Since Linden Lab recently unveiled Combat 2, a major update to Second Life's combat system, I got in touch with Kyle Linden, the company project manager under the Avatars and Creator Tools initiative. A Linden since 2007, Kyle's also a longtime gamer and even owned a roleplay region in SL before joining the company. "[O]ne of the things I have always wished for Second Life is easy to enter combat situations to enhance role playing games our residents create," he tells me.
While there are many impressive user-made game systems in Second Life, the platform's streaming architecture is not immediately optimized for high speed, physics-based combat out of the box. So I asked Kyle for some tips for community developers getting started with implementing Combat 2:
WJA: What are the most important updates to LSL Combat2 that game developers should know about?
KL: Presently, Combat 2 is only available to private region owners or on regions set aside by the Second Life team to be Combat 2 enabled. The big highlights for Combat 2 that content creators should be aware of are being able to define where the players respawn when they run out of health.
Previously this only resulted in one being teleported home, and this is quite jarring as you’re no longer in the experience, especially for new residents who have no idea what to expect.
Another good thing about Combat 2 is healing, which will now keep you in the action longer and less frequently being teleported back to base.
In addition, creators may now define all sorts of new damage types, such as fire, acid, force and be able to craft armor that protects players from specific types of damage too. Some examples of the kinds of benefits a full suit of combat armor you just acquired could be, auto healing, amplified jumping, protection against fire, cold and bludgeoning and anything else a content creator's imagination may come up with.
At the other end of the spectrum is making combat in Second Life quick and easy to jump into for new or long time residents alike, who may have never tried out combat before because the bar to entry meant buying into a specific scripted combat system, which may have its own HUDs and other requirements to participate.
WJA: What advice would you give developers around optimizing frame rate and response time in SL combat games?
KL: This is the same kind of advice one would give any content creator in Second Life, be conservative with the number of unique textures in the experience. Pay attention to how many objects are rezzed and total script time being used so that the region itself is always running near the maximum of 45 FPS even under heavy load. Another playability factor is scriptless bullets that are temporary so the region doesn’t get full of spent munitions.
While not directly about optimizing performance, one other piece of advice is to make the environment part of the hazards to avoid, not just other players. If you run into barb wire or fall into a fire it should hurt commensurate with the source of harm.
If you're developing (or playing!) in a Combat 2-enabled region, please share details in Comments, because I'd like to highlight the most promising in a future post. I'm especially curious to see games where Second Life's streaming architecture is made part of the gameplay. For instance, a sniper vs. sniper FPS which requires slower, stealthier combat, or battles on a low-gravity planet, which would make lag part of the movement/strategy.
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