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.

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.

Footman's Logg, Mar. 7th, 188X,

so, I'm an idiot and posted an entry for my RP blog, on my OOC SL blog by mistake, and just caught it now...

VD Month

happy VD to everyone who celebrates it, (I'm lucky as I usually manage to be single when it comes about, I figure looking at it optimistically is a good philosophy).


I've been taking the time that Grendel's been on vacation (checking out other sims) while in between working on projects in RL, to finally get my villianous alt, Doctor Dinosaur Runner, to embark on his dark evil career of evil darkness.  leaving doomsday devices around Babbage, and while everyone I've talked to has been helpful with allowing me to leave an obnoxiously ticking clock on their property, I have to admit, I'm realizing how much easier it is to get an RP plot going, when you actually have a place.  Doc D does have the Aeroraptor, (and his stolen Tardis, but the I've been trying to downplay the Tardis part more, before the timelords in Babbage try to shut him up before he can spill the beans, using it more for his 'secret' base and the airship his public one), but there's always been that element in Babbage of those that have land, and those who rent out a cheap spot. (not on purpose, but it does become apparant at times).

I'm planing in the next few weeks, to look into another lot to rent (tier is rent, you're not owning), and rebuild some sembalance of a Footman Idustries presence again.  I have a couple ideas, a larger building I've been working on that will have a study, parlor, storage, lab, and possibly a store to attempt to sell things inworld again.  Or, if there's one of the larger sky lots in Vernian, I have a new zepplin, with multiple rooms, parlor, lab space (with a dance floor apparantly) , bedroom (just sleeping scripts in the bed attached), and spare room I could possibly work out something with it, possibly mod it into something even larger (while trying to avoid the 'giant helium breasts look' poor Doc O had ended up with and quickly took back down before he did anything with it).   Depending when my taxes come in, and when I start back at my museum job, I may look into a couple, and have a few different locations in the city (all of course with encouraging RP in mind)

the only thing, is aside from a couple mods, the current building I have for the next Footman Industries, is a prefab.  When I first built the F.I. Electric Eel Power Plant, most of it was made entirely by me, the lab and living area was a prefab, wich I eventually burned down making the whole plant entirely built by me.  The thing is, I enjoy building, but am pretty much an ugly builder, despite my experience in CGI and game design, SL's building is somewhat counter to what I'm used to. I do have other non-SL projects that take my attention, and never really got into sculpties yet, so as a result, many of my builds, tend to have a blocky look.  Wich works well for some things, not for others (my first airship I lived in, when photographer's came to take pictures of the airship tower in palisades, they took careful effort not to have any of my airship in their pictures.).
The original F.I. plant, blocky worked, I wanted a large, blocky, industrial location.  the prefab I've found for the possible new location, has, with some tweaking, the large, industrial (slightly imposing) look I tend to want, so I went with it.
 the meshes they keep promising, if they ever deliver, might help with my building, as it sounds more like what I'm used to in using graphics programs (it took months for me to call prims anything other than polygons)

I'd like to say I've improved with building since arriving in SL, but have to say, I doubt I'd ever have the patience (or the prims) to build an impressive, highly detailed, mansion with roman columns and all that. I have an inventory filled with half finished projects intended to be more ambitious than a large monolithic block of a building that can attest to that, I often start them, then get distracted starting another project, or getting into RP, or just visiting with someone I hadn't seen in awhile

So, gave away land

tight month, combined with the fact I had to visit my dad's for the holiday, wich always means I end up spending more money than I want, and I logged on to a reminder I had 1 more day on my tier, basically, if I either hadn't gone to my dad's, or had 1 more week to go, I could of swung it, but the situation being what it was, all that previous stuff, plus the fact I haven't been on as much the past few months, working on some RL project (work on a tabletop miniatures game, I'm designing some of the minis and background), decided it's time to let the land go.  But rather than just sell it to someone likely to raise everything and plop another shop down where my lab and graveyard used to be, and ban anyone from even talking in character within 20 meters of it, (I hate that, and always get irritated by communities in SL where every single thing changes from day to day, makes it feel less like a working city and more like a fever nightmare of some public service worker with ADD), I'd give the land to whoever meets 2 criteria, A. they keep the graveyard in some form or another, other people seemed to enjoy it afterall, and B. they had to keep it RP friendly, as in allow people to freely RP there, and don't be like some in the past that have done mass bannings based on people daring to speak as their characters within earshot of tourists.

I went on Babbage group chat after letting Tenk know, had one want to see the land, and then of course procede to tell me she didn't pay attention to what I had said, and  really would rather tear it all down and build herself a mall there, next please.
Fortunatly a Mr. Cornelius Fanshaw stepped in and took it, I exploded my lab, (I have to have some IC reason the lab was gone afterall, I built the place for RP, can't just have it dissappear as so many buildings seem to like doing when teir is up) though I hadn't really made a huge plot as to why (still somewhat burned by how my dissappearance played out, it wasn't that is was ignored, it was that the actual clues were, and I basically had to hold Gizzy's hand to get her to end it, ah well) Basically, IC, the pengi left out a pallet of steamweaver bombs from one of their late night holiday celebrations of violence, booze, and explosives.
I also somehow managed to explode the Tardis control room for Dr. Dinosaur (my villian alt that hasn't done alot quite yet), on the one hand, I'd of have to have taken it down anyway, but by blowing it up my uual way (set everythin to physical, and unlink, while running explosion scripts)  leaves alot of loose prims.....all ver Babbage.   So, I was cleaning peices out of the canal, one of my walls managed to get inside town hall, etc.  but eventually had the plant, lab, and tardis all cleared up, leaving the graveyard.

I logged on the next day to see if there was anything else Fanshaw needed, to see all the prims that were part of my graveyard were returned. Fortunatly, it was because he expanded the cemetary, alot, and had many of the same items I did already, such as the wrought iron fence from Miss Tesla and all.

So far, I'm pretty happy with what he's done with the place, it's much more larger and impressive.

I'll probably get another lot sometime when things aren't as tight (as they usually are during the holidays anyway), since someone else now has a cemetary in Babbage, I might focus on a haunted hotel (with rentals) or finally bag an underwater location.

For now, I'll still logg on and any interesting RP try and get involved in, but just won't be on as often, and possibly will take the time to hang out in the other steamlands I like, like Steelhead and Armada.




And somehow, Blogger says it's still the 25th, so Happy Holidays folks, whatever one you follow.

RP fighting

So, I had built a large air arena, with the idea of (once I figured out wether I'd get more land or not) having combative matches, melee, gunfights, and once I could find a decent set up for it, old school boxing.
metered and non metered stuff.
  but Miss Netizen beat me to it, at least in part, with opening cuffs, mostly focused on hand to hand, or puglism, and apparantly either RP'd or metered.  So I'm probably going to hold off on my sky arena for now,  as it was pretty much to fill in the same purpose.  I might rework it as a shooting range, but usually when I leave out a zombie rezzer, people get to shoot, and there's been a couple gunfights off and on in my land apparantly (it's why I have damage on afterall, to encourage fighting)

One of the things I could never really understand, is the beleif that having some sort of combat, especially if it's metered, somehow will magically turn any sim into 'just another combat sim'
I guess in Babbage's case, it goes hand in hand with their wierd bi-polar relationship with RP (they're getting much better about it though).   but in general, I can say, I've been in and RP'd in many sims that do have meters and combat, and it's never really taken away from the RP, or shopping, if that's your preference.  If anything, meters for combat would even help, you get less arguing over who shot who, and wether they can have matrix like abilities to dodge every bullet (an RP awhile back got so bogged down by that argument, it just sucked), meters, there's no argument, you're down, you're down. it doesn't mean you're dead, most sims using meters don't do the perma-death unless it's consenual, IE: you're sick of that character, want to be someone else, usually, you lose at meter, you RP recovering a bit from an injury is all (or rp being a captive, as seems to be common in another genre of SL RP Gizzy's told me about).  Worried about shopaholics getting hit by stray bullets? don't be, metered weapons likely wouldn't effect them at all, and most sims that use them have a rule anyway, don't shoot in stores (much like common sense would say in RL)

Some of them even keep their meter's optional, Insilico uses DCS2 (they're currently working on their own, simpler and less laggy meter last I knew), and it's completely optional, most of the people there only put them on when they expect a big fight or battle.   Ravenscraig has their RPS meter (as much as I find flaws in it, t's nice that it also has non-combat skills), Legends of Cybertron, before the sim owner got bored with SL and left, used the terra combat meter.  and none of these sims really turned into combat sims, with the exception of Ravenscraig, cmbat actually just happens on occasion, with alot of non-combative RP going on inbetween.

So, far as I can see, the whole idea of 'but meter combat will turn any sim into a combat sim!' is false, it's like anything else, you put in guidelines, no shooting up the stores, in more RP focused sims, any combat needs a decent RP reason, no just walking up and hitting someone out of the blue, etc.  and it can actually be pretty good.

random thoughts, plans, ideas, status

After finally ending the SLenderman RP with much thanks to those involved, I've kind of been off-world alot the past few weeks.  RL has been busy, with it being summer and all, a majority of my evenings, friends in the real world have been dragging me along to assorted activities, and with the fact summer's winding down and that usually signifies business slacking off for me on the graphic art side of things (I can never figure out why most my jobs end up being in the summer) I'm going to be looking for a 'regular' job to get me through the fall winter, and spring until things pic up again.
Partially why I was with Miss Hermit in wanting to conclude it soon and slightly annoyed when Pocket went and gave himself a coma at first, though now it looks more like it was to kick off his own RP with Tenk and Molly, wich I don't mind as much.
Gizzy's back, sort of, I guess her connection's touch and go at her new place, I've only been able to atch her in-world twice though, once for the RP involving her new doll skin, (personally I liked the more automoton look myself, but that's just me), and during the clockhaven beach party. 
I've opend the Ordo Aspconditus group for anyone to join now, and finally got the logo from Langain, who's also returned to Babbage, tough in a semi-state, so in a way, the core Ordos are all back (aside from Arwen, who hasn't logged in months).  the OA's basically become what the late Sparrowwood was supposed to be (though I just have a plant and cemetary, and not a whole neighborhood.......yet...)

In other news, I've let my half assed attempt at an in-world shop sail away, my lack of time to be in-world, I logged on to a message the boat slip was in arrears, and, after sitting in my deck mulling it over, decided to pack it in and go back to primarily Xstreet sales. (when Xstreet works), as 500L a week, along with the 1000L for my plot in Babbage, Antarctic Imports really wasn't doing enough to support itself, I mostly blame the fact I have absolutely no idea how to do a store in-world, and made the boat look more like just one of the places people rezz just to add flavor. I did kind of make it a more IC type of place, and aside from the pictures of items on the sides of crates, it really didn't look much like a store.  had more freebees in there than anything else anyway.
I might, if a cheap store rental opens up, attempt it again, but my goal primarily is not to spend any RL money in SL to be honest, though depending how things go this year, I might bite the bullet and switch to a premium account (hey, I get a free house afterall, that likely would see little use)

Once I can get myself in-world more often again, I do have some plans I'd like to do in the near or far future, such as more land (actually would like to someday have an undersea lab, and let my power plant just be a power plant) maybe some day own a hotel myself with very cheap rentals (i had ideas for a haunted house themed hotel, with wandering ghosts, cobwebs and secret chambers)
maybe some day when I have the money, get my own sim and build the Harbor Landing Colony, Antarctic steampunk.  I have plans and ideas, I just lack the financing yet

my idea for an RP about my experiments using the more magic based creatures still on hold as I don't really get what the status on those in Babbage are since the large drama and butthurt over it way back when.  There's aparantly still some supernatural/mythological creatures in the case of Pip and the other short, non-urchin types, but really nothing that would make as much sense to hook into a battery, or that would be that obvious, I would have to kidnap one from Steelhead or Winterfell. plus any other mythological creature I've tried to catch, end up being hired as lab assistants instead (like Miss Darkfold, who I don't think really is in Babbage anymore anyway)

and of course I gave out so many steampunk proton packs during the SLenderman RP, just shows I really don't have what it takes to be a shopkeeper f I'm giving away wares