. What is the rarest card of them all?

The rarest cards are on one hand the most powerful ones, but on the other hand they are so difficult to play that it is never a necessity to own them in order to be competitive. There's a few cards that are especially rare of course, two cards each for only me and Darien to hand out personally – however, we like and also the special promo card that we only gave to the first 100 people who purchased our game. A very popular rare card is the one we gave exclusively to our beta-testers. We try to limit these opportunities however, so collecting doesn't become too much of a bother.

4. How can someone get started if they want to play?

Go to our website. There you will find links to our stores in world, if you'd like to know more. The game is available on the marketplace and if you join our LOGOS-cards group you can ask for a free demo unit, which is a fully working copy of the game without the ability of making your own decks and ideal to learn the game.

I hope that covers all the basics, I'm sure I'll reference my development experiences with the game in future threads as well. For now I'll leave this here for whomever is interested.

Game on!

- Oni Horan

To celebrate the launch of the new Premium membership package, which includes exclusive benefits and Premium-only sneak peaks, we’re offering 50 percent off Premium Membership*!

Take advantage of this limited-time offer and sign up now. In addition to saving 50 percent off the regular price, members enjoy more rewards than ever — including exclusive, Resident-created gifts. You’ll also gain access to Premium-only Sandboxes — special areas inworld where you can build objects, rez purchased items and meet other new members — all on specialized land where you are free to express your creativity. Become a Premium member today and you’ll also get a sneak peak of the limited-time beta of Linden Realms, a quest-driven interactive experience created by Linden Lab at our Premium Sandboxes and Gift Kiosks.

Plus, you’ll get your own Second Life home to furnish, Premium-only access to Live Chat support, a L$1000 sign-up bonus and weekly L$ rewards to spend on whatever you like. Read more details about Premium benefits here — and keep your eye out for even more benefits coming soon.

*TERMS & CONDITIONS FOR 50% DISCOUNT
This limited-time discount offer is available only for memberships on the Quarterly billing plan. Discount will be applied to the first quarterly billing cycle only, and all future charges will be at the regular Premium price. To qualify, Second Life members must have an active Basic account or create a new Second Life account. Discount offer begins on Monday the 21st of November at 8:00 am Pacific Standard Time (PST) and expires on Monday the 28th of November 2011 at 08:00 am Pacific Standard Time (PST).