Coming Soon: Linden Realms Tools for SL Game Developers, Like Auto-Teleporting & Auto-Equipping Players

Speaking of game development in SL, Nalates Urriah has an advance look at some of the features of Linden Realms Tools, which Linden Lab made and showcased in their Linden Realms mini-game, and will release to developers soon. They include llTeleportAgent, which enables automatic teleporting of an avatar on the user's land, and llAttachToAvatarTemp, which temporarily attaches an item to an avatar without adding it to inventory. I'm sure game developers can already see the potential in both tools, but here's an obvious application:

When a new player teleports into an FPS game in SL, they can be automatically equipped with a weapon, and when they're killed, they can be automatically teleported to a death/respawn point. No more asking new gamers to add game objects to their inventory and then attach them to their avatar (a very user-unfriendly process), or expecting them to learn how to teleport within SL, before being able to play (ditto).

Linden Lab should be announcing something about Linden Realms Tools any day (week?) now... stay tuned.

Above photo by Ehrman Digfoot.

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Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

This is all great.

But now that Marketplace has killed the need for merchants to be inworld - who's going to fund these amazing gaming sims?

Sorry for that rant, but its true, and topical to a current hot issue on the official forums.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this stuff, but I worry nobody will be able to use it in a world where no one can fund a sim anymore...

[Vivienne Daguerre]

I am excited about the potential for this. There are a lot of role play sims that will be able to make good use of this. Auto equipping people with appropriate combat meters is one example that comes to mind.

Teleports will be as easy as walking through doors!

Role play items have been a pain for new people to figure out, and involve a lot of steps. For example, I have a cooking hearth with a pot of stew that you can stir. I can set it so that when you touch it the default action is that you sit on it, so that much is fine, and you are animated to stir the stew. One interruption is the asking of permission to animate you which can interfere with your immersion in the scene.

I can also script it so that when you sit on it, it automatically gives you a wooden spoon to stir the stew with. As it is now, you have to open your inventory, find it, and then right click to "add" it. If you are wearing something else on the hand attachment point and you select "wear" instead of "add," whatever you had attached would be replaced by the wooden spoon. Experienced users know that, but noobies would not.

So, instead of all that, the Linden Realm tools as I understand them will allow you to click on the cooking hearth and instantly you are holding the wooden spoon and your avatar is stirring the stew. Tada! No muss and no fuss! No digging in your inventory. When you click "stand" to stop stirring the stew, the wooden spoon disappears from your hand. You won't be walking around with a wooden spoon in your hand if you forget to detach it.

I love it. Can't wait to play with it.

[Frans]

Merchant might not be inworld, but the people buying from merchants clearly are going inworld. why else would they buy things?

So these same people are going to find the 'amazing gaming sims'. I don't expect amazing gaming sims though, more likely there will be small improvements to immersion overall.

[shockwave yareach]

I'm afraid pussycat is right. I run my mazes on my own parcel just for fun. If I were to have a whole sim for some huge maze or a D&Desque dungeon crawl, I'd have to have sales to pay for it. I'm a nice guy, making free games, but my wallet is not infinite.

SL used to have a vibrant economy. But Marketplace and the high prices of land have made owning land a sucker's purchase. If the marketplace was limited in some way to the land the magicboxes sits on, you'd have more marketplace if you have more land. Simple and fair. But you first have to lower that land cost -- you've already run off the deep wallets willing to shell out obscene amounts of cash for your virtual legos. The people remaining have no such money fonts and aren't going to pay the prices you demand, no matter what new sparkly you add to SL.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

The auto-attach feature hints at possibilities for in-world retail. I can envision walking into a shop, stepping onto a pose platform, and having a HUD pop up that allows me to try on every item in the merchant's inventory and purchase whatever appeals to me from that interface.

No more awkward demos, no more buying things that look good in the picture but are crap in world. It's not difficult to envision a system along these lines that's cleaner and easier to use than the somewhat outmoded Marketplace interface, something that's modeled on a modern MMO character creation system.

Is there an "auto" command forthcoming to temporarily swap out skin, tattoo and clothing layers?

Hmmm... maybe I shouldn't have said anything. I think I've just found my next project :)

[Nyoko Salome]

arc: maybe with rsl/v! ;0 i'd often thought about the possibilities of that but never gotten around to testing it...

personally i still see 'a lot' more sales inworld still than via marketplace (at least 2 for 3), but frankly it's been ages since i've done any updating to mp listings, so i may not be as best 'strategized' for it now.

pussycat just because i always think this when i see your name: ;0 ...
pussycat catnip, that's the name;
pussycat catnip, ain't no shame
to have a lil catnip now and then
cuz pussycat catnip's really zen ;0

[desdemona enfield]

I am so looking forward to be forced around merchant stores and having advertisement HUDs forced onto my display screen.

This will be a marvelous enhancement to the rather lame set of landmarks, note cards, group join offers, and chat messages thrown at me when I arrive.

Desdemona

[Pussycat Catnap]

"Merchant might not be inworld, but the people buying from merchants clearly are going inworld. why else would they buy things?

So these same people are going to find the 'amazing gaming sims'."

Yes.

But -WHO- will pay the bills to keep that amazing sim open?

Historically it has always been merchants, renting shops.

Just because the sims are set to get the amazing dial turned up to 11 doesn't help them one bit when they have no way of paying the bills.

SL economy works like a circle:

People feed merchants to get stuff to play with --->
Merchants rent land to set up shops for people to buy stuff at --->
Land owners use that money to build amzing places for people to use the stuff they bought at --->
People need stuff to use at the amazing land they visit ---> (return to beginning, in a circle).

Marketplace sliced a hacksaw crude wound right through the link between merchants and land.

- These places are set to get way more amazing soon, but now, they have no way to pay for all of that...

Its a golden goose, dying of cancer.

[elizabeth (16)]

@vivienne- that be way cool a pot like that

could have drinkies as well. even a whole formal tea ceremony with ur friends, just by sit and click. like can make flying things as well, horses even maybe, all kinds

like u and arcadia thinking, not have to be only about guns and stuff. i think we will end up with way more other things than that anyways

is really exciting and i cant wait to see what ppl make \o/

[elizabeth (16)]

if like arcadia said then will be, try on before u buy. that going to def put me inworld shopping more. will be way better than buy off the pictures on marketplace or inworld like now

[Winter Jefferson]

Can't this all be enabled right here and now by the use of RLV? It's not just for perverts!

Signed,
A Pervert.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Don't make me giggle when I'm at the office, Winter. People look at me funny :)

I think you and Nyoko are right, but I haven't worked with RLV. Looks like I've got some homework.

Oh, not like that. Probably not, anyway ;)

[Karma Avedon]

The word that keeps bothering me here is "creators". Will these tools be available to any resident who is willing to learn them and how to work them into their projects, or only to a certain group, who would then have a huge advantage at their fingertips?

[Arcadia Codesmith]

It looks to me like they're incorporated into LSL and therefore would be available to anybody who scripts.

When I see "creator" in SL, I think "everyone"... at least potentially.