Second-Life

Kaum kam ich heute abend online, war im Gruppenkanal schon die Hölle los. Die Black Shark Piraten hatten mal wieder nichts besseres zu tun, als Belnend zu überfallen, was kein Wunder ist, da mit den Gesellen sonst kaum noch einer spielen mag. Feindschaften müssen schließlich gepflegt werden, nur sind die keine guten Feinde.

Jedenfalls war es dieses Mal wohl eine Zeit, wo sie Erfolg hatten, da noch nicht so viel in der Stadt los gewesen ist, wenn nicht, ja wenn nicht einer der Angreifer vergessen hätte, seinen Combat Meter zu tragen. Normal gibt es bei so etwas zwei Möglichkeiten: derjenige liegt entweder direkt beim ersten Treffer, damit er es lernt - oder man wiederholt gnädigerweise den ganzen Angriff von vorne. Man einigte sich auf Letzteres.

Nun ist Rollenspiel an sich ein dynamischer Prozess, und gerade abends gehen häufig viele Spieler in recht kurzer Zeit online, so auch hier - die Stadt füllte sich deswegen. Das nahmen die Black Sharks dann als Grund, den Angriff abzublasen, um irgendwann später mal wiederzukommen. Einerseits zeigt das natürlich viel über ihre Spielweise und die Nichtkonsequenz ihres Handelns, immerhin aber kann man mit ihnen reden, aber hätten sie einen Arsch in der Hose, hätten sie es so oder so durchgezogen, aber nein, man wollte wohl unbedingt gewinnen. Andererseits blieb so der Gruppe erstmal ein von außen aufgezwungenes RP für eine gewisse Zeit erspart, was auch nicht schlecht ist. Bis zum nächsten Mal dann eben…

I recently did some testings about combat in Second Life. The viewer, as you can see, is a really complex beast of software and allows quite many tweakings to optimize the graphics settings for combat - and turns the view from pretty to really unrealistic. But this unrealistic few gives the fighters, who are using it, quite some advantages. Even more so, you are not able to detect it if someone uses that kind of view.

The first video shows a normal view, graphics settings to “high”, on the sim named Ivalo from the ship to the city gates. It is quite a beautiful sim, with a big forest and nice surroundings, as you can see for yourself:

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Beautiful, isn’t it? The second video shows the same way, but all graphics settings set to low, range is still 128m, but the rending of alpha textures and other stuff is also turned off. That’s the kind of setting which many fighters in Second Life prefer to squeeze more frames per seconds out of their client. As you can see, it is quite different, and even more important, since all trees are almost turned off that way, you are able to see the city walls and the outlook post, giving you an unfair advantage.

Ich habe gerade ein wenig mit dem Client von Wegame herumgespielt, das ist mal eine nette Sache. Er zeichnet unter Windows völlig kostenlos Videos auf, die man danach beliebig kodieren und bearbeiten kann, was braucht man mehr, um Youtube mit Second Life Videos zu füttern.

Mir war mal danach, ein wenig die Geschwindigkeit zu testen, mit denen unterschiedliche Viewer dieselbe Sim rezzen. Mein Wahl fiel dabei auf die Sim “Stiletto Moody Bare”, da es dort sehr viele Sculpties gibt und auch ansonsten der Viewer naturgemäß dort ordentlich zu tun hat. Die Einstellungen waren dabei in allen Viewern in der Grafik auf “Hoch”, die Sichtweite auf 96 m dabei beschränkt und als Bandbreite in jedem Viewer 1.000 kbit/s eingetragen. Da als CPU hier ein Quadcore von Intel unter Windows 7 sein Werk tut, wurde zudem noch “Run Multiple Threads” aktiviert. Damit man es einigermaßen vergleichbar ist, wurde vor jedem Viewerstart der Cache gelöscht, der Avatar auf einer anderen Sim eingeloggt, dann zu der Testsim teleportiert und in etwa eine Minute direkt nach dem Teleport dorthin aufgezeichnet.

Momentan macht bei vielen Second Life Bewohnern, die Geschäfte und/oder Sims betreiben, vermehrt ein Schlagwort verheißungsvoll die Runde: Opensim. Opensim wird dabei als alles Mögliche und auch Unmögliche angesehen, die Gründe, warum sich langjährige Residents dabei vermehrt dort aufhalten, sind extrem unterschiedlich und reichen von “Ich will kostengünstiger an Land ran” über “Ich will dort einfach Geld verdienen” bis zu “Ich will mich endlich aus den Klauen der Lindens befreien und verdammt noch mal alles selbst unter Kontrolle haben.”

Die Fragen, die sich mir dabei stellten, sind erst mal diese: was ist Opensim eigentlich genau, was macht Opensim für diese Mitmenschen interessant und was nicht sowie hält das alles einer kritischen Überprüfung stand?

Was ist Opensim?

Opensim ist ein kostenlos verfügbar und im Quellcode offener, von Linden Lab unabhängig entwickelter Nachbau der internen Infrastruktur von Second Life. Oder einfacher ausgedrückt: wenn der Second Life Viewer mit einem Webbrowser verglichen wird, dann ist Opensim ein für jedermann kostenlos erhältlicher Webserver. Mehr noch, da Opensim unter einer sehr liberalen BSD-Lizenz entwickelt wird, darf jeder auch den Quellcode nach Belieben modifzieren und für alle möglichen, kommerziellen Produkte einsetzen, wenn er mag.

One thing that’s always been a quite controversial topic in SL is the creation and usage of megaprims. SL itself imposes a limitation on the physical size of any prim, which is 10x10x10 m at maximum.

Due to programming gaps and errors though there’ve been people around in the past, which created found ways to overcome that limitation and created bigger prims than that. Since you are unable to create those prims by normal means, those have been sold or just been given away in big packages for free and still are. In the times of Havok I being the physics engine running all over the grid one of the main argument against the usage of megaprims was that it creates unnecessary lags.

Anyway, many people just didn’t believed that or cared at all and used them anyways. With Havok IV in use now, those issues about megaprims causing lag are clearly outdated say Linden Lab itself. Also already around two years ago Andrew Linden hinted they might be allowing the free creation of those prims in the future.

One of the things you should really be aware about role play is that it can be quite time consuming. In better sims there is always something going on, you can try hard to achieve perfection in it, you can study a lot, talk a lot and so on. This can lend to the fact that some people are just going to be in the RP sims only for most of their time, neglecting their friends and being there for months.

Then, when the RP phase is over, they need to really start again, since they neglected so many old friends and quite some of them may have removed them from their friends list. So, take the advise, while RP is fun and allright, don’t let it become your number one priority, if you haven’t started in such a sim directly. You might hurt some people in the process, badly.

One of the toughest and most asked questions around is, if Gor is quite discriminating against women or not. Many just find the whole setup and role play quite disgusting because of the use of slaves, pleasure slaves, their punishments and the role women at whole play in that kind of medieval society.

So, how to approach that? Well, first let us take a look at some facts of Gor:

• John Norman believes in a natural order and thinks that living against that causes quite some trouble. So, this includes that males are being dominant, and women, while most of them are free, either need to choose between freedom or sexual fulfillment as a woman. Some people quite like the idea of such a natural order, because they think, all have there well met place in society, then, and that living against this order is the reason for many today’s troubles in society at all.
• There are many slaves around, used for whatever kinds, but both male and female are possible.
• Although there are free women, they are highly appreciated and such, their place in society is of course more hurdlesome than that of free men. They have to wear veils and such and finding a partner is not easy, for them, while though they may use kajirii.
• There are severe punishments, of course, against all kinds bad stuff, but most times it seems that women are often being punished more severe than most men are.
• There are no female warriors on Gor according to the author himself, John Norman.
• Most gamers are going to tell you, when that topic is being raised, that all women on Gor are not stronger than a 12 years old - but of course, then again, a Panther can run around pulling a hard wagon with quite much stuff on it, go figure.

Well, there might be for sure other stuff, but it might give you an idea. The picture of the woman in Gor is quite clear, also that of the man. Gor is a man’s world.

Yesterday M Linden aka Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linde Lab, published an open letter to the community, in which he heralded the nice community base of this world, their devotion and layed out the future plans of Linden Lab for the Open Spaces sims.

In short: no change at all, all he did was just pulling out a bunch of nice word, putting the same old plans in a nice looking, neater soundng package and that’s it. The tier change is coming as planned, also in the same amount in the end, it is just happening in two steps instead of one and that’s all. Wonder when the next protests are going to show up…

One quite frequent discussion on all Gorean groups and channels in Second Life is, if there is such a thing like one true Gorean role play or not. Normally the people then take two main stances.

1. There are the people who want to play as according to the books in Second Life as possible and dislike so called onlineisms. An onlineism is something, that is simple not there in the books, but became quite common in certain sims of Second Life.
   Examples for it are: there is a common phrase in the book in the region of Torvaldsland called Jarl, which is the way to adress a leader of them instead of Ubar. Bondsmaids address all free men as Jarl, but in the books there is no such phrase as Jarla to greet free women, but this is something that is quite common on certain sims in Second Life, so this is a good example. The people who dislike onlineisms don’t ust this phrase at all.
   Another example are female warriors. There is no such thing in the books, even the author itself stated there is no such thing on Gor, but on quite some Gorean sims in Second Life there are indeed female warriors. So the people who really play by the books don’t acknowledge them at all as being valid.
2. The other party of people is the crowd, which takes the stance, that while the books are depicting the daily life of the planet Gor, they are only able to depict small aspects of the whole culture at all, and, while not really mentioned in the books, quite some stuff is still possible to be there in the whole setting and most likely is there, if you come to think about it, and therefore should be considered a possible part of Gorean role play even while not being mentioned in the books at all.
   Those are the people, who don’t bother using onlineisms then like “Jarla”, perhaps also female warriors and such.

So these are the two main parties, which constantly discuss on Second Life about what real Gorean role play should be or not, what in it might be or not, sometimes also might engagne in flame wars. And because of this fact alone already, there is not just only one true Gorean role play, but every sim or alliance of sims makes up their own rules about what they consider valid role play or not. So what you get in reality in Second Life is quite a broad range about what real Gorean role play is about and what not, and coming with that, big, different rule sets.

Many people are now starting to whine about devaluing their land investments in SL, again. They always tend to do that, e.g. when LL adds land too fast, lowers tier feeds, upfront fees and does other stuff.

Just get one thing into your big skull: owning land in Second Life is not about getting a value. Land is made by the Lindens, as they see fit, you are on their whim there, always, and there is nothing yet to change this. Take it or leave it, but don’t always whine about that. Real estate owners with a good business approach should know better than that.