Virtual World
Twinity
Posted By Jeff On September 3, 2008 @ 10:12 am
At first, twinity seems like it’s just about virtual world attempting to play with the big boys at Linden Labs. In that sense, you’re right, but they have a trick up their sleeve: you.
Let’s start off with accessibility, shall we? Twinity requires a download to play and is currently only available for Windows. Though this is often a big concern down the road, I’m sure they’ll have something in the works once they come out of beta (hopefully). Next is price, which because of beta is free as well as they also give you some in-game currency to play with off the hop which is always nice.
One of the biggest things I look for in these worlds is creating my avatar (yes, I’m a fashion whore leave me alone) and Twinity gave me quite a shock here: you can actually import your face onto your avatar. I thought at first it would simply match the hair color, or eye color but no, It actually shapes my face onto the avatar. To be brutally honest with you when I was doing it (be it almost 3am) I said to myself “wow, that looks familiar…holy crap that’s actually my face!” does need a bit of work on that feature, but it’s off to a good start. The base selection of clothes/hair seems to be a bit limited, but I think it’s possible to have user generated stuff so I suppose it’s not that big of a deal.
The next list is things to do. My main interest is often creating a ‘home’ or ‘apartment’ and Twinity isn’t too bad at that. I was able to create a place that is going to charge me 47G (in-game currency) a month which isn’t too bad given that I was given 3000 when I signed up. Users have the ability to choose layout of the place, the style (apartment, office, cafe, etc) as well as location. It was the location here that shocked me, as they’re real places. I chose an apartment then for skyline chose Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Well to my surprise when I looked out the apartment window I saw the CN Tower. Now that is cool. On top of that, it has the basic abilities to wallpaper each wall, create the objects you want and has a nice list of textures you can buy as well as make and upload your own.
The interface and controls are two things that can use some work. Most of the things you need to do in Twinity involves right clicking, which is kind of annoying. On top of that, when the menu loads you have 3 different options for the one thing and none of them make a lot of sense (change texture, apply texture, change texture settings). After playing with them, you get used to them but some better wording would help, since all I wanted to do was make the walls red. The next issue is camera control, it doesn’t follow so you constantly have to be right clicking and swinging the camera around with the mouse as you walk which is annoying beyond belief. A little more user-friendlyness would be appreciated.
Another annoyance of Twinity is the fact that is a complete memory-hog and runs very slow. I understand it’s in beta, but the fact that it runs as though we were still in 1998 annoys me to the point of not wanting to play this any more. Every time I load something, I get a spinning loading icon, even if I’ve already loaded this window 3 times. A caching feature would be a nice touch.
There was also some options and talk about making movies, but at the time of this post I didn’t have the patience to check it out given how incredibly slow in seems to run.
All in all I think Twinity may show some potential for some users who want the ‘realistic’ approach to virtual worlds, but given that is lacks the friendly approach to casual players I can’t see it taking visitors away from competitors. Perhaps further along when it comes out of beta we can decide if it will actually become a player or not.
Smallworld
Posted By Jeff On August 21, 2008 @ 8:18 pm
Smallworld is a new MMO virtual world currently in Beta out by Outsmart. Unlike many Virtual worlds, there is no downloads but also isn’t horrible 3D graphics. I made a list of the Pros and Con that I could think of. I’d highly recommend everybody to check it out, it’s one of the best I’ve seen it q very long time. With such a nice build, I’m hoping this doesn’t end up being another one that goes from Beta to Nada.
PROS
CONS
Lively? Hardly
Posted By Jeff On July 31, 2008 @ 1:01 am
The other day I decided to play around with Google’s new play thing Lively and to be brutally honest with you it was pathetic. This comes as something really hard for me to say, given that I have a history of spouting off at every given opportunity about how great google is but Lively is just unbearably bad. For those of you just tuning into what Lively is (or at least trying to be) it’s an avatar based 3D char room. Players are able to ‘create’ and ‘customize’ a series of avatars and chat it locations similar to the real world. This is hardly a new concept, but given that it’s being backed by one of the most powerful forces online the expectations are fairly high.
The first issue I have with this is the idea of it being browser based but requiring a download. A download for something is normal these days, especially for virtual worlds/mmo; Having browser based with no download are no problem either. However, the expected quality between the two is going to variry a great deal. If a user is required to download something it should be far superior to something thrown together in java or shockwave. This isn’t the case with Lively which is a big turn off right from the get-go.
Next lets tackle what is actually in this world and how it’s presented. Avatar selection is very slim. Users have a choice of 8 (I belive it was 8, might be 6 come to think of it) different avatars ranging from an anime styled character to a cat-like creature. For each of these avatars, you have a very limited appearal options which includes mostly different colored hats. There is no skin tone option or clothing layering option which most other servies offer making uniqueness very limited among users.
As we’ve now established that all the avatars will be clones, lets look at the functionality of this system. In an attempt to ‘create a room’ (which is common in many virtual world to allow to to customize a small space to call their own) I managed to put down a sofa, a table and a poster to float in the middle of my room. This would have been easier if the viewing screen is not cropped so small and the camera angles were not horrid.
The last things I can possibly think of at this time which irritate me about this poorly designed website is that the characters use chat bubbles (which is ok if the whole environment is viewable, but quite obviously is not due to poor camera controls) but does not support a chat log feature that I was aware of in my time using it. On top of the chat bubbles, character movement is completely done with the mouse by clicking and dragging a character to place which becomes very annoying, very fast when the cameras try to keep up with the mouse location.
Final summation: If Google wants to make it completely browser based they have to remove the inital download and install of the modules and make control a bit easier. They did a fantastic job with Google Docs and not having to require any downloads so there is no reason why they can’t do it with this. If they choose to go with the download route make it a true virtual world download and up the quality of the product (which honesly has to be done even if you stick with a browser based envirtonment) to allow more customizable feature and some sort of user interface would be a huge help. Until then, I’d stick with Second Life.
Kaneva
Posted By Jeff On August 23, 2007 @ 1:28 am
To be blunt, Kaneva sucks. There is no easy way to put, it’s just pure and utter crap.
Let’s start with the graphics: they’re pathetic. There is virtually no detail at all, be it realistic or cartoonish. It’s gross mixture between the two with no details. If you were to have a 3rd grader make a person out of play-doh you could get the same results. Were this made 6 or 7 years ago, it might fly for ‘neato’ graphrics but even that is pushing it.
As far as the user interface goes, it reminds me of an old adventure game that you would pick up for sale at K-mart. It makes you say “what the hell is this crap?” when you can’t find anything you’re looking for. On top of that, most of the features make you leave the client and go to their webpage. That might be ok if you’re purchasing something with a credit card, but that’s about it. The in-game purchasing system uses either credits or rewards, which makes sense. Though there is no confirmation of buying anything besides your money going away in the bottom corner of the screen. I had 9 parts of black pants before I realized this. I wasn’t too impressed.
I ran around a mall for 15 of the 20 minutes I was on, only seeing 2 people. It seems that nobody else thought this was very good either, huh? As far as the system running without a lot of lag, it did do that right. But when you have less than a dozen people online that should be too bad. And don’t even get me started on having to do a 213mb update after downloading.
So as I said, it sucks. You should try something else or even dip your head in hot melted cheese instead of playing this.
VSide
Posted By Jeff On August 22, 2007 @ 4:47 pm
First off, I have to say I love the look of this virtual world Vside.
In-Game Screenshot
Characters/Environment: As far as this goes it’s really good. They’re smooth looking and run flawlessly at the moment in beta. The surrounding environment is looking really good and quite interactive.
Interface: I’m lovin’ this interface, seriously. An interface can usually make or break a VW and this one has nothing to worry about. All the buttons needed are located on the bottom or side of the screen with nice looking icons. Whenever something happens (you click on somebody, song changes, you enter a new area, etc) it will show on the left.
Features: The site as a friend list and ignore list as can be assumed with all major social sites. It also included AIM integration as well (thought I haven’t tried it yet since I can’t remember my password. Shut up). From what I read, it will allow you to simply run AIM inside the Vside client.
The site also includes quite a large list of available actions (which most newer ones do) how this one is very intuitive as well. For instance, if I type the sentence “Hehe, sounds exciting” my character will make a giggling action. It’s quite the interesting concept, and I think I kinda like it.
They have an odd system of “respekt” in game, that changes the user’s rank (newbies, junior, etc). That makes sense and seems like a good way to differentials between newer members and vets, but the way that they point are given out seems a bit shaky to me. Users can get respekt by exploring the map (which is fine) but also by adding friends. Within 10 minutes I saw people just adding all random people. Flawed system (just a bit :p)
Another great (and I use that loosely) feature is the music feature. Each area has it’s own station/playlist of music. It’s actually really well done because unlike some other systems this runs without slowing down the play depending on if the music on/off. It also has a smooth transitional fade between locations’ music, which adds a nice realistic effect. Now if only they weren’t playing so much rap it might be a little more favorable.
.
More: The age groups seem to be varied from what I can see. When you click a character you get to see a blip of info on them such as age, rank and location. I was talking to a 15 year old one minute then a 35 year old the next which makes things interesting.On the back end, the site also has extended profiles that users can fill out which makes a nice feature for those who like to share every detail of their lives with people.
As far as content creation goes it looks like there is none. All content is created by the Vside company. This leaves for a more stable environment in the long run, but will mean that user interaction with the company will be limited. The site also features moderation, which is a needed feature that many sites are putting on back-order for ‘cool features’ and the such.
This site is definitly something to check out, even just to admire the looks.
› Continue reading
Virtually Life / Multiverse
Posted By Jeff On August 5, 2007 @ 10:22 pm
Virtually Life is a neat video made within SL. Just thought it was neat.
Multiverse
According to some reports this is supposed to be the new competitor for Second Life. I LOL’d after looking at it to say the least. It was released a few days ago and honestly it sucks. It has bad graphics and doesn’t even have decent gameplay. Yes it may still be new, but I’m not seeing anything worth sticking around for in the engine. It took far too long to download once in the game, and if every world will require you to spent 30 minutes download it’s not worth it. There was a choice of 4 avatars to choose from in the world I entered, which isn’t enough to call it “customization”. They may claim is this going to give Second Life a run for its money, but I can’t see it happening. I think the articles meant to say that it will be a competitor for Activeworlds, because it’s nowhere near the level that second life is at.
SL @ AlwaysOn / Club Penguin
Posted By Jeff On August 3, 2007 @ 5:26 pm
Now that I’ve had my eyelids cut open again, I think I’m going to start looking and discussing a few more virtual worlds (VWs) again. It’s been about a year since I’ve actually tried keeping up on them. Though ashamed to say it, I pretty much got sick of virtual worlds for the longest time. Working with one for so long that didn’t work with such bad management really put me off of the the whole thing. However, I think it’s time to start again so I’ll be talking a lot about them as I find stuff I like.
This video from Beef.Tv is a really great video of Phillip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Labs, at the AlwaysOn Conference discussing media in Second Life as well as marketing. Unlike many other VWs second life doesn’t run on company investment, but community investment. This brings good news back to those who have been looking for the escape pods due to the flood of media lately with titles about second life losing ground due to larger businesses leaving.
In some other news, it seems that Disney is reaching out again for more clients. They’re recently purchased Club Penguin, a MMO aimed at pre-teens, for $350 million, with an additional $350 million more by the end of 2009. This comes as a shock to at least myself given that Disney already runs one ‘successful’ MMO known as Virtual Magic Kingdom. With the recent addition this means that Disney now holds strong loyalty with both teen and pre-teen crowds, which is surely where they want to be standing with the increasing variety in available VMs.
Zwinky & Self Image
Posted By Jeff On July 8, 2006 @ 4:15 pm
Zwinky
I saw this in a pop-up ad that got through my blocker. I know, this could very well be spammed with adware. In fact, I’m almost certain it is. But I got to create a funky looking dude, so it was worth having to run AdAware after. Woot.
Anyway, check out my Zwinky HERE.
Hehe, ‘Check out my Zwinky‘ sounds so wrong.
Self Image
Anyway, next topic of discussion: Boh3m3 (a user on youtube) & Self Image. He had a video which he talks about self image.
When I think of self image, I think of how you see yourself not how other people see you. How others see you is simply your image. In some cases, you’re presenting yourself as you see yourself. However, more often then not people’s image is only what they’re giving the person. So this usually isn’t personality, it’s looks and how you act firstly. That said, you usually want to show the person what they want to see, true to your self image or not is not even a factor to consider.
So he asked “Can you change other people’s perception of you through a physical change?” Yes and no. You can create a new perception, but not change an existing perception. If you see somebody dressed in a business suit you’re going to perceive them differently then you would were they covered in tattoos wearing leather. That’s barely even a topic of discussion, you’re going to get a first impression of somebody so you can make a judgement of them to figure out how you should relate to them, correct or incorrect all you have to work with is looks and how they act. However, that’s only assuming you don’t know them already. If a friend (or simply somebody you have a general idea of their mind set already) changes their looks, there is little chance that you will change your perception of them, as you already know them as a person, not just a face.
So yeah, if I’m to ask a stranger for the time I’d ask somebody dressed proper and neat over somebody dressed in rags because I would assume a person is a certain way by how they look.
But If a friend were to dye their skin green and grow an orange Mohawk, besides thinking they’ve flown over the co co’s's nest I’d know they’re still the same person inside and it will go unchanged.
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