New World Notes

Now in Sinespace: Adjust Clothing Tint in Real Time With Color Wheel Feature -- Plus Creator Tips from Gaby of PrettyDeceased

The Eris Bodycon is a new strapless leather dress in the shop of Sinespace (an NWN media partner) which includes a new-ish feature -- the ability to adjust the tint of a clothing item in real time to a near infinite degree, using a color wheel user interface. (See above.)

Created by Gaby, owner of the PrettyDeceased brand, the color wheel feature has actually been part of Sinespace for some time.

 “But current clothing isn’t taking advantage of that,” she tells me, “so I decided to make an outfit that is properly set up to fully use the material tinting option.”

She even wrote this tutorial here for other creators to incorporate the existing color wheel option into their own items.

Gaby also sells clothing on the Second Life marketplace under her PrettyDeceased brand, so has some insight on the color change differences from world to world.

“Sinespace does it in a more in-depth way and not just like a surface tinting, as in SL. In SL, you have a texture for your item and the tinting option; now if you try to make it black you will just cover the texture and lose details like shadow etc… 

“If you have a correctly set up item in Sinespace that has a normal map and an ambient occlusion map; the game will respect each map no matter the color. As a matter of fact, except for the pattern options, the tintable dress doesn’t have a texture at all. The final texture, or what you see, it’s brought to you live directly there.”

Gaby started creating content for Sinespace earlier this year, and has tips and insights for other SL content creators who might want to try their hand on the Unity-based platform:

Tech Conference Almost Cancelled by Quarantine Moves Whole Event & 1000 Attendees to SInespace's Breakroom

Cool real world use case on for Sinespace's Breakroom (a media partner to this blog) featured on VentureBeat -- a virtual world-based tech conference:

BlockDown is a direct response to the worldwide quarantine, which effectively canceled an April conference EAK Digital had been planning to host in Istanbul. CEO Erhan Korhaliller said in an interview that he had worked on the event for five months and wasn’t prepared to let it go. He considered simply staging the event on a video conferencing system but found the options boring — especially at a time when most people are working at home and yearning for a colorful, engaging alternative to boost their spirits.

“The current virtual events are like one-way communication, and it’s very difficult for people to interact,” said Korhaliller. “Sinespace is more like a cinema-style 3D world. It really allows people to immerse themselves in the experience.”

During the first virtual world hype phase of 2006-2007, a number of startups tried doing this, but the return on investment was negligible. BlockDown, by contrast, brought in lots of paying customers:

Wall Street Journal Features Sinespace's Breakroom in Story on Virtual World Offices for Remote Teams

"Miss Your Office? Some Companies Are Building Virtual Replicas" is a new Wall Street Journal story from Katie Deighton featuring NWN media partner Sinespace, creator of Breakroom:

Stay-home orders and the shuttering of workplaces have given corporate employees some respite from getting dragged into time-wasting water-cooler conversations.

But some companies and their employees don’t want to leave everything about the office behind, it turns out, and are replicating their offices in “SimCity”-like simulations online...

Sine Wave Entertainment Ltd. last month introduced Breakroom, a virtual-world product for remote workforces. It can accommodate all-hands meetings, secure one-on-ones and document sharing. Clients of the product include Virgin Group Ltd. and Torque Esports Corp.

Many customers initially assume they will recreate their offices, then realize they can make tweaks that would be impossible in the real world, said Sine Wave CEO Rohan Freeman.

“We spend our lives wishing we were working in open, sunny campuses with butterflies outside,” Mr. Freeman said. “Here you can realize that dream.”

Read the rest here. Speaking of which, here's a new video showcasing Breakroom's use for virtual world-based conferences and events:

Couple Who Met in Sinespace Now Quarantined Together in Real Life Create Virtual World Hangout for People Who Want to Socialize Beyond Zoom -- Including Themselves

The Localhost Connection Cafe is a gorgeous new cyberpunk-themed hangout in Sinespace, and it’s amazingly detailed and sumptuously, stylishly lit. It was created by Carsten Stark and Artemis Bane, who also host “Geek Weekly” get-togethers there. And it would probably not exist, at least in its current form,, but for two occurences: 

An unexpected romance. 

A global pandemic, quite frankly.

First the romance: It also started virtually, and wasn’t part of either creator’s original plan.

“We just happened to start talking about projects we wanted to do in Sinespace,” as Carsten puts it. “[We] just really hit it off… It was totally unexpected. Neither of us was looking for anything.”

They made the trip to meet each other in person last Summer -- back in the olden days, when people could still fly, and go on first dates -- and things proceeded swimmingly from there.

“The spark we had translated really well into real life and we both felt like we've finally found our other half (soulmates if you will),” says Carsten. “She moved up here in January so that we could be together.“

And then they were really together. Because shortly after she moved in, the quarantine was imposed in Carsten’s home state. So now they were also in lockdown together,

But being creatively and technically compatible (along with the relationship part) helped inspire and drive a new collaborative project:

“Immediately Carsten and I had synergy and the brainstorming on localhost just blew up,” as Artemis puts it. “He’s a coder and I’m a texture artist. We both model in 3D. There was pretty much nothing stopping this idea from happening.”

A virtual traveler who has explored many online worlds, Artemis once owned a version of localhost in Second Life:

Watch Robert Scoble Tour Sinespace's Breakroom, Discuss the Metaverse

Here's a couple videos of renowned tech evangelist Robert Scoble taking a tour of Breakroom, the social hub for remote teams and virtual conferences from sponsoring media partner Sinespace. Scoble is a longtime advocate of virtual worlds and the metaverse, so it was a treat to tour Breakroom with him, as led by lead developer Adam Frisby and the rest of the Sinespace team. While Breakroom is designed for remote collaboration, meetings, and classes for companies and schools, Scoble told us he saw it as a step toward the metaverse:

This gives you the ability to have different contexts... It has some attributes of the metaverse, it has that ability to walk around and have serendipitous moments... and it's more fun than [video conferencing] because there's a rabbit sitting at my table."

Free demo/access to Sinespace's public Breakroom campus here. Adam tells me Breakroom isn't meant to be a direct replacement to video conferencing:

"We think a key point to make is that we're not really looking to supplant video conferencing," as he puts it. "Video conferencing is high mental load and intense, sure it's in there -- but our goal with Breakroom is to create a more relaxing, creative alternative. Something more persistent and less ephemeral too, where you can take coworkers and have a social experience with collaboration tools (whiteboards, screenshare, video, etc) if you want them." 

Longer version of Scoble's tour below the break, where we talk in more detail about the metaverse, VR, work culture -- and play a quiz game and Sinespace's Humans vs. Coronavirus FPS:

Today at 9am PT: Join Us in Sinespace's Breakroom For the First Public Demo of the Social Hub for Remote Teams & Conferences

Update, 8:15am: If you can't join us directly in Breakroom, here's the livestream on YouTube!

Today at 9am, Adam Frisby, his development team, and myself are doing the first public demo of Breakroom, the 3D social hub for remote teams and virtual conferences built on the Sinespace platform (a sponsoring media partner to New World Notes). I am highly biased, but I think it's a cool new way to work and collaborate online -- and the Sinespace team would love your feedback!

To join us there, just go here to download and install Breakroom for PC or Mac.

This Friday, 9am PT: Meet Adam Frisby & Team in Breakroom for a Public Demo of the New 3D Social Hub for Remote Teams

This Friday at 9am, Adam Frisby and his development team are giving a public demo of Breakroom, the 3D social hub for remote teams from Sine Wave Entertainment (a sponsoring media partner to New World Notes). To join us there, just go here to download and install Breakroom for PC or Mac.

Previously a co-founder of OpenSim and a developer for numerous projects in Second Life, Adam will share what he’s learned about creating virtual worlds for education and enterprise use, and how that influenced the creation of Breakroom. He’ll also demo Breakrooms features for remote work and teaching, including webcam calls, a dynamic whiteboard, screensharing, and a group quiz system. And if there’s time at the end, we may even play some rounds of Greedy Greedy or an FPS called Humans vs. Coronavirus.

Unable to join the event in-world? Don’t worry, we will stream the demo live on Breakroom’s new YouTube channel, and here on New World Notes.

Play This Weekend in Sinespace: Award-Winning Carnival Fishing Game Created by a Husband & Wife Team -- Here’s How They Made It

Carnival Fishing Game, a new casual game for users of Sinespace (a proud sponsoring media partner to this blog), was the runner-up $2000 prize winner of the virtual world’s recent game development contest. Developed by longtime Sinespace creators Punkarella and Booradley (gotta love the Mockingbird reference), you can buy it in the shop for 999 Gold.  

You can also play a free version on region owned by the creators: Click Explore and search “Fishing” -- it’ll teleport you the playable demo at Punkarella and Booradley’s place. If you’re lucky, they’ll be online and you can play with the creators themselves!

It’s designed for social fun with friends who aren’t necessarily hardcore gamers, and the approach this husband/wife team is a good case study for other casual game developers to think about:

“[W]e wanted something that didn't involve shooting/guns and would not be intimidating to players of various skill levels,” as Punkarella puts it. And she designed some clever hooks to encourage multiplay gameplay sessions for different kinds of gamers:

“Although there are people who want high scores and will come back to games to take over leaderboards, that doesn't really appeal to more casual people or those who just don't have the quick reflexes to ‘win’,” she tells me. 

“For those reasons we made it so there was both a table scoreboard so you can just mess around with a few friends and do little challenges, and tickets that would let people save up over time to work towards the various prizes. You can also reset the whole machine so that they can be used for tournaments and special events. I wanted to game to bring people back and to appeal to those who care about collecting and socializing rather than just scores.”

While it seems like the game uses Sinespace/Unity’s physics, that’s not the case -- and while it plays like a multiplayer game, it’s not quite that on the back end. Booradley,who handled the game’s scripting, explains what he did instead. And this is another master class in game development:

Educators Who Use Virtual Worlds: When Do You Want a Live Group Demo of Breakroom, the Free-for-Public Schools 3D Social Hub from Sinespace?

The developers of Breakroom, the new 3D social hub for remote teams from virtual world company Sinespace (a sponsoring media partner to New World Notes), are starting to hold live demos to companies and organizations interested in using the platform for classes, meetings, events and other online group activities. 

Brearkroom’s lead developer is Adam Frisby, a co-founder of OpenSim, and is free to use for public schools, so Adam and team are planning to give demos specifically catering to educators -- especially those already familiar with OpenSim and other virtual worlds.

Question is, when is the most preferred day/time for such a demo? The team is planning to schedule them on weekdays between 8am-Noon PST, but if there’s a strong preference for other time slots, they’ll try to accommodate some of those as well.

So please take this survey to help Sinespace schedule demos during the most preferred days and times -- and share this survey with any virtual world-based educators you may know!

This Weekend in Sinespace: Zombie Bunny Deathmatch & Other Easter Fun

This weekend, NWN partner Sinespace has a whole host of Easter-themed fun in store for you, culminating in egg-flavored FPS maze combat in Zombie Bunny Deathmatch. (They're cute, they're fluffy, they're murderously undead!)

To start playing, just travel to the Welcome Centre and teleport from the sign there -- or click Explore and search for "Easter Festival 2020".  Zombie Bunny Deathmatch was created, by the way, in BKR Source, Sinespace's open source FPS/combat system. (Read about creating your own maps with it on Unity's blog.)

Many more Easter events listed here on the Sinespace blog, including karaoke, racing, live music, and a “Best in Easter Best” costume contest.