Click here to visit something fairly amazing in Second Life: A massive roleplay game world inspired by Mass Effect. It’s the creation of BluShock, a fan community that’s been creating entire worlds and experiences in Second Life based on the videogame franchise for over a decade. I recently made a small visit to the asteroid base, just a small part of the larger experience, and was duly impressed.
“It's our largest and most ambitious/compact base of operations yet,” BluShock leader Fazzy Constantine (above) tells me. “We have over 25 rooms and multiple elevators with 8 levels each, a huge arboretum dome, which is inspired to look like the Presidium Commons, on the Citadel, from the Mass Effect games, which our roleplay group has been inspired by, since 2010.”
But the base is only the beginning:
“The asteroid will be our base of operations in our fictional star system. Vanaheim, which is set in the Milky Way galaxy, in what would be known as the Beta Quadrant, if you were into Star Trek. We have three more main worlds we'll be creating, over the course of 6 to 9 months.” Here's further details on the group's in-game news site.
Anyone can visit their worlds, but the group is serious about maintaining their roleplay narrative, even in their Discord server: People can join, he tells me, "Through application, and then we hold an induction. If they have roleplay experience, great. If not then it's pretty easy to pick up. If they want to just observe and become explorers of the asteroid and worlds then they can choose to do that and still get invited to the Discord server."
There’s a new fitness game in the Really Needy HUD system (a proud sponsoring media partner to New World Notes) and it brings a fun new way of exploring and socializing in Second Life -- basically, you earn points by doing physical activities through the virtual world.
“You start at level 0, and by jogging outdoors or running on a treadmill, you gain Fitness Points, and level up,” Really Needy HUD creator Grace7 Ling explains. “As you unlock new levels, there are a wider variety of activities you can do to earn Fitness Points, such as swimming, boxing, weights, or you gain new abilities, for example, making protein shakes. Most importantly, your avatar’s Health meter, which normally has a maximum of 100, can rise above 100. This simulates the avatar’s physical constitution improving as fitness increases.”
So basically, it’s a Sims-meets-MMO mini-game you can play in Second Life -- but Ms. Ling hopes it also leads to a deeper experience in the virtual world:
Click here to directly teleport to Bloodbath New Orleans, a perfect place to explore as October creeps up on Halloween. Star SL YouTuber Naria Panther (with a delicious, mood fitting Eastern European accent) and friends explore the place with a working streetcar, an eerie fair ground, and many gorgeously detailed Gothic edifices to creep through.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
It is always fun to take a peek at the role-playing groups such as History Recreated. There you discover artists like Benoit de Montgelas whose photos show a strong effort to be historically accurate. I was drawn to this picture which is called “MdM Spring Collection” even though it clearly advertising his own creations by the cherry blossoms. They are opening here in Portland and the streets are brilliant with their blossoms along with the magnolias and camellias.
Perfect starter home for the family, sociopaths or the handyman. Property includes large vaulted ceilings, countless corridors and hallways, laser death trap and original hardwood floors! Bonus: Entire greater downtown area of Raccoon City and dilapidated shopping mall with killer arcade!
"After a surprisingly many years of being financial independent off the sales from my store and the unbelievably kind support from the community that has rallied behind the sim, I can no longer afford to keep it all going," he explains. "At the current rate things are going, we have a solid 4 weeks left, but rather than close the sim outright, I'll be looking into options to transfer ownership of the sim in it's entirety to someone who can financially afford it."
As you might guess by the one image above and the many below, these two sims were inspired by a famed survival horror franchise:
Allegory Malaprop: "The Hive is a Resident Evil inspired sim, divided into 2 pieces: The Hive and Raccoon City. It's all meticulously built, roleplay optional, great for exploring and photography. Advanced lighting strongly recommended- the lighting and materials add quite a bit to the environment."
Hopefully another SL groups can step in -- maybe one of the many roleplay game communities? -- but unless and until then, here's some more images of what's about to leave the grid:
Jenn Frank is an acclaimed writer who has reviewed videogames for major media/gaming outlets including the New York Times, the UK Guardian, Slate, Vice, and Kotaku, and won the 2013 Games Journalism Prize. She is "Jennatar Flow" in SL.
If you're a regular visitor of Second Life, you're probably already familiar with MadPea. For the past ten years, MadPea has been selling adorable knickknacks and running seasonal scavenger hunts. If memory serves, many scavenger hunts occurred in and around the Starlust Motel
Well, those scavenger hunts evidently became more and more detailed and intricate over the years, until they finally turned into—what else?—point-and-click adventure games! (It makes a strange sense: What IS an adventure game, if not a type of scavenger hunt?)
MadPea Production's latest game, Nightmare in New Orleans, launched four entire months ago. I was bound to hear about it eventually, though. After all, I am probably the world's biggest fan of the 1993 point-and-click adventure game Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, which, like Nightmare in New Orleans, is a voodoo mystery set in the Big Easy. Be still, my heart!
I don't want to give away too much of Nightmare in New Orleans. But I can tell you that, as in Gabriel Knight, investigations in Nightmare in New Orleans will take you to a cemetery, a hoodoo shop, and historic St. Louis Cathedral. (I feel obligated to point out that Gabriel Knight came much closer to getting the vibe of a New Orleans hoodoo shop right; the shop location in Nightmare in New Orleans has more of a The Craft thing going on.)
If you're already aware of Second Life's array of long-running role-playing sims—which tend to be extremely well-wrought, have narrator text and NPCs, and involve health meters and combat—you might not be quite as dazzled as I was.
But, wow! I was blown away by Nightmare in New Orleans! The intuitive and well-designed UI of the HUD, which also tracks in-game progress! The pop-up map UI, for navigating to new, just-unlocked destinations! The interstitial "loading" screens that conceal the teleportation process! Dialogue trees driven by in-world script menus! Bots playing the roles of NPCs, with actual spoken-out-loud, recorded lines! It was just like a "real" old-school adventure game!
And the puzzles—oh, my goodness, the puzzles. That first puzzle is so deliciously good, it honestly breaks my heart that more adventure-game players might not venture into Second Life to ever see it.
I asked my husband to please log into Second Life and catch up to where I was in Nightmare in New Orleans—I lack confidence in combat scenarios, and I needed someone to cover me during a particular combat-heavy sequence, which I found invigorating but stressful—and HE was blown away by the game. He couldn't stop raving about it. He's a programmer and game developer who currently works in VR, and the technical achievement of Nightmare in New Orleans absolutely rocked his shit.
As I'm sure all readers of NWN realize, Second Life's major strength, for creators, lies in the sheer amount of possibility hidden in its superficially-rudimentary toolkit. But no matter how many in-world art installations I dragged my husband to, nothing quite drove home the value and possibility of Second Life for him, until Nightmare in New Orleans.
Technical achievements aside, Nightmare in New Orleans's greatest strength is surely the richness of its environments, which is MadPea's bread and butter. The amount of detail packed into each location is just over-the-top, and those locations seem to become more and more lush as the game progresses. It's a feat of environmental storytelling. (The sole location that really hiccupped in loading, for me, was the manor. Seriously, the server load for the whole game is just unthinkable.)
There's something truly genius about building a point-and-click adventure game using Second Life as a platform. On the one hand, it's like, huh?? Second Life wasn't BUILT to accommodate the intricacies of an adventure-game narrative. On the other hand, "teleports" function as hyperlinks; on a certain economical level, Second Life offers what are essentially archives of user-made "game assets," meaning a programmer never has to model the items he can just as easily find in Marketplace.
As a former videogame reviewer myself, I can't discuss any amazing achievement without also complaining -- and giving some gameplay tips:
Reader "Pulsar" tips us to a cool-looking game group based in Second Life that makes the many highways of SL into an open-ended adventure game:
There is a group called "Drivers of SL". Every week they release a special HUD, that turns your driving along Second Life roads into an adventure (often it involves boating and sometimes flying or trains). There is a story and NPC bots that interact when you come closer. The HUD guides you and tells you when to turn using a recorded voice, text, and icons. There are nice prizes that you get along the road (usually good vehicles), and many other fun things. Easter drive saw a 1966 Ford Bronco with working suspensions, for example, and you had to hit eggs, while avoiding chickens. Another time the HUD simulated a car crash, hospital, etc.
Just search "Drivers of SL" in the viewer, or follow the founder, Christi Charron, on YouTube. As the above suggests, the graphics won't necessarily be next gen unless you have a topline PC, but as Pulsar explains, the pleasures of riding through a totally user-generated world go beyond visuals:
As the name suggests, it's both a pet care game and a game where players can actually be the cat themselves: "I can be a cat and you can be a cat and we can share our accessories and gain tokens which can be redeemed for toys," she says.
And yes, that means doing pretty much anything an actual cat does, as part of the game:
The Big Easy: One of the most romantic cities in the world, and now, the setting for a new Second Life-based mystery game from MadPea, creator of many other popular SL games. Here's the announcement:
It all begins with a mysterious urgent telegram from New Orleans regarding your brother, the private detective. He has inexplicably vanished while working on his latest case. Taking the ticket provided, You rush to the airport to board the next flight to the city aboard Pealine Airways, in an attempt to find out what has happened to him.
Second Life has several regions devoted to Fallout-inspired roleplay such as this one, but Fallout: New Orleans may be the most ambitious. Lead developed by Tamos Shan, it comes with its own combat system, unique factions, its own bestiary and more. (The official website is about as polished and detailed as anything from the official Fallout games from Bethseda.)
After launch, it gained popularity among Second Life’s many overlapping post-apocalyptic roleplay groups, most of them loosely affiliated with SL’s legendary, long-running Wasteland regions.
“A group called the Atom Cats seemed to be quite popular,” Shan remembers. “They came from another Fallout sim that had closed up, and wanted to help us make the sim. We gave ‘em a place, all that jazz, let ‘em help us shape the sim, story and all that. They seemed to work well alongside our Minutemen-esque faction The Wardens, and the Brotherhood of Steel.”
I should say “was”, because recently, Tamos Shan and the other staff who ran Fallout: New Orleans recently closed it down, more or less due to administrative hassle caused when players bring their own assumptions and improvisation to a fan-made roleplay game based on an existing franchise:
"We had a large number of players seeking to be members of factions in some manner that would not have fit our setting or would not have been feasible," she says. "Existing properties tend to have this problem where players have expectations of it, and often get upset when the creators using that setting don't meet them."
So there were Fallout: New Orleans players who wanted to be loyal to the Fallout canon, while others wanted to riff -- and conflicts ensued:
