PS3 Home or Minecraft?

[Pamela Galli]

Someone at some point had to upload textures, yes.  Just as someone at LL had to code SL into being and had to create library textures, and sky and water textures. But before sculpts, ANY USER could do 100% of his creating inworld. I did, for quite a while in fact. I would bet that this was the case with most builders. 

Which is what Celestiall said.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Someone at some point had to upload textures, yes.  Just as someone at LL had to code SL into being and had to create library textures, and sky and water textures. But before sculpts, ANY USER could do 100% of his creating inworld. I did, for quite a while in fact. I would bet that this was the case with most builders. 

Which is what Celestiall said.

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Where did Celestiall say anything about creating inworld? All she talked about were tools, without specifying whether they were used inworld or outworld. And those textures still had to be created outworld. There's no getting around nthat one.

[Pamela Galli]

Library textures.  Google.

 

All of which has very little to do with the main point, which is the direction SL has taken and intends to take in SL2, and whether that direction has made SL more engaging or not to most users. I see no evidence that prettier = more concurrency.

[arton Rotaru]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Library textures.  Google.

 

All of which has very little to do with the main point, which is the direction SL has taken and intends to take in SL2, and whether that direction has made SL more engaging or not to most users. I see no evidence that prettier = more concurrency.

---

I see no evidence that uglier = more concurrency either.

There is a Minecraft clone called Patterns. A game where you can build with inworld tools only. The company who made it is called Linden Lab. Is it as successful as Minecraft? Certainly not, and no other game in the same genre will ever be.

Lets see who talks about Minecraft in 5 years. I bet not that many. And I bet, we are still here in 5 years, and ranting about how stupid Linden Lab is doing their business.

[Bree Giffen]

I think the argument would be better if Blue Mars was used instead of Sony home. Blue Mars was intended to be a world built by creators using only professional tools and like in Field of Dreams the residents would come. Blue Mars "died" of course.

I read an interview with Blizzard developers who  said they made World of Warcraft look clunky because they knew that a very large majority of users did not have the best graphics cards and making a game too high end would have prevented the establishment of an mmo dominating user base. Many other MMOs came out trying to be a high end game experience and they "died".

Deliberate simplicity is a good strategy but a world also needs to be well designed. SL in its simpler beginnings was accused of having a high learning curve. Minecraft was so well designed that even a child could master it. I guess the main point I'm trying to explain is that instead of going from SL's complexity and bad design to Minecraft's simplicity and good design, LL should be going for complexity and good design.

[irihapeti]

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arton Rotaru wrote:

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Lets see who talks about Minecraft in 5 years. I bet not that many.

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i accept the bet

[arton Rotaru]

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Bree Giffen wrote:

I think the argument would be better if Blue Mars was used instead of Sony home. Blue Mars was intended to be a world built by creators using only professional tools and like in Field of Dreams the residents would come. Blue Mars "died" of course.

I read an interview with Blizzard developers who  said they made World of Warcraft look clunky because they knew that a very large majority of users did not have the best graphics cards and making a game too high end would have prevented the establishment of an mmo dominating user base. Many other MMOs came out trying to be a high end game experience and they "died".

Deliberate simplicity is a good strategy but a world also needs to be well designed. SL in its simpler beginnings was accused of having a high learning curve. Minecraft was so well designed that even a child could master it. I guess the main point I'm trying to explain is that instead of going from SL's complexity and bad design to Minecraft's simplicity and good design, LL should be going for complexity and good design.

---

Right! And how could they achieve that goal. Of course with efficient modeling tools. One of the biggest problems of Second Life is still lag on lower end machines. A huge contributor to lag is building with in-world prims. Mesh was introduced to give creators the possibilities to build efficient content. Today you can create a sim which would work as good on lower end machines, as WoW does. With prims this wasn't really possible at all.

[Perrie Juran]

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Dillon Levenque wrote:

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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irihapeti wrote about a skillion adjustments she'd like to make to her avatar and mesh clothing, to make it all fit well. 

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I'm beginning to see the wisdom of one of Void Singer's avatars. In one spikey stroke of genius, she obviated the need for any and all adjustments...

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And yet, stroke of genius notwithstanding, you torched her off as if she was nothing but yesterday's newspapers.

By the way, Void (in spite of being a very nice person) tends not to come across as cuddly. That avatar doesn't do anything to change that.

And Dr. De Santis: I won't speak for Maddy but I will give my opinion: I doubt she meant to cast aspersions on those who enjoy twisting and tweaking the pieces that make up Second Life.

---

There was another Avatar present in that room that day if Maddy recalls.

As to whether or not Singerlarities are cuddly I don't know.  You still find yourself warmed in their presence. 

But I'm really more interested in irihapeti's comments.

When I came to SL back in 2007 it was to socialize.  I had no interest in building, scripting, etc, etc.  But I did develop an interest when I learned I could change things to better suit my needs.

One of my earliest friends was a very skilled builder.  And I would sit and watch her build.  She'd rez a primitive, a wonderful word that so aptly describes the building block for SL, and 30 seconds later I'd be staring at an Ionic pillar.  Another 30 seconds and it would have vines crawling up it.  And she was like a high preistess to me who knew secrets us mere mortals could not understand.

She did try to teach me but my computer at the time was so slow it was often an exercise in frustration for me.  But I did slowly learn a little.  And a little is all I really know even to this day.  Because building was never my focus.

Now it is true that any one can learn any skill set.  But with the introduction of each feature the complexity has grown.  First their was the Primitive.  But it was rigid.  LL introduced some tweaks and the "Flexi" was born.  But still based on that Primitive anyone could rez and start shaping.

Then came the Sculpty.  A new mystery introduced because you did not minipulate the Primitive.  You applied a mask that was mysteriously made in another world (a program outside of SL).  So suddenly there was a whole new skill set to learn.

And now we have Mesh, which if you read the creation forum can almost seem scary to deal with.  In many ways building has gone from a simple to a very complex task.

But something else also happenned with Mesh.  Linden Lab took away the ability to do the one thing irihapeti wants.  Thye took away our ability to Mod it.  To quote another Resident,

"they crippled Mesh.

Unlike every other object type, Mesh has no layer of abstraction between the model and the instance. The result is that every other object type can be changed into any other object type without losing the identity of the object. With Mesh, you're stuck: it is always Mesh; even worse, it must remain always the same model.

This was done to placate creators crazy about protecting their precious intellectual property. The result is the increasingly static, "behold the pretty pixels" Second Life."

Mesh has changed the nature of Second Life.

It has done more to discourage creativity than to encourage it.  And personally I don't think that is a good thing.  We really do not have a level playing field any more.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

 

"they crippled Mesh.

Unlike every other object type, Mesh has no layer of abstraction between the model and the instance. The result is that every other object type can be changed into any other object type without losing the identity of the object. With Mesh, you're stuck: it is always Mesh; even worse, it must remain always the same model.

This was done to placate creators crazy about protecting their precious intellectual property. The result is the increasingly static, "behold the pretty pixels" Second Life."

Mesh has changed the nature of Second Life.

It has done more to discourage creativity than to encourage it.  And personally I don't think that is a good thing.  We really do not have a level playing field any more.

---

Qie was referring to a scripting issue -  a script can turn a prim cube into a prim sphere, for instance, which can't be done with mesh. However, mesh objects can be modified as much as the maker allows them to be - they can be resized, in whole or in part, be retextured, etc. I've converted an eight room mesh motel to a six room one, easily stretched the rope of a hanging chair to reach my cathedral ceiling, etc. In fact mesh pieces can be more modifiable than prims because there's less of a size-limit issue. There's a hard limit how small you can make a house that uses hollowed prim cubes, for instance.

[arton Rotaru]

Honestly, I really don't get that "prim building is for everyone". It always sounds like as if people coming into Second Life, and opening the build tools floater, and start building awesome, highly marketable objects, making good amounts of L$ from it, right from the bat. The reallity is nowhere near that. To make something nice with prims you need a lot of practice.

In fact it's much easier to create appealing builds in a dedicated modeling software than doing it with torturing prims. Once you know to handle the basics of the software. Doesn't matter much if you learn to build in-world, or to learn Blender and the like. Both take time and practice, that's a given.

[Perrie Juran]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

 

"they crippled Mesh.

Unlike every other object type, Mesh has no layer of abstraction between the model and the instance. The result is that every other object type can be changed into any other object type without losing the identity of the object. With Mesh, you're stuck: it is always Mesh; even worse, it must remain always the same model.

This was done to placate creators crazy about protecting their precious intellectual property. The result is the increasingly static, "behold the pretty pixels" Second Life."

Mesh has changed the nature of Second Life.

It has done more to discourage creativity than to encourage it.  And personally I don't think that is a good thing.  We really do not have a level playing field any more.

---

Qie was referring to a scripting issue -  a script can turn a prim cube into a prim sphere, for instance, which can't be done with mesh. However, mesh objects can be modified

as much as the maker allows them to be

- they can be resized, in whole or in part, be retextured, etc. I've converted an eight room mesh motel to a six room one, easily stretched the rope of a hanging chair to reach my cathedral ceiling, etc. In fact mesh pieces can be more modifiable than prims because there's less of a size-limit issue. There's a hard limit how small you can make a house that uses hollowed prim cubes, for instance.

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It could be that I've taken Qie's comment out of context not fully understanding it.

[Perrie Juran]

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arton Rotaru wrote:

Honestly, I really don't get that "prim building is for everyone". It always sounds like as if people coming into Second Life, and opening the build tools floater, and start building awesome, highly marketable objects, making good amounts of L$ from it, right from the bat. The reallity is nowhere near that. To make something nice with prims you need a lot of practice.

In fact it's much easier to create appealing builds in a dedicated modeling software than doing it with torturing prims. Once you know to handle the basics of the software. Doesn't matter much if you learn to build in-world, or to learn Blender and the like. Both take time and practice, that's a given.

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I never said that there wasn't a learning curve.

Just that from my point of view the complexity has changed.

And I really don't see how you can say that it hasn't.

But that's my point of view based soley on what I've read, not done.

[arton Rotaru]

Nope, building with prims something else than a pile of cubes is a pain. Modeling software is designed to make building 3D content as fast and comfortable as it can be. Something which a platform like Second Life never can provide.

[Pamela Galli]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

 

"they crippled Mesh.

Unlike every other object type, Mesh has no layer of abstraction between the model and the instance. The result is that every other object type can be changed into any other object type without losing the identity of the object. With Mesh, you're stuck: it is always Mesh; even worse, it must remain always the same model.

This was done to placate creators crazy about protecting their precious intellectual property. The result is the increasingly static, "behold the pretty pixels" Second Life."

Mesh has changed the nature of Second Life.

It has done more to discourage creativity than to encourage it.  And personally I don't think that is a good thing.  We really do not have a level playing field any more.

---

Qie was referring to a scripting issue -  a script can turn a prim cube into a prim sphere, for instance, which can't be done with mesh. However, mesh objects can be modified

as much as the maker allows them to be

- they can be resized, in whole or in part, be retextured, etc. I've converted an eight room mesh motel to a six room one, easily stretched the rope of a hanging chair to reach my cathedral ceiling, etc. In fact mesh pieces can be more modifiable than prims because there's less of a size-limit issue. There's a hard limit how small you can make a house that uses hollowed prim cubes, for instance.

---

It could be that I've taken Qie's comment out of context not fully understanding it.

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You don't need a script to turn a cube into a sculpt into a cylinder; you can do it in the build menu.  This is very useful esp with sculpts -- you can redo a sculpt map and drop it into a sculpted prim and it will keep its size and rotation and position.  With mesh, if I want to update, say, a window, I have to not only upload a new mesh but copy and past the size, rotation, and position. 

[Parrish Ashbourne]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I will spell out my point:

 

Clunky old Minecraft, looking like it was built with Legos, with no games and nothing to do, is worth two and a half BILLION dollars.

Beautiful Home, with games to play, is worth, um, nothing.

 

Yet guess which one SL used to be like and which one LL wants it to be more like, with professional graphics and games to play?

 

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I agree

I've been building with legos for over 40 years and still love them.   I spent 2 years learning blender, I love what it can do but hate the process, took all the fun out of building in SL, and that's the problem in blender your not even building in SL.

The whole point of a virtual world is to have a place to interact with objects and other people.  How fun would it be to watch an inworld mesh speed building contest?

[Theresa Tennyson]

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arton Rotaru wrote:

Honestly, I really don't get that "prim building is for everyone". It always sounds like as if people coming into Second Life, and opening the build tools floater, and start building awesome, highly marketable objects, making good amounts of L$ from it, right from the bat. The reallity is nowhere near that. To make something nice with prims you need a lot of practice.

In fact it's much easier to create appealing builds in a dedicated modeling software than doing it with torturing prims. Once you know to handle the basics of the software. Doesn't matter much if you learn to build in-world, or to learn Blender and the like. Both take time and practice, that's a given.

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But if you've built your reputation as a builder on mastering an arcane proprietary system that only a few people bother to learn and the environment opens up to allow content made by other systems then you''re suddenly a smaller fish in a bigger pond, n'est ce pas?

[Parrish Ashbourne]

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arton Rotaru wrote:

Nope, building with prims something else than a pile of cubes is a pain. Modeling software is designed to make building 3D content as fast and comfortable as it can be. Something which a platform like Second Life never can provide.

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Mesh Modeling software has to be comfortable because it takes for ever to texture/uvmap any thing other then a pile of cubes.  There's no reason SL could not have good inworld mesh building tools, it would just take time to develop them.

I've never felt like pulling my hair out building with prims, learning blender left me bald.

 

 

[arton Rotaru]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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But if you've built your reputation as a builder on mastering an arcane proprietary system that only a few people bother to learn and the environment opens up to allow content made by other systems then you''re suddenly a smaller fish in a bigger pond, n'est ce pas?

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C'est la vie. :matte-motes-smile:

[arton Rotaru]

Especially texturing prim builds with their fixed UV mappings is a pain. Creating the UV layout is one of the biggest advantages of mesh IMHO.

[Pamela Galli]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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arton Rotaru wrote:

Honestly, I really don't get that "prim building is for everyone". It always sounds like as if people coming into Second Life, and opening the build tools floater, and start building awesome, highly marketable objects, making good amounts of L$ from it, right from the bat. The reallity is nowhere near that. To make something nice with prims you need a lot of practice.

In fact it's much easier to create appealing builds in a dedicated modeling software than doing it with torturing prims. Once you know to handle the basics of the software. Doesn't matter much if you learn to build in-world, or to learn Blender and the like. Both take time and practice, that's a given.

---

But if you've built your reputation as a builder on mastering an arcane proprietary system that only a few people bother to learn and the environment opens up to allow content made by other systems then you''re suddenly a smaller fish in a bigger pond, n'est ce pas?

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You continue to miss the point, if you think this is about me "really" complaining because mesh has made me a small fish. In fact I have worked very hard to keep my mesh skills current. I still have a 4 sim store.  I still make a good living, with no decrease in sales.  Notice that I appear in two categories of "winners" voted on by public within the last year in each of two awards -- for my mesh content:

http://slhomeandgardenexpo.com/2014/09/28/the-rezzie-awards-winners/

 

 

http://avichoiceawards.com/2013/12/16/avi-choice-2013-final-results/

 

So, no, this is not about me personally, but about the direction SL is taking, and the significant costs.

Comprenez vous?

 

[Urzul]

i didn't read all the post,
but,for me it for fun,i like to walk in my build even prim like,
it better then minecraft,cube.
I start making mesh but not very good.i have look many tutorial,still lot to learn.
I build something with only prime right now ,and it nice to me.break of broking my head whit leaning.
Lets have fun.

 

 

[Parrish Ashbourne]

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arton Rotaru wrote:

Especially texturing prim builds with their fixed UV mappings is a pain. Creating the UV layout is one of the biggest advantages of mesh IMHO.

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Creating the UV layout certainly is a big advantage of mesh, just not an easy/quick one to learn/use on any thing complex, and even harder/imposable for some one other then the creator to change/modify. 

[Tari Landar]

SL has never truly been a completely or even mostly level playground for creation. The ability to create has always been here, but it requires both desire and ability in the part of the creator. Still, not everyone is the same, so there never really was a true level playing field. Sure things used to be simpler for creators, somewhat, but I'd much rather see things progress than stay where they were, personally.

I may not like the fact that I can't create like some, ok most, other creators, but I am fascinated with what people can do with the tools and knowledge they have. I don't see any reason to stop that flow of creation, or prevent people from doing magnificent things, just so we can appease folks who want to stick with old school building. I AM one of those folks who would love to stick to old school building. I know it, I love it, and it is so much simpler for me most of the time, but I know it's not ideal for sl in the least. It's definitely not ideal for retention, or growth.

Really, a completely level playing field for all, isn't possible, there are too many factors at play. The biggest factor of all being the abilities of those who choose to create. Do you really want your ability to create to be hampered by my ability, just so we can say "well, everyone has the same level playing field"? I surely don't. I don't want others slowed down because of my inability to see the things I am building, or my understanding of nifty new gadgets and programs and tools and..and...I really don't. I don't want a level playing field at all, I don't think there should be one.

Maybe I am an odd duck in this conversation, though. I know lots of folks who are super smart, in my opinion, and can do all kinds of awesome things in sl...but they can't build for crap. So they use the things others have created, to help enhance their own abilities and create things for the masses to enjoy. I think sl would be a dull and boring place without the progress we have made as far as creation is concerned. Even if the implementation of that progress has sucked at times(and will likely continue to suck, here and there, at least, forever)

[Pamela Galli]

Yes, as an artist, I am glad I have the skill to make more beautiful things. I don't know, however, if that is a good thing for SL as a whole. I suspect it is not. It is prettier now, but that hasn't attracted new users. 

 

Ebbe says he is going to "target" creators in the new SL -- to focus on us in some way. He says there will be inworld building tools as well. My wish for SL as a whole is for it to be known more as a place where anyone can create rather than a place where people can see how pretty my creations are. 

[Drongle McMahon]

"Ebbe says he is going to "target" creators in the new SL"

It would be nice if he meant the target is for everyone to be creators - which means better tools that everyone can use, but I fear he means experience creators, who would be the middlemen, insulating LL from the rest who are supposed to be just experience consumers.  Still, the some experience creators might be able to provide experiences with the sort of opportunity for creation that many of us would prefer.