New World Notes

The Trouble with Being a Tiny Avatar in Second Life

Terry Shuriken made the tiniest avatar in Second Life I've ever seen, as I blogged a couple weeks ago, but as it turns out, this tiniest of tinies is not for sale: "Uh, nope not selling this because its veeery unusable," Terry tells me, then goes on to tell me about the trouble with being so tiny: "You can't see it [the avatar, that is] unless you press control+0 many many times to zoom in, and also use zoom-in HUDs to zoom in even further."

And even if you manage to get your camera on the avatar, heaven help you if you try to move:

Shuggles Puts Customization HUDs Within Reach of Every Single Second Life Designer (NWN Partner News)

Today I'm going to talk a little bit about about mpHUD, a product from NWN sponsoring partner Shuggles [SLURL] by Shuichi Shinji. In Second Life fashion, HUDs are a somewhat tricky thing. As consumers, we've been a bit spoiled to expect a HUD to navigate even the most minor options a product may have. Although we often don't know much about what it takes to make a good HUD system, we still regularly take them for granted. For multi-talented SL designers, creating a new HUD is mostly just a timesink. For others who may have a world of knowledge about 3D modeling but barely a scrap of scripting know-how a new HUD is just one more expense. Some find a scripter they trust, negotiate a price, communitcate what they want, and hope for the best. 

Shuggles' mpHUD gives creators a little more room to breath, particularly if you're looking for highly in-demand functions like resizing or color-changing. You can pick out the specific features you need (or grab the complete bundle) and follow the instructions provided to put together your ideal HUD without spending a tremendous amount of time or L$ in the process. That means more time to design, fewer expenses along the way, and an end to customers complaining about outdated menu-based options.

Swing by Shuggles' in-world location or their Second Life Marketplace storefront to scope out the mpHUD system for yourself.

Inside Sunset Overdrive's Fabulous Virtual Fashions

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Gita Jackson gets it -- or should I say, she gets us. Jackson is a games writer with a passion for virtual fashion, and she understands the role it can play in how we understand a game's characters, attitude, and landscape. Hot on the heels of her recent post about the fashion and design decisions behind Final Fantasy X's Yuna, she's interviewed a few of the folks responsible for the vibrant, arresting fashion of Xbox One exclusive Sunset Overdrive over on Paste. (Full disclosure: I am also a regular contributor to Paste.)

Jackson spoke with Insomniac Games Art Director Jacinda Chew and Carin Cronacher, an LA-based fashion designer who creates stagewear for Alice Cooper in addition to designing for her own brand. While Cronacher's experience gave her a unique perspective that aligned well with the game's intended visual style, as she explained to Jackson she still had to make sure she'd be putting together designs that people would actually want to wear:

Visit RMK Gothic Sim for a Stylish Second Life Halloween

Beautifully shot by avid SL videographer Kawanishi Yana, this is a montage through a sim called RMK Gothic, where a carnival fun house, a deep scary forest, and other Halloween-flavored fixings are served.

Iris Reviews Fantasy Life for Paste: A Roleplay Game Where You Can Be a Heroic Cook, Tailor, or Angler

"Fantasy Life: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor" is the latest article by New World Notes' Janine "Iris" Hawkins for the ultra-hip Paste Magazine, and it's a review of a Nintendo 3DS game a lot of SLers and other roleplay fans should love: Fantasy Life, where you can adventure as a standard Paladin, Mercenary, or Magician, but also take on much more mundane roles, like Cook, Tailor, or Angler. SLers in particular will enjoy the fashion and design aspects of the game, Janine tells me, who adds this play tip: "Keep progressing in the story so you can get access to shops that sell the materials you need instead of always having to hunt or them."

Another fun feature is the game encourages you to play many characters, passing talents from one to another:

GamerGhazi: Your One-Stop Subreddit for You Know What

/GamerGhazi, as the name suggests, is a subreddit of news and much-needed humor covering and mocking the biggest but also most irksome controversy to wrack the game industry in many years, which I'd also like to take a hiatus from posting about on New World Notes, especially as I just did last week.

Oh, and note for apolitical or non-American readers:

Starved for Fun: Don't Miss These Top Posts from Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Survival Week

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Last week gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun ran a series of features for their rather brilliant Survival Week, a week devoted to survival games and mod conversions. With a full week's worth of articles published it can be tricky to catch up, but here are four recommended starting points:

This Second Life Image is Almost as Stunning as the Classic Painting it's Based on

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Second Life artist Boudicca Amat does a lot of different things with her SL snapshots: sometimes her work is very modern, and sometimes its the exact opposite. My absolute favorite pieces of hers, however, are the ones where she goes out of her way to imitate or evoke classical art. Normally, Boudicca just teases a few similarities with a famous piece (as she recently did with "Cecilia") but her latest, "Pinky", takes her usual approach one step farther.

"Pinky" is still a few steps removed from Thomas Lawrence's "Pinkie", originally painted in 1794. The angle of the model, the framing, the hair... There are a lot of things that aren't recreated perfectly, but those things allow "Pinky" to stand on its own without its famous source. For all intents and purposes it could simply be a beautiful portrait from the (virtual) regency. Either way, it's an exceptional Second Life snapshot.

Be sure to check out the rest of Boudicca Amat's work in her Flickr gallery.

Top Nine New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

Wow, busy week last week:

• Journalist Critical of GamerGate Posts Best Critique of GamerGate Directly in GamerGate Forum
• Iris Wants to Know: Second Life Designers, How Long Does it Take You to Work Your Content-Creating Magic?
• NPR Report: Women Were Once Interested in Computer Science -- and They Can Be Again
• RL Artist Turns Photos of SL Architecture into Art
• Fortune 500 Company Symantec Using Unattributed NWN Image of Unauthorized Dune Tribute in Second Life to Put a Poodle On It
• Second Life Won't Make it Easy to Imitate This Real Life Trend, but Clever Designers Could Still Prevail
• High Fidelity v. Interstellar: Should Virtual Reality Exploration Replace Space Travel as Philip Rosedale Hopes?
• 1st Feature Film for VR Created by 2 Metaverse Alumni/strong>

I sometimes wonder if our coverage is going too far afield of Second Life and virtual worlds, but looking at this, 5 of the 9 top stories are on that topic -- 6 if you count the Banshee Chapter Oculus movie from SL/Linden alum.

NWN Back Up on Chrome After False Malware Report

If you're visiting New World Notes via Chrome, you should no longer be seeing an annoying and understandably concerning malware warning page from the browser, which popped up sometime last Friday. For some reason this happened after Google reportedly mis-categorized services like bit.ly and del.icio.us as being unsafe, and as it turns out, I added a del.icio.us widget to my blog many years ago -- like, back in 2006 when I launched it and people still, well, used del.icio.us -- but had forgot it was even there. Gorgeous Yongho, SL fashion photographer and blogger extraordinaire at JuicyBomb, pointed that out to me (as did others on Plurk), I slapped my forehead, yanked out the offending code, and now we're back in business on Chrome. Thanks again to JuicyBomb, who might be able to give you some good advice on HTML, and can definitely give you some gorgeous fashion pics to peruse.

Quick favor? If you know other readers who were worried about this malware false-positive, please share this update with the social buttons beyond the break: