Sunday, April 17, 2011

Open Sim Explorations

I've visited the open sim grids off and on in the past, never really gotten as involved in Os too much when it first started being a thing, since there wasn't that much to really grab my attention outside of the fact there was no LL politics.  I've recently jumped in again onto the OS grid using the Imprudence viewer.

It still reminds me of my first forays into SL, before there was much else outside the mainland, and everything was an assortment of bright blocky items, only less danceclubs and offers of prostiution.

I searched for steampunk, and found an interesting sim, most the freebees were steampunk textures, so i took as many as I could.  Next stop was a freebee area at a mall, I tp'd in, saw an old style car, the freebees ahead of me, and could not move at all...


after a few minutes, I suddenly took off like a bullet, slamming into a far wall, nice to see lagg still effects this grid as well.  I was able to find hair more like SL's Footman, but the skins were all the normal male skins, nothing really zombie like.  I couldn't rezz there, so would have to get the trenchcoat and all later.

Occasionally I had issues teleporting, but really nothing worse than SL.  and I could upload images and textures for free, also a plus

I did have moment's where things would freeze at times, TPing into a sim to suddenly have a box I had picked up earlier attach to my head, and I then froze like that for a minute, but otherwise it seems about as smooth as SL.

I hadn't done a serious search for RP yet, aside from coming across a horror one called Maelstrom,It seemed empty, but you figure the OS grids probably don't have a huge user base yet.   I understand there's grids dedicated to RP, that I may have to check out at a later time.  Not too sure yet if any have steampunk RP, but looking at OS, it doesn't seem to pricey to get a sim on one of the grids, the RP Worlds grid had sims for about the same amount I pay  each month, for my plot in New Babbage, for a whole sim.


Overall, Opensim is promising.  With people constantly proclaiming the death of SL, and M Linden having brought it close, more and more limits being imposed, and the politics that seem to develop, it's always good to have alternatives.  I don't honestly beleive SL will go anytime soon, if something like IMVU, wich really is just a glorified chatroom can still be around, then SL will be, but the fact there's work on other grids is a good thing, Open Sims may be what finally bring about something like the Sprawl or Net from William Gibson books.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

new land in Babbage

So finally got another plot of land in Babbage, wheatstone this time.
back around the end of march, but I had to hold off any building, as I hadn't realized it was being used for the oiling festival at the time, fortunatly I had those weeks free then, on the one hand, wish there was a way to keep the building rezzed there to house some of the contest entries, on the other, I already had put together the factory, and the hall wasn't what I was going for anyway.

I've continued my usual goal of keeping any land RP friendly, turning on damage, and per my own preferance, turning off flight. (i hate being in an RP and having a random person float by an inch off the ground, plus it just looks retarded).  and have a pretty decent automoton factory, with a secret lab, assembly floor, lounge and library, and study.  Plus a tardis in the 3000+ altitude for my evil time travelling dinosaur alt. and already running into issues with prim limits. So some creative use of prims has been in order, Fortunatly if I do rezz the arena I've been building, it's only really 10 prims.  I hope to eventually have it finished, and have automoton fights using the Warbot construction kit, clockfighter matches with Bob's clockfighter kit from his old circus, and if I can ever find a good HUD or other system for it, boxing.

The last few months have been kind of 'meh' in terms of RP, it's really made apparant how difficult it is to pull off any sort of RP that anyone can get involved in, when you don't have land.  In the past when I just had the Rama rezzed at the paliades tower, it was mostly small RP, usually small groups, like Gizzy and Arwen, Langain said she never really felt that welcomed in Babbage and left, I can say I don't quite beleive it.
There was the first dinosaur hunt, when Arwen had gotten a raptor avi and roamed babbage in it, that did manage to generate RP, and ended in an interesting battle in the canals, but otherwise they've been mostly provate RPs.  When I built the first Footman Industries, then it seemed to take off a bit more.  the sim owner himself even had approached me about letting loose a zombie plauge.  And it seemed to go pretty well, even though it wasn't 100% my own RP, it was good to kick it off, so to speak.  Since then we had Stargirl's operation, Darkholme's seance, the Geistmagorium, random acts of destruction, some involvement in Loki's RP events (though I always miss the big plot turns as they happen when i'm offline), the fire, 13's possession, and the SLenderman RP.

Doc D's last RP with the doom clocks was stillborn.  most people either ignored the RP in favor of complaining to the sim owner about the ticking, rather than me as I asked.  and the fun of one of the older citizens who wishes the city was treated more as a museum or model town where you can look but don't touch or RP with it, took it upon himself to return clocks, even ones on land I had permission to leave them on, and including the one with the clue to stop it all.    So worked it out with the bad horse of Babbage that he was smashing them all, starting a rivalry between villianous critters in the process.   It's better than just letting the rp peter out like so many seem content to let them do, but still not quite what I as hoping for.  I'd been hoping for one or more of the heroic types to find the clue, storm Dr. D's airship (on rented airspace, and closest i had to land at the time) and disarm the master clock.  I had mental images of some final showdown on top of the airship between a group of heroic types, doc d. and his minions, possibly ending with the airship exploding,  instead, I had people ignore me when I said just to message me if there was an issue, and whine to te sim owner instead, so a little dissapointing, it didn't even get far out the gate before people killed it.    
 This is normal for the area as well sadly, it's a great collection of sims, really imaginative buildings and structures, interesting characters, and an interesting IC and OOC history to it, and some of  the population is like the old lady across the street who glares out her window at all her neighbors and screams at kids to stop riding their bikes past her house, things have been getting better, but you still get people flying off the deep end when an urchin, speaks like an urchin to them.  They really have to get over this idea of 'forcing' someone to rp as well.
At least with a plot of land, I can easily leave a device rezzed for an rp, and actually have it generate rp, since the complainers usually stay away from my land most times, and the roleplayers are usually the ones to come around more and investigate.

Of course shortly after dumping in money for 40+ days of teir, one of my housemates in RL suddenly announces she is moving out, bumping my rent and utilities about an extra 80$ until I can get someone new moved in, so we'll see how long Footman Automoton's lasts before Grendel Footman goes away again for awhile.