Svarga, the virtual island ecosystem created by a British game programmer in 2006, is a masterpiece of Second Life which briefly disappeared from the world after the owner retired from SL, but then returned in 2010 after Linden Lab generously purchased it from the owner. Sometime after that, something seems to have gone awry with the scripting system that simulated the actual ecosystem, in which virtual rainclouds randomly watered plants which would then grow to be subsequently pollinated by virtual bees. This came to my attention after an SL YouTuber made a recent visit to Svarga (below), casually noting that the ecosystem seemed to be on the fritz. I visited Svarga to double-check, and that does seem to be the case. I tried to reach the original creator, Laukosargas Svarog, but their last e-mail I have on file doesn't appear to be working.
Visit Svarga for yourself, especially if you're a scripter, and let us know if you see anything obviously off. If we're lucky, the ecosystem can be reset by Linden Lab with a few scripting tweaks.
I don't think the scripts have worked in most things since Svarga came back in 2010. And it's doubtful Laukosargas has had anything to do with the sim since then, as well.
Posted by: Alicia Chenaux | Wednesday, June 14, 2017 at 03:15 PM
it's a tragedy really. Svarga was one of those things that was an object lesson in "you can't do THIS anywhere else", and if we actually lose it, the world becomes just a little more mundane and replaceable.
Come home, Lauk, all is forgiven!
Posted by: Patchouli Woollahra | Wednesday, June 14, 2017 at 11:50 PM
It is sad. Like Alicia says, things weren't working when it first came back. We used to buy food for various critters and feed them. I remember that wasn't working.
Svarga gets no attention. If something stalls, there is no one to fix the problem.
Seems like it would be a fun project for some of the SL Moles.
Posted by: Nalates Urriah | Saturday, June 17, 2017 at 03:43 PM