SL Roleplay System Adds Jobs for Players Who Want to Make a Virtual Living as Barista, Tattoo Artist, Etc. -- Sim Owners Can Use It To “Hire” SLers!

Here’s a fun new feature to the Really Needy HUD roleplay system from The Really Useful Scripts Corner, a proud sponsoring media partner to New World Notes:

Jobs for avatars! (Watch above.)

If you’re a Really Needy player (or want to try it out), you can play with the job system on the Really Needy sim now: Click here to teleport.

“Rainy City in my sim is offering jobs like Barista, Bartender, Receptionist, and Tattoo Artist, as a start," creator Grace Ling explains. "Really Needy HUD users will get paid on the job with coins they can use to buy food in the city to replenish their Hunger and Thirst.” There’s even openings for janitors and garbage collectors.

Rainy City also has an “Adventure Hunt” quest where they can investigate the disappearance of a reporter -- join the Really Needy Roleplay group to get started: “Visitors will be equipped with an Experience version of the Really Needy HUD, as they go about exploring the city and talking to different Non-Player Characters powered by my chat-bot script to solve the mystery.”

Sim owners can use this system to turn their region into a fully functioning urban roleplay community:

“Sim owners who are starting a roleplay community are often faced with a challenge of setting up an ecosystem in the sim and to create scenarios for role-players to actively engage with each other,” says Grace. “The Jobs function is a natural extension of the Really Needy HUD as a roleplay tool - jobs create great reasons for interaction between residents of the sim, whether it is a pizza delivery person, locksmith, taxi-driver, EMT, trucker, gun smuggler or weed shop dealer. It is not just a tool for individual role-players. It’s part of a comprehensive solution for roleplay groups and communities.”

Speaking of which, Grace herself is looking for roleplayers who want to become regular citizens of Rainy City:

“I am looking for role-players who have the skills and interest to provide custom services, to join in the Rainy City virtual economy. For example, one of my Needy HUD users designs custom skin tattoos in SL. She is roleplaying as a tattoo artist in Rainy City. While her avatar is tattooing someone sitting on the chair in the tattoo studio, she is designing the skin tattoo in RL on her computer. Perhaps there could be more job ideas like this.”

Jobs are just the latest feature to the Really Needy HUD -- see also swimming to increase fitness, or getting injured in various situations. Read all about it on the official site!

Comments

[Kaylee West]

Wagner, with the greatest respect, I am wondering if you have visited the region? I went there the other day, very excited after having read your blog post. I have been running a system of interactive NPCs in SL in our university teaching region for around 14 years and so am always super excited and interested when I hear of others in SL developing interactive AI. However, I was quite disappointed when I actually visited Rainy City. I am very impressed by the needs HUD and the idea of having jobs that people can role play with some rewards.I was a little disappointed with the AI NPCs as they didn't really appear to be very interactive (one did take my order for a beer, but I never received the said beer). Maybe I just didn't work out how to interact with them properly.

What disappointed me was the number of pictures around the region of women seeming to be sexually exploited. I am not a prude, and people have the right to their own approach to sexual relations, but I find it hard to stomach pictures where women appear to be being abused and exploited.

I don't mean this post to be offensive, so I apologise if it comes across that way.

[Adeon Writer]

@Kaylee West

I'm probably the posterboy for Second Life prudeness and nothing in that region popped out to me as surprisingly unexpected.

This is Second Life, and the region linked in this blog is rated Adult. The Needy HUD game in question also has an Adult version, in which sexual content is one of the meters that need to be regularly fulfilled. You can put two and two together here. I'm not sure why you expected to find content appropriate 14 year olds in an Adult region.

Come on now. Don't play naive. That's my job.

[sirhc desantis]

' I have been running a system of interactive NPCs in SL in our university teaching region for around 14 years'
I doubt that very much :) Unless you are animats in a Tardis..

Off topic
Oi Hamlet - no gacha response? You fell out of the loop mate :)

[Anna Beloni]

seems to me like the huniepop 2 .The player must collect enough fairy wings to awaken the entities, form a trio, and maybe avoid an age of premenstrual misery. Players will travel to an exotic island to play threesomes with girls in order to obtain these wings.

[grace]

hi Kaylee,

>> ..with the AI NPCs as they didn't really appear...

I don't think I have ever represented my chatbot script as Artificial Intelligence or "AI NPCs". I don't think James did either. My chatbot script allows users to make NPCs that give canned responses to key phrases it hears in chat or do simple actions like giving landmarks, SLurls or objects or playing an animation (for Animesh edition). Users doing this by using configuration notecards. The Pro Edition goes beyond a canned response by allowing the owner to specify multiple possible responses, with different weightages (probabilities) to different words that occur in a sentence. It can also detect if an avatar is facing the chatbot or within a specified distance to determine if the chatbot is being spoken to. Thank you.

[word hurdle]

With all due respect, Mr. Wagner, I was wondering if you had ever been to this area. After reading your blog post, I immediately made plans to visit. As someone who has been in charge of a system of interacting NPCs in Second Life's university teaching zone for the past 14 years, I am constantly fascinated to learn that others in SL are working on similar forms of interactive artificial intelligence. While I had high hopes for Rainy City, my experience there was largely negative. HUD is doing a fantastic job of addressing real-world problems and I love the concept of providing people with rewarding role-playing opportunities in the workplace. The artificial intelligence non-player characters didn't impress me much because they didn't seem to have anything to do with one another (one did take my order for a beer, but I never received the said beer). Perhaps I was just unable to figure out how to communicate effectively with them.