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[PA Comic] Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - Zeppeling
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Posts
this isn't my favorite PA
especially since it's the kind of joke that's been made for years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_sexuality
Facts you learn from podcasts, eh? Viking fury!
I'm sure Mike has learned some things from his brief foray into the frothing darkwaters of SL.
If you read it as one single character's dialogue, it's absurdly funny. Like he's on a quest to defile some lighter-than-air sack.
Lana?
I agree. It took me a minute to realize it was actually new. So I also await the news post to see why SL is coming up now.
The helium!
It's a great concept, a brilliant concept, but it's implementation is just so bad. You can tell the company that runs it decided to cheap out and not hire any artists, instead relying on their userbase to donate things like starter avatars. So your first impression of SL will always be how hideously ugly it is.
That alone will drive most potential new people away and they will never see stuff like;
Hell, it's so difficult to find the good stuff in SL that most who stick around will never realize stuff like that exists there.
Anyways, SL is in the new again because Rod Humble is their new CEO, they've added mesh import, and they've started adding features they should have had in 2002. No idea if it will be enough to keep them relevant or "too little, too late".
Well I'll be damned
That's insane
The Metal Slug tank? I made that. It works. You can climb in and drive it around. The vulcan cannons even rotate back and forth as you move forward and backwards, just like in the games. The turret even rotates. When I have time i need to make effects so the guns can fire. It already jumps and kicks up dust as it lands.
That's why SL is such a fantastic idea. You can do stuff like that.
But you'd never know just logging in and trying to endure the awful graphics and confusing "new user experience" they inflict on you when you start.
Worse yet, getting the most out of SL's graphics requires you to work against the default settings they use on all incoming people. Those sci-fi environments at the top? The ceilings are too low for the default camera placement. They make the camera hover a good couple metres over your avatar (you need to dig around in the debug settings to implement more modern style camera placement like you'd find in any professionally made videogame) and they start you off with a 2m tall avatar, combined this means you need to upscale everything, which eats up resources and area fast (since the land area you have to work with is always a set size, making stuff bigger means you have less area to work with).
It's just infuriating if you know anything about design.
You don't?
It's sad because it has mountains of potential but people only ever think of it as a place where losers go to be vampires, furries or indeed airships.
For reasons already explained, the developers themselves don't help their own product. But people jump to too many conclusions about SL for it to ever have a chance anymore.
And that's sad.
...-air balloons.
I'm sorry.
That stuff exists in SECOND LIFE?!? Is there another new game out there with the same name? Because the Second Life I played for a few weeks like 5 years ago was a shitty MMO sandbox with terrible graphics and poor customization.
Too Galactic for you.
But all of that is secondary to the real things I remember reading. Like the penis bombs; just swarms of penises flying through the air. And the constant talk of not-so underground pedo-rings.
I guess Obi-Wan was wrong about the whole "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" thing.
is all I know about Second Life. Are people still able to fleece the furries, or have they experienced a virtual-reality housing bubble helium sac yet?
Here's a few examples of the crap you need to get around to make good stuff in SL.
The camera placement resembling that of a videogame from 1997.
Like theResetButton says, the avatar customization is broken. Above about 6'3" it becomes difficult to create an avatar with correct human proportions (impossible if you make a female avatar, the arms will not stretch long enough to maintain proportions if your body is stretched out past about 6'1"), then to ensure everyone has terrible proportions, they start you off at about 7' tall that looks like the proportions were set up by a 13 year old (tiny heads, short arms, super broad shoulders on men, super long legs on women). There is nothing in the appearance editor to help you fix your proportions, you basically need two years of art school and enough free time to waste in figuring out how the appearance editor is broken and THEN you can make a good looking avatar.
The environmental shader defaults are just abhorrent.
Here's that island screenshot again:
Here's the same scene with SL's default shader settings, this is how the people who run LL want you to see that island setting:
The first screenshot has no additional features turned on, no special filters, just moved some sliders in the shader settings panel. Changing these settings in no way affects performance, you get the same FPS either way, they just could not be bothered to hire a graphics professional to create proper default settings.
I love tooling around in SL building stuff, but for the above reasons I can't really recommend it and I certainly don't fault anyone for seeing it as crap. Crap is how the people who run it choose to present it.
Social aspects? Ehh, I stay away.
What job has you go on a version of Second Life?
All in all I had fun, it's definitely full of crazy and 'sad' stuff but there's some great user created content. I'll be honest, I'd have been screwed (possibly literally, against my will) if it wasn't for Cynic and some of the other classy PA gents though, it was very much bewildering for the first time user.
When all is said and done...it's better than Playstation Home.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
And mind you guys, there is no subscription costs. You can plug in a few bucks to rent or buy property, clothing and items. All in all, it is quite cheap to have a great time. Also I'll say its a hang out. You log on, send it off to the side of the screen, look up some chicken recipes, chat with some friends, and move on. Other people, like Radd, may get more into the creation of things and actually begin building with it, which is actually great fun and can actually be pretty rewarding.
Ahah the Fancy Lads, I remember you lot. Personally what has kept me in SL all these years is the fact that if you are a person who really digs a great variety of music, there are people who KNOW that music inside and out and will play it for you! I have discovered more incredible music via SL than any other way in the past few years. The trick is meeting those people/finding out where they spin, because 90% of the 'clubs' in SL are predictably boring, top40s playing virtual meatmarkets. Once you get a in though, you are golden, the community of people who are really passionate about music are like a spiderweb and it will lead you to any number of venues where people dj incredible varieties of awesomeness.
@Radd Penny, is that you? :P
And yes, in SL, you should specify.
apologies on being a little late to the party