New World Notes

Hanaya has the Perfect Finishing Touches for Almost Any Virtual Living Space (NWN Readers' Choice, Top SL Brand)

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

• Brand name: Hanaya
• [SL Marketplace]
• [SLURL]
• Blog
• Estimated average item price: L$200
• Brand owner: Moriko Inshan

I was happy to see Hanaya nominated for this list repeatedly, because it's a brand that I've kept in the back of my mind for when I'm redecorating and a room is lacking that certain... je ne sais quoi. A quick glance at Hanaya's marketplace storefront may give you the impression that there's not much to this brand of furniture and decor, but you would be absolutely wrong.

Hanaya designer Moriko Inshan has kept the focus of her brand quite broad, offering everything from sofas to horse stables. She often favours the same kinds of designs you'd see at Urban Outfitters or on Etsy in real life with strong vintage and rustic/DIY influences, so if you take the time to turn the pages of her marketplace shop you'll almost certainly find dozens of gems you didn't realize you (and your virtual living space) needed.

Six Recent New World Notes Posts to Read Over Christmas

• Holiday coverage of NWN Readers' favorite SL brands continues
• Second Life Private Estate Ownership Hits 4 Year Low
• Beggar Bots: The Gold Farmers of SL
• Cloud Party Adds Flight, Removes Facebook Requirement!
• Hatch, Innovative Virtual Pet Game for iOS, Launches
• You May not Starve in the Burtonesque World of 'Don't Starve', But You Definitely Won't Survive

Cloud Party Adds Flight, Removes Facebook Requirement!

Cloud Party is giving virtual world fans some really great holiday gifts this weekend -- starting today, avatars in the world backed by Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka and Cryptic Studios vet Bruce Rogers will be able to fly. And not fly like they do in Second Life, but with animations and particle trails (see screencap above). Perhaps even more important, Facebook is no longer required for account creation. "You can also create account with just an email address and password," Cloud Party CEO Sam Thompson tells me by e-mail. To build and use some other Cloud Party features, you will still need to verify your account, which you can do through Facebook, or with a valid credit card ("which we don't charge").

Up until now, Facebook Connect has been required for Cloud Party log-in, which many virtual world fans, particularly Second Life users, have complained quite vociferously about. But according to Thompson, the company never intended to make Facebook the only access method: "[I]t just saved us a lot of work on the login side and was pretty effective at reducing griefing. Now that we have finished many of our other major features (such as the new Marketplace and Cash Out), it became a priority issue for us." He adds that they're planning to add other log-in and validation methods, such as Google+, in the next few weeks, and probably Twitter OAuth eventually.

There's some other features getting rolled out today -- read on, read on:

How to Fix SL Performance: Fix SL's Content Creation Tools

Penny Patton has another must-read post for people who want to improve Second Life performance (looking at you, Linden Lab), a follow-up to this one, which gets pretty lengthy and in the weeds, but focuses around a singular takeaway: A lot of Second Life's poor performance (often called lag) is directly attributable to Second Life's content creation tools. For instance:

In addition to providing no restrictions preventing people from abusing sim resources, LL also does not provide users with the tools to manage their resource use even if they wanted... Without knowing how to script an object to tell you the script memory you're using, there's no way for the average use to know that they themselves are actually the source of all the lag they complain about!

This also relates to SL's overly-complex avatar customization, which not only frightens off new users, but pushes them to tweak their avatar in ways that cause lag for everyone around them: "A single avatar, by itself, can load up with enough scripts to bring a sim grinding to a halt. I've seen avatars do this on purpose. I was sitting in a sim just the other day when an avatar with about a thousand scripts entered the sim." And so on: "If Linden Lab doesn't provide the tools to do it well, the userbase will do it poorly, compounding SL's reputation for poor framerates despite looking like an outdated videogame." In other words: As currently deployed, Second Life's core user creation tools are hurting Second Life's core user experience.

Read it all here, but in case it seems too TL;DR, I included Penny Patton's final closing points below, which are too important to miss:

You May not Starve in the Burtonesque World of 'Don't Starve', But You Definitely Won't Survive

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Lately I've been getting engrossed in Don't Starve, a survival-something game from klei entertainment that's currently in a buy-in beta phase in Google Chrome (Mac and PC) as well as Steam (currently PC only). I call it "survival-something" because what that something is depends quite heavily on your play style. Survival-action, survival-adventure, even survival-horror, it all comes down to what you make of the creepy/cute/hilarious/horrifying little world the game gives you. The only sure thing is that you will die. Repeatedly. And that's okay.

Let me explain:

Iris Rants: My Simple Advice for SL Fundraiser Naysayers

 

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Together For Sway is one of the top shopping events in Second Life right now, with its wintery theme and a great personal cause, but there have been some negative voices among the crowd. If you're not familiar with the shopping event scene in Second Life that may be surprising news; after all, who could be against raising money to support someone in need? Sadly, for those of us who are used to the highs and lows of these kinds of events, this is nothing new.

While I support Together for Sway wholeheartedly, I have some straightforward advice for those who don't:

Animate your Avatar with Personality-Heavy AOs from Oracul (NWN Readers' Choice, Top SL Brand)

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

• Brand name: Oracul
• [SL Marketplace]
• [SLURL]
• Blog
• Estimated average item price: L$200
• Brand owner: daiz Papp

When Oracul began to make a name for itself, getting a fully-featured AO (short for animation overrider, a scripted attachment used to change the animations an avatar uses while standing, sitting, walking, etc) could cost you around L$1000, and was something that even the most devoted fashionistas only had a handful of. daiz Papp's brand Oracul came out of nowhere offering AOs jam packed with animations for every movement an avatar could make; each AO had a distinct personality and style, and they were so cheap that you could buy one for every mood or outfit you had. It's not just personality that makes each AO different, though-- there are plenty of AOs designed specifically for specialty avatars at Oracul as well, including fairies, robots, and even babies like the one in the ad shown above.

daiz's AOs were also one of the last nails in the coffin for AOs that only featured static, un-animated poses. Animated AOs convey much more life and personality through an avatar, and when oracul put them within the reach of anyone with any tastes and on any budget... Well, who could say no? Oracul is the second store on the NWN Readers Choice Brand list that Hamlet himself has been wearing (at least since I made him over last month.) if you're looking for a way to show your personality dynamically through your SL avatar, a trip to Oracul would be well worth your time.

Hatch, Innovative Virtual Pet Game for iOS, Launches

Hatch is an upcoming virtual pet game for the iOS that's incredibly innovative and destined (in my slightly biased opinion) to become a massive hit, and the developers are now giving out eggs for early adopters who want to start the ownership process of their pet "Fugu" -- that's the name of Hatch's face-punchingly cute pets -- go here to reserve yours. I'm biased because the long, painstaking design and development of Hatch is featured in my new book, Game Design Secrets. Here's what I wrote about Hatch there:

If you’re playing music on your phone, your Fugu will dance... Perhaps most clever of all, and unlike other artificial creature games, your fugu is directly linked to your phone—as your iPhone’s battery loses energy, your fugu starts getting tired too.

Hatch lead developer Phill Ryu, who I profiled in Design, just told me about what's most unique about his virtual pet game, among others (like Tamagotchi) that have come before:

"I think the iPhone as a home and platform for it is just beyond perfect, and offers an amazing opportunity to nail one side of the 'story of pet ownership' that most virtual pets haven't scratched – the scale and scope of the relationship." Since the fugu's on your phone, that relationship can become a long-term thing:

Kinect Connected through Second Life to an RL Museum

This is a brilliant and recent fusion of Kinect and Second Life, featured last month at a museum in the Netherlands -- by moving their body before the Kinect camera, patrons could control the flight of an SL avatar, and move it through a surreal landscape:

You can still visit the site in Second Life, by the way -- visit the LEA blog for details there.

This devilishly cool hack comes to us from the SL artist known as Marx Catteneo, who told me a bit how he made it:

Watch This Music Video from Linden Vet Melanie Keller Because It's Beautiful & Dreamy & She's Now a Rising Star

When I last saw Ms. Melanie Keller she was a Linden in Linden Lab's basement doing Linden things, and while I'd heard she'd since gone on to Los Angeles to pursue her pop star dream, I hadn't seen much of what transpired since, until this luminous and lovely music video appeared on my Internet stream -- watch it, because it's gorgeous and noir-ish and retro sexy cool:

For my money Melanie's voice sits somewhere between Beth Gibbons of Portishead and Alanis Morisette of the 90s, and that's a very good place to be. I'm biased but I think she could become a star; and if she does, it'll be to some credit to Second Life as a live music venue, because while she was a Linden and starting out as a singer, she performed a couple times in-world too, as an avatar named, well, Melanie Keller: