Zuckerberg Comes for the Metaverse

[Coffee Pancake]

3 hours ago, Mr Amore said:

I absolutely agree with this, SL has so much potential to host any genre of gaming and the SL Experience adds incredible functionality... but... it's a ton of work. I know many people, with many ideas, but either they can't script it, or mesh it, or texture it, or animate it. LL provides the toolset, but there's no support or even guidance from a development environment to help them along.

For a game development perspective, SL provides a very limited toolset and a lot of architectural deal breakers.

The time commitment requires to make a game is intense, but the huge indie scene makes it clear that plenty of people are able to stick with things and overcome the problems to make some pretty great individually made titles.

The main rub here is whatever's done in SL must adhere to the global rules of SL. Experiences fell far short of what's required.

Architecturally, there are a number of roadblocks and add layers of complexity that turn any involved project into an impossible one.

Story based quest driven game - The shared experience demands that everything look the same for everyone all the time. You approach an NPC and there is no way to indicate they have something for you that's relevant to your personal progression though the story. NPC's must always be in the same location for everyone all the time. Collectable items will always be shown even if you have collected them, or don't need to see them because they aren't relevant yet.

Any action / adventure based game - Server side physics adds a huge round trip latency to everything. Combat becomes a janky mess, timing based elements are impossible, everything has to be made extra sloppy to make up for the player being 'an amount' of time out of sync with what's actually happening on the server. NPC elements tend to slide around disconnected from the setting feeling robotic and jerky, player agency is destroyed when their own personal experiences don't align with whatever the server thinks happened, players are forced to "aim ahead" and direct their interactions at the place where they think the server will be a moment ahead of time (duration of a moment is based on connection and distance from server).

Lack of client side scripting forces ALL inputs (and only the standard defined SL ones at that) from the player to be routed though the server. Everything lags, even on a good day.

 

Migrating SL to something more akin to a massively multiplayer unity/unreal would enable the diversity of possible content to go though the roof, and would still enable everything we do in SL right now.

Somethings would probably need to be remade (more likely rescripted) to take advantage of features like client side physics, they would be night and day better than what we have in those slots right now.

We're all sentimentally attached to the stuff we have, but we're not sentimentally attached to the lag and not daft enough tostick with vintage irrelevant systems. Everyone who bough prim shoes or Linden hair has tons of stuff that's technically still usable but has been made irrelevant.

 

Enabling SL to make a competitive FPS game isn't because we explicitly want FPS shooty games (although I'm sure plenty would), it's about meeting all the requirements to allow that to happen and in the process enabling a huge step forward in terms of interactivity and user agency.

If people could make games here, they would, the time commitment alone isn't the deal breaker.

[Adeon Writer]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I could go on and on but what's the point. If what you say is true in the way you claim, you would have long ago fled SL and become preoccupied with Roblox. Yet you remain dithering on the forums.

I have friends who have left SL in reality, only keeping a bare presence, who moved on to Sinespace, Open Sim, Uplands, whatever for a whole set of reasons and then found those other places to be better according to their criticism, and they put their money where their mouth is -- in those other places. So of course you're free to do the same.

It does not follow that one needs to leave one virtual world in order to enjoy another?

Personally I find my "second life" extends across many platforms. Each platform has it's own purpose and fulfillment. If you can get everything you need from a single company, that's wonderful! But there is no need for loyalty.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Adeon Writer

[Mr Amore]

54 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Architecturally, there are a number of roadblocks and add layers of complexity that turn any involved project into an impossible one.

Story based quest driven game - The shared experience demands that everything look the same for everyone all the time. You approach an NPC and there is no way to indicate they have something for you that's relevant to your personal progression though the story. NPC's must always be in the same location for everyone all the time. Collectable items will always be shown even if you have collected them, or don't need to see them because they aren't relevant yet.

Any action / adventure based game - Server side physics adds a huge round trip latency to everything. Combat becomes a janky mess, timing based elements are impossible, everything has to be made extra sloppy to make up for the player being 'an amount' of time out of sync with what's actually happening on the server. NPC elements tend to slide around disconnected from the setting feeling robotic and jerky, player agency is destroyed when their own personal experiences don't align with whatever the server thinks happened, players are forced to "aim ahead" and direct their interactions at the place where they think the server will be a moment ahead of time (duration of a moment is based on connection and distance from server).

SL certainly has its performance limitations, and with those interesting perspectives you've highlighted the immersion breaking points. From what I've observed, live-action combat systems are SL's weakness, yet it's the system everyone wants to invest in. Generally because they haven't been exposed to the alternatives.

Where can we go without live action combat and all its ills?

I'm of the opinion SL's strength is in creating environments for roleplaying, which could also enable turn-based combat. It's happened on some sims, but they've barely scratched the surface of what's possible. The average RP sim with an SL experience will use its teleportation and HUD attachment functionality, but little else. And when it comes to turn-based PvE combat, it's still messy and done manually because the systems aren't integrated.

Why aren't RP sims going all the way? Either it's an absence of vision, ignorance of SL's capabilities, lack of scripters to code it, lack of mesh creators, but probably a combination of everything.

In a turn based combat system SL begins to shine, it has excellent support for communities and socialization, and all of its performance-based concerns cease to matter. When a system like this comes together, those 'story based quest driven games' won't need to be static environments always rezzed on a sim, but can be deployed as and where you want them, to be played through by you and your friends.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Mr Amore

[animats]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Story based quest driven game - The shared experience demands that everything look the same for everyone all the time. You approach an NPC and there is no way to indicate they have something for you that's relevant to your personal progression though the story.

The Drivers of SL HUDs get past that. Their NPCs are partially driven by a HUD  you wear, so you get a personalized experience. It can be done, and it should be easier to do.

These forums should have a "game dev" group, where people interested in doing that can talk.

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Any action / adventure based game - Server side physics adds a huge round trip latency to everything.

Yes. This is especially bad if you're far from the Western US, where the servers are. Europe is about 200ms away, round trip. However, SL is laggier than speed of light lag requires. This deserves more discussion, but not in this topic.

Shooter games use tricks to create the illusion of less lag for targeting purposes. There's a lot of special casing around bullets. SL has no built-in notion of "bullet". Bolting that on is probably not that great an idea. It adds constraints around other things.

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

NPC elements tend to slide around disconnected from the setting feeling robotic and jerky,

I've struggled with that, with my NPCs, Keyframe motion has some problems. The motion you ask for is only approximately what you get, especially under load. Although my NPCs move about as well as avatars.

I'm looking forward to seeing who LL gets as new CTO and CEO. That will tell us if there will be forward progress. Or not.

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, Adeon Writer said:

It does not follow that one needs to leave one virtual world in order to enjoy another?

Personally I find my "second life" extends across many platforms. Each platform has it's own purpose and fulfillment. If you can get everything you need from a single company, that's wonderful! But there is no need for loyalty.

There's a difference between participating in a variety of virtual worlds -- I've done that myself now and then -- and making your obsession and your main game, in fact, endless criticism of the world of SL for not being Roblox. I'm all for criticism of SL. Criticizing it for not being Roblox seems patently absurd to me, like criticizing it for not being Facebook. 

[Adeon Writer]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There's a difference between participating in a variety of virtual worlds -- I've done that myself now and then -- and making your obsession and your main game, in fact, endless criticism of the world of SL for not being Roblox. I'm all for criticism of SL. Criticizing it for not being Roblox seems patently absurd to me, like criticizing it for not being Facebook. 

It comes from frustration with and a deep love for Second Life. If Roblox of all things is starting to do things better than Second Life, that is a problem. Because Roblox was a joke and a footnote for elementary school aged kids. To see it it start cleaning up it's image and start outpacing Second Life on the content creation tools front, that hurts. That hurts a lot.

Do I want to go over there and play Roblox? Oh heck no. It's like being at a daycare.
Am I jealous that the content creators for that kids game has in-game modeling tools that put Second Life to shame? Yes, yes I am.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Adeon Writer

[Arielle Popstar]

3 hours ago, animats said:

I'm looking forward to seeing who LL gets as new CTO and CEO. That will tell us if there will be forward progress. Or not.

Will it you think, or is the development process in LL so entrenched that not new owners, CEO or CTO will be able to change that?

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Adeon Writer said:

It comes from frustration with and a deep love for Second Life. If Roblox of all things is starting to do things better than Second Life, that is a problem. Because Roblox was a joke and a footnote for elementary school aged kids. To see it it start cleaning up it's image and start outpacing Second Life on the content creation tools front, that hurts. That hurts a lot.

Do I want to go over there and play Roblox? Oh heck no. It's like being at a daycare.
Am I jealous that the content creators for that kids game has in-game modeling tools that put Second Life to shame? Yes, yes I am.

I remember asking King Philip about CSG modelling for SL at a town hall years ago .. he had no idea what that might be and moved on to some softball question, probably about his pants.

Before SL I was making stuff with for the POVRay raytracer using a C like scene description language and a couple of specialist modeling tools (Morey). Complex CSG operations could be very intensive to resolve

[Adeon Writer]

Quote

CSG modelling

It's been #2 on my list of "SL features SLers actually want" since forever.

(#1 being an overall avatar size slider that includes attachments)

[Alazarin Mondrian]

On 7/27/2021 at 7:20 PM, kali Wylder said:

I really resented FB coming in and dominating the market when I liked MySpace so much better.  FB forced everyone's page to look the same where MySpace allowed everyone to be creative with HTML.  And that insistence on only real people being allowed was such a drag too. 

Yes, and that individuality and customisation at MySpace turned it into a glue pit of pages loaded up with badly-written flash apps that would grind all but the most powerful computers to a near crawling halt.

[Drayke Newall]

7 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

What, did they just kick people off, upon turning 19?

Sorry it was 2am in the morning when I posted that so may not have been clear. I meant in regards to their demographics. Under 18 was their target audience or main users for 15 years. This meant that a small fraction of the people playing Roblox were able to cash out. This is changing now.

[Drayke Newall]

4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Criticizing it for not being Roblox seems patently absurd to me, like criticizing it for not being Facebook. 

Why can you not understand this point Prokofy and always get it wrong.

NOBODY WANTS SL TO BECOME LIKE ROBLOX.

There is a difference between wanting features added to Second Life that other systems do better and more modern to advance SL beyond what it is now capable of, to modernise it to saying make SL like Roblox or x, y, z. I would love LL to update SL (like they should have years ago) and give the finger to Facebook and say "haha we already have a metaverse that is better than anything you can provide".

I would love Unreal 5's optimisation system added to Second Life (it wont happen). A system where you can have 10billion polygon mesh downgraded automatically to something that doesn't lag or remove the quality of the mesh would mean wonders for Second Life which suffers from unoptimized content. Does that mean I want SL to be unreal 5? No.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Drayke Newall

[Mollymews]

4 hours ago, Adeon Writer said:

yes this

[Quistess Alpha]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Complex CSG operations could be very intensive to resolve

I have to imagine there's a smart way to do it, for example having a Li-heavy CSG operation for building purposes and a 'convert to mesh' option that would cost some L$ and reduce the Li (along with the actual computational complexity) by a significant amount.

ETA: how you would go about texturing something made with CSG, (I.E. how the 'faces' might be auto-generated) is an interesting problem, but I'm sure it'd be surmountable. Perhaps LL could allow >8 faces per object?

Edited August 3, 2021 by Quistess Alpha

[Adeon Writer]

24 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

I have to imagine there's a smart way to do it, for example having a Li-heavy CSG operation for building purposes and a 'convert to mesh' option that would cost some L$ and reduce the Li (along with the actual computational complexity) by a significant amount.

ETA: how you would go about texturing something made with CSG, (I.E. how the 'faces' might be auto-generated) is an interesting problem, but I'm sure it'd be surmountable. Perhaps LL could allow >8 faces per object?

Yeah. It would bake to a mesh, but the primitives would still be saved. CSG would only need to be calculated while in build mode. That's things like Little Big Planet do it, anyway.

[animats]

9 hours ago, Mr Amore said:

Where can we go without live action combat and all its ills?

As a social space, SL needs to work better.

The ongoing troubles with group messages are, well, embarrassing.

More than that, social activities should just flow. No "Oh, I have to relog". No "I turned into a jellydoll". No "My outfit won't load". No "I came off at the region crossing and now I can't move." All of which happened to me yesterday when I was showing someone some of my favorite spots.

If you try to do anything as a group in the big world, something will break. That is no longer acceptable.

If you ship a game with bugs like that today, you are laughed and reviewed into a recall. That just happened to "Cyberpunk 2077". Reviews were terrible.The product was pulled from sale, went back into development for six months, and came out in reasonable working order.

That's what the market expects today.

 

[Mr Amore]

9 hours ago, animats said:

As a social space, SL needs to work better.

The ongoing troubles with group messages are, well, embarrassing.

More than that, social activities should just flow. No "Oh, I have to relog". No "I turned into a jellydoll". No "My outfit won't load". No "I came off at the region crossing and now I can't move." All of which happened to me yesterday when I was showing someone some of my favorite spots.

If you try to do anything as a group in the big world, something will break. That is no longer acceptable.

If you ship a game with bugs like that today, you are laughed and reviewed into a recall. That just happened to "Cyberpunk 2077". Reviews were terrible.The product was pulled from sale, went back into development for six months, and came out in reasonable working order.

That's what the market expects today.

 

We're basically the developing nation of virtual worlds. Our priorities are centered on the bare necessities and less so the luxuries other games can afford.

Content creation groups and RP sims have resorted to using Discord since the group chat issues. It is embarrassing.

I see SL as a social space with gaming features. Whilst the likes of Roblox and Fortnite are games with social features. And the community in SL is strong, when Sansar happened very few people even went to see it. Because their friends are in SL, they had no incentive to leave.

LL could adopt other features from Sansar keep SL relevant in the face of Megacorp Metaverses:

• Create instanced regions (like Sansar's Experiences) off the grid
• Make these regions larger
• Enforce a building code for assets used on these regions(reasonable texture resolutions, low poly mesh)
• A reference for modular assets
• A 'Creation Studio' populated with these assets to help build custom scenes

It'll never become a 'gaming' platform, but some controls over content optimization could make mobile and VR viable in the future.

[Lucia Nightfire]

10 hours ago, Mr Amore said:

I see SL as a social space with gaming features.

Where are these "gaming features" you speak of? 🤔

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

3 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Where are these "gaming features" you speak of? 🤔

I think of Greedy Greedy. I remember when it was popular for awhile...

[Lucia Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

I think of Greedy Greedy. I remember when it was popular for awhile...

I was being quasi facetious.

We are all aware of table top games and zyngo type "games" in SL.

I was focusing more on script/viewer capabilities/tools that facilitate more advanced/intense/active games/gameplay/interaction.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

21 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

I was being quasi facetious.

We are all aware of table top games and zyngo type "games" in SL.

I was focusing more on script/viewer capabilities/tools that facilitate more advanced/intense/active games/gameplay/interaction.

I know.  Would like to see more advanced stuff in the clients used to access SL.

[Adeon Writer]

Tabletop games works well in SL because it is not destroyed by Second Life’s “shared experience” restrictions. Everyone always sees the same thing on the table, so those kind of games work just fine.

for actual games though, linden really needs to let us render things differently for different people. 

[Coffee Pancake]

24 minutes ago, Adeon Writer said:

for actual games though, linden really needs to let us render things differently for different people. 

Even for simple games that we have right now.

Take a hunt for example .. when a player collect an item, it vanishes, and only remains visible for players who have not collected it yet - currently impossible..

This would allow people creating hunts to make them more interesting, a trail of bread crumbs or clues.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

5 hours ago, Adeon Writer said:

Tabletop games works well in SL because it is not destroyed by Second Life’s “shared experience” restrictions. Everyone always sees the same thing on the table, so those kind of games work just fine.

for actual games though, linden really needs to let us render things differently for different people. 

I dislike the shared experience thing.

[Coffee Pancake]

6 minutes ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

I dislike the shared experience thing.

There are areas where it should be applied.

For example - There was at one time an attempt to go over a parcels Li allocation being putting objects metadata on a 3rd party external server that would require a special viewer. Users of regular viewers would see an incomplete build or nothing at all.