The Really Olympic Swimming Pool is a new product from New World Notes sponsor Really Needy HUD, which turns activity in Second Life into a fun Sims-like roleplaying game. As you probably guessed, any swimming in the pool is tracked as exercise on the Really Needy HUD. As creator Grace7 Ling explains, you just need to click on the pool’s life buoy, to get started:
“By clicking the Swim HUD it will auto attach as a temporary attachment, and your avatar can swim forward, back, up, down, and also make a jump dive. It also tracks how long you are in the pool’s mesh/prim water and communicates to the Fitness script in the Really Needy HUD”.
As befitting style-conscious SL users, the pool also enables users to look wet, when they get out:
Click here to visit the 725th Street Bar, a ship-based food and drink establishment perfect for dates and other social get-togethers in SL -- and which now serves food and drink compatible with the Really Needy HUD (a sponsoring partner to New World Notes), so that a meal consumed there fills the Hunger and Thirst meters of anyone wearing the Sims-like roleplay system. (More about that here.)
Bar owner Drogo Bartholy, who even employs live waitstaff to serve his customers, added the Really Needy system to further enhance users’ experience:
Here’s two new items from proud New World Notes sponsoring partner Really Useful Scripts Corner which effectively turn its Really Needy HUD roleplay tool into a combat system:
Ably demonstrated by Really Useful’s lead developer Grace7 Ling above, these items aren’t technically part of a combat system, but they can certainly be used as such:
“It is a natural extension to simulating physiological needs (hunger, thirst, energy, etc.) that roleplayers would also like to simulate health damage as a result of not meeting those needs, or due to injuries,” she explains. “The Linden Lab damage system is too simplistic and inflexible, while some other systems are focusing only on combat rather than roleplay.”
“The Injuries add-on enables wounds that automatically appear on your avatar’s body if shot by a firearm, courtesy of tattoo layers made by cosmetics creator Izzie Button, who is a partner.” It even displays bloody splatter and mist when a shot hits home, and also comes with walls that display bullet holes. (More features here.)
It was inspired by Second Life’s many roleplay communities where some users take on roles such as the police and EMT workers:
The Really Needy HUD system (a proud sponsoring media partner to New World Notes) just launched Season Two of its fitness contest, with the top three winners collecting L$2000 total in cash prizes, along with a free Really Luxurious Shower Cabin -- go here to get started.
A fun new way to explore Second Life and socialize, the Really Needy HUD is a Sims-like roleplay system to SL, and the fitness game on it tracks the most active players on an in-world leaderboard. (Click here to see it.)
Here's tips to getting started from Really Needy's Grace Ling:
As you can see from the video above and my dialog below, Mr. Bones himself makes for a friendly virtual companion in SL (he can even follow you on command!), but he’s also meant to show off Really Useful Script Corner’s feature set for customizable NPCs (Non-Player Characters).
“My basic chatbot has two functions - Chat and Responses,” lead developer Grace7 Ling explains, “Chat includes the bot being able to greet visitors and greet its owner. The bot can also remember who it has met before as well.” Her chatbot can also spout random things as a way of encouraging nearby SLers to reply.
As for responses, Grace means more than simple text-based replies. Responses include “doing something in response to a keyword or key phrase it hears, like giving a landmark or SLurl, or playing a sound or animation.”
Ms. Ling’s more advanced chatbot comes with a third feature: Chatter, which enables owners to specify multiple possible answers to a statement, with different probabilities for each. You can even expand your bot’s phrase recognition range by adding “brain-files” (i.e. notecards) to its database.
While Mr. Bones comes with the new Animesh Pro Edition chatbot script, Grace’s chatbot series includes a mesh human, a French bulldog, a parrot, and a mirror.
Her customers, she tells me, are already using them for a wide variety of NPCs in their own projects:
The Really Useful Aquarium is a cool product from New World Notes media partner Really Useful Scripts Corner -- lead developer Grace7 Ling gracefully demonstrates its many features in the video above. Available in her Really Useful Scripts Corner on the Marketplace and at her SL store (click here toteleport), Grace’s fish tank is fairly unique among other virtual world aquariums:
“Many of the older aquariums are using flat textures of fish that cycle around in a fixed way,” Grace notes. “The Really Useful Aquarium has mesh fish which swim randomly around the tank. The swim speed and turning speed of each fish can actually be customized if you know how. Secondly, if you are not using the display shelf, the tank is actually quite versatile and can be resized to rather surprising dimensions, and the fish will adjust automatically to the new dimensions of the tank.” (Watch below.)
On top of that, aquarium owners or their guests can feed the fish:
The Mega Weather Maker from The Really Useful Scripts Corner (a proud sponsoring partner to NWN) is a handy device for unleashing all kinds of weather scenes on your Second Life property -- including, as the creator puts it: “Blizzards, raining cats and dogs (literally), falling cherry blossoms, an Aurora Borealis, and even striking intruders on your land with lightning bolts!”
There’s an in-world location to try her Weather Maker before you buy: Click here to teleport, and read the sign for step-by-step instructions.
Now in its 6th edition, store owner Ms. Ling was inspired to create this system, she tells me, because there were hardly any others in SL that could generate weather effects sim-wide -- and those that did exist tended to be too script or prim heavy.
Also, she adds, “the rain always fell through the roof of your house as particles are not affected by prims.” It’s why the version 6 of the Mega Weather Maker comes with a free Really Useful Rain Resistant Roof -- see below, along with some of the fun weather effects, including cherry blossoms and the literal rain of cats and dogs:
Click here today to teleport to the Fameshed event to take a look at the new offering from acclaimed SL houseware creator (and proud NWN sponsoring partner) Dutchie: Loosdrecht waterfront cottages, which are, as Dutchie explains, "named after a beautiful lake area nearby my hometown Utrecht with marshes, grasslands & reed beds, popular for swimming and water sports."
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:
This coming Thursday at 4pm PT, Sinespace is hosting an in-world fireside chat with co-founder Adam Frisby and Adam Goodrich, founder of Procedural Worlds, creator of the powerful Unity terrain tool Gaia, which can be used in Sinespace to build massive, highly detailed worlds -- see video below.
Sinespace (a proud media partner to New World Notes!) is holding the event on their World Stream technology, which enables you to stream the 3D virtual world from a Chrome browser on any computer, even low-end laptops. I’ll post the link right before the scheduled time, which you can just click to enter the virtual world. If you want a reminder, follow me on Twitter or join the Sinespace Discord.
There will be a Q&A session during the chat, so get your questions about creating and scaling huge virtual worlds ready. After that, the team is planning to take a tour of Archipelago, the new Sinespace vehicle sim region that’s 20 square miles large and built, in part, with Gaia.
Up to now, by the way, World Streaming has only been available in Breakroom, Sinespace’s virtual world for live events and conferences. So this Thursday‘s event is the first open invitation to try out this technology directly in Sinespace.
