Cloud Party CEO Sam Thompson: Avatar Shape-Tweaking Sliders, Island Search, More Camera Control Coming Soon

Cloud Party CEO Sam Thompson stopped by New World Notes to comment on Iris Ophelia's post on "3 Things Cloud Party Needs to Attract Virtual Fashionistas" and confirmed that yes, those three things she's looking for -- avatar shape-tweaking sliders, island search, more camera control -- are coming soon to the web-based, user-generated, Cory Ondrejka-backed virtual world. That, and more:

"We are very much on the same page," wrote Thompson, "all three of these features were already on our todo list in some form or another. In fact, we pushed a very basic island name search function (in the navigation app) just moments ago."

More detail from Thompson, who also talked addressed the skepticism some have with Cloud Party, after the break:

"The self-portrait mode on the camera phone is definitely coming soon. In the meantime you can zoom out by scrolling back, and then use left-click to rotate around your character. Not nearly good enough (no panning or composition control), but a start.

"Adding sliders for avatar adjustment is a bit more complicated, but something we've built these avatars to handle, and something we have a lot of experience with from working at Cryptic Studios. We also have more initial clothing choices coming, but figure that getting a marketplace up and running will be a quicker solution to the problem of not having enough clothes selection.

"Also, I understand being skeptical about us as we are a new company on the block and no one knows who we are, but please believe me that we are here to stay and absolutely listening to our users. We have not taken some massive VC round or hired a bunch of marketing people: we're 4 programmers and an artist in an old office with an ant problem. This is our first company, and we're all game developers that wanted to try something new. I'm pretty excited about where Cloud Party could be in a few more months, and I hope you will help us build it into something lasting and great."

Moral of the story: Iris Ophelia gets results. Or alternately: Cloud Party developers are dynamic and responsive to what Cloud Party needs to succeed.

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Comments

[Iris Ophelia]

For what it's worth, having played a couple Cryptic MMOs pretty extensively, I would trust former Cryptic folks more than most to put together some good slider options.

I think both Champions and Star Trek Online had an issue where faces could look a little "samey" without using extremes, and the faces in Champions were just not all that attractive to begin with, but I'm hoping those will both be examples of lessons learned that will inform the sliders that Cloud Party will eventually have. If these devs were 100% unknown entities in that regard I'd be a lot more worried.

[Iggy]

If Iris ain't happy, ain't nobody happy :)

Mr. Thompson, since you are reading these comments, let me say on behalf of my fellow VWER educators currently planning our first meet-up in your world: bravo.

Fresh air sure feels good when you breathe it.

[John]

I especially created a new facebook account just for Cloud Party. Almost all people that I know don´t want their first life identity to be associated with this. It would be great to have an other way to sign in as well.

[Metacam Oh]

wow the complete opposite of Linden Lab, now I may be impressed. If they develop in a direction that the users have a hand in, Linden Lab is toast.

[elizabeth (16)]

personally i think CP should stay with FB authentication

is a place for a 3D world out in the open where being a nym is unimportant. is 600-800 million people on FB out in the open. even 1% of them is 6-8 million

what do the nyms bring to CP that you cant find already in the Renderosity, Daz, Blender, SketchUp communities?

nothing really except the nyms need/want to be a nym

[Danielle]

@elizabeth - what makes you think all 800 million Facebook accounts are real people? Facebook itself admits 50 million of their accounts are fake names, and the true number is likely higher.

Some of those are "innocent fakes", like creating a separate account for facebook games, so you don't spam friends and family with game messages. Then there are people who care about their privacy or stalking, and lastly the "commercial fakes", accounts created just for the purpose of linking to websites or business to make money.

[Desdemona Enfield]

Re: SL vs CP.. an anecdotal tale...

In my material life a friend visited me this evening. I casually mentioned CP as 'an interesting thing' and gave her a demo on my desk top system.

I then wandered off to make coffee. When I returned they had taken out their laptop, gone to their FB account, flipped over to CP, and were half way through the integrated tutorials while wandering around the beginner zone.

Hmmm...

des/de/mona

[Desdemona Enfield]

.. and my friend encountered the first instance of malicious griefing which I have seen in CP. A glass sphere had been spawned around the cyclotron button, which is an interactive point used to complete the user interface tutorial.

d/d/m

[Desdemona Enfield]

Speaking of user interfaces, the building interfaces are so dead on close to the offline building tools of Unity3D, right down to the building shortcuts, that I suspect that the CP world engine itself is based on Unity. What Unity has lacked has been run time in world building tools.

ddm

[Desdemona Enfield]

.. and finally, my friend and I came back from seeing a movie, and she is now camped on my couch, sitting at her CP house, and building like crazy.

This is not looking good for SL.

ddm

[Desdemona Enfield]

Say, did you know that you can run two instances of the CP browser window and play with yourself?

(giggles)

[Masami Kuramoto]

Breaking news: The nym debate is over, CP just introduced display names.

But be careful there because you can choose your display name only once!

[Desdemona Enfield]

By the way, if you are an artist in SL and you have been making exhibits by creating mesh objects and importing them into SL, you can at present import those objects into Cloud Party for FREE!. (see caveats 1, 2 & 3)

If you are familiar with the building tools of Unity3d, then you will have no conceptual problems with the CP building tools. If not, you're primary learning point will be that putting textures on objects is a two step process. Object surfaces have materials placed on them. Materials themselves include a texture as one of their properties.

If you need scripts written, there are eager souls wandering around that place who are experimenting with interactive scripting. The language syntax is different from LSL, however once you get used to the expressive style, you'll see that the functionality is similar.

-------------
caveat 1: If in SL you've been accepting free exhibition space from various corporate or institutional landowners, or have been competing in creative contests for prizes, you might want to check the fine print on your terms of sponsorship. In RL people who accept such largess often discover that they have signed away their creator rights.

caveat 2: Land, known as zones in CP, is not free. However there are numerous sandboxes, known as public zones, within which you can experiment. Just move away from the now over crowded Beginner Zone.

caveat 3: At present you can get a small free plot once you complete the building tutorial. Since CP has started selling land just yesterday, you might consider jumping into CP, completing the brief lessons, and claiming a free plot while the offer still stands.

des/de/mona

[Desdemona Enfield]

Re: Cloud Party scripting language...

For those of you who have been praying for a better language than LSL (bear in mind that I am a long time fan and expert user of LSL), drool over these features

-- java script syntax
-- reflexiveness (scripts know the names of their functions and variables)
-- call back function designation for data fetches
-- unlimited number of distinct repeating or single shot timers
-- persistent state information retained in globally unique buckets
-- full java language Math namespace
-- structure notation for variables, eg, context.data.pos.
-- python like generic var type
-- python like list decomposition: var a, b, c = listOfThreeItems

--------
... and chat line access to all script functions (at the chat line, type '/help')

Do you want a smaller avatar? When you are in Cloud Party, chat this:

/scaleMe 0.7

details: http://its.cloudpartytime.com/help_scripting.html

-----------
ddm

[elizabeth (16)]

@Danielle- is the other larger group that is unaddressed now. CP seemed to want to do that at the start. 2000 vistors later. most of them from SL coming in on guest accounts and/or making fake FB accounts just to do this. woohoo! 2000 \o/ so lets change it to make it good for them 2000. nevermind anymore the audience we did set out to capture

like after listen to about 2000 nyms then is better now somehow to limit the potential upside of our product to the 50 million anon/fake people we dont know anything about rather than the 550-750 million that we do?

is a bit shortsighted i think. specially after only about 2 weeks in which most of the dialogue has taken place. but is their world and they can do whatever they want and is ok that they do

@Masami- if do want a nym/nick system then i think is kinda dumb to make it so that you cant change your nym/nick ever

would be better to have an account number that users/system publicly transacts against. then can have any nym/nick you want over your head that you can change anytime you want for any reason

[Masami Kuramoto]

@elizabeth

SL nicks are final too. You can add another display name on top of that, but you can't hide or change the original handle you chose when you signed up.

[elizabeth (16)]

@Masami- yes i understand that just about everyone does this including linden now

i alway wondered why tho as it soon leads to alphanumeric soup as is the case on youtube, etc. and is now becoming prevalent in SL as well

while is ok in a small world that can only ever be one say jack.smith it kinda disenfranchises all the other jack.smith

but if was jack.smith (#1234) then can also be jack.smith (#76534). as many as you want really

[Masami Kuramoto]

@elizabeth

Cloud Party already supports an arbitrary number of Jack Smiths, even without the new display name feature.

[foneco zuzu]

I said it and say it again, Fb is "The Evil!"
I for sure will not (and i was beta tester of FB, lol) use my non active acount to ling there!
But if you allow twiter or even better, Flirk, then;)

[elizabeth (16)]

@Masami- i get it now how they done. cool thanks