Linda Kellie’s Free Virtual Goods Kinda Sorta Maybe Going Offline

  By RamenJunkie | May 17, 2013 - 8:00 pm | OpenSIM, Second Life
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ssc3 After what I guess is some sort of virtual world drama I am not aware of, Linda Kellie, maker of loads of free goods, is removing herself from the internet.  That’s more or less the best way to put it.  Maybe she has a different 1st life persona going on line, maybe not, it doesn’t really matter, the point is, that she is sinking all of her websites and such tomorrow (Saturday, 5/18) at midnight. 

This is kind of a blow for the OpenSIM community as she has created a boatload of stuff and gives it all away free.  Full sims loaded with avatar parts and clothes.  All available to download and do with as you please.  So her site is going away, maybe.  There is something about someone called ZetaMex buying it out and keeping it alive over on Hypergrid Business.  I don’t know any details on that, I don’t know how that will work.

There are also several people downloading it all to host an archive copy of it as well (the above mentioned Hypergrid Business site being one.  This is good because the site itself seems to be having a bit of an issue with downloads.  I’ve had several fail repeatedly after trying to download from two different locations.  I imagine the site is a bit hammered at the moment. 

Anyway, if you’re looking to pick up a few freebie items before they go offline, feel free to do so here, or you could always wait and get them from a mirror.  There are of course, no guarantees of anything once the site is gone.  Also, you may end up where the archives are just full OARs or IARs, which are less easy to upload on a one by one basis.  A lot of the individual freebies are in the complete region OARs, so it’s easier for archivists to just download one file.

As for Linda Kellie, I have never met or interacted with her that I know of or remember, so I can’t really speak for any of whatever may be going on in her life.

The Simulator is the Easy Part…

  By RamenJunkie | May 16, 2013 - 5:30 pm | OpenSIM
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I’ve been using Sim On a Stick instead of regular OpenSIM as a sandbox for a while.  It’s simple to run and set up and does what I need it to do.  It’s also easy to backup by just copying the files from my flash drive and easier to build and destroy “scratch worlds”.  I’m starting to get to a point where I want to do a bit more though which means creating a standard OpenSIM instance that will be always on.  Always on is easy, I have a spare machine with decent specs already running headless in my office for my Minecraft server.  I’m a bit worried about running both OpenSIM and Minecraft on the same machine at once because I have had performance issues in the past doing this.  The current server is considerably more powerful than the machines I used to use though so it should be good.  A server like this with low user load (one user on OpenSIM and maybe 3 or 4 sometimes on Minecraft) doesn’t really need much to run.  The processing need is on the user end for graphics.  The server on the back end is just a bunch of text scrolling by in a window.

ScreenShot008

Seriously, it’s boring on the back end.

It’s also easy to set up.  Download a file, drop it in a directory, run the executable.  Yeah, there is a little configuration to be done on it but it’s nothing amazingly difficult.

The problem is with all of the things surrounding the server.  In the case of OpenSIM, the first hurdle came with MySQL, the database which also runs in the background to manage assets.  I’m not sure exactly where the problem came in but essentially, it would not run after the initial install, or when it did run I kept getting authorization errors.  This was eventually solved with Oracle’s Admin Password reset, but it’s not a real elegant solution nor should it be necessary on a fresh install.  The only thing I can think of is that MySQL was already installed in the past when I did a Sim On a Stick install, even though that is supposed to be a self contained ball of programs and it really shouldn’t affect anything.

The next issue is with firewalls and ports and IPs.  It doesn’t seem to be an uncommon problem with OpenSIM.  I’ve pretty much decided this will not be accessible from outside the house, though I had hoped to make it publicly available on a limited basis.  If anything so I could log in remotely.

A quick bit of schooling on how the data flows.  A client, from the outside, points to a DYNDNS domain name I have which points to my home IP address.  This is simple.  When it gets to my house, it hits my router’s firewall, which will reject the traffic unless I open up the appropriate ports.  That’s not too hard either, I do all sorts of port forwarding for other tasks and have for years.  So I forward the necessary ports from the firewall to the internal machine, which has it’s own internal static IP.  The machine also has it’s own firewall, which I also have to open the ports on, which I’ve done.

And it still doesn’t work.  I’ve opened the path but something is being rejected somewhere.  Depending on how I configure the OpenSIM files I either get an httplisten time out and get nowhere or I get a time out on the Region Handshake.  It’s annoying.

There all sorts of points of failure here all of which I have eliminated at one point in an attempt to get things running.  The two firewalls are the main issue, though disabling the server firewall and telling the router to place the server in the DMZ (essentially, put this machine outside the firewall exposed tot he world), still didn’t work.

I’m sure I’ll figure it out at some point, I’d be happy if I could just access it from within the internal network but I’m not having any luck with that either.  I know it can be done because I did it a few years ago with a similar set up.

It’s That Thing I Made in Cloud Party!

  By RamenJunkie | May 15, 2013 - 10:00 pm | Cloud Party
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Cloud Party had this community build thing recently.  It was “Pirate themed”.  I had a bit so I jumped on.  I have not really built anything in Cloud Party so I had to get familiar with how things work there.

I also had no idea what to build that was pirate-ey.  So I made a little crappy shack on stilts near the water.

A few days later, Cloud party threw a few screen shots from the event up online.

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Oh hey, I recognize that boat and the island there in the background and… oh hey, there’s my little crummy hut!

Later they posted another one.

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Kind of makes me proud.  I guess…?

123D Catch in OpenSIM

  By RamenJunkie | March 18, 2013 - 1:55 am | OpenSIM, Second Life
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So as I promised myself i would, I gave 123D Catch a second go.  This time I took twice as many photos (58), with much more lighting, and using my SLR.  i even let it upload the large uncompressed images even though it was like 600+ megs of data.  After hours of uploading and crunching, then having to redownload it (for some reason), I had a model.

The subject I used this round was a HotWheels Nissan Skyline.

That one there.  The photos may actually still be a little too dark.  Maybe next try I’ll take something outside.  I decided to try the Skyline because it’s more or less a box.  Shockwave had overlapping surfaces and hoses and junk, the car has none of that.    Anyway, sometime later, I ended up with this model…

It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than Shockwave.  At least it works on all sides, though irritatingly, it still has the white fringe around it from the background, despite that I tried to wrap the photos around to the bottom.

123D Catch can export this to a .obj file, which I can open in blender and convert to .DAE.  The biggest issue (no pun intended) was that the object is huge.  Anything else I’ve use Blender for that was “about the right scale” took up maybe one grid of the default Blender grid.  This sucker filled the default Blender grid and stuck out all over the place above and below.  That is probably kind of meaningless described but trust me, it was huge.  When I imported it into OpenSIM it was huge as well and needed scaled down.  Also I have not gotten a handle on “what good” but Firestorm listed it as having 51000 triangles, which seems a bit obscenely high.

Anyway, here is the final result with texture.  I shoved the white junk down under the ground for now.

The Potential of 123D

  By RamenJunkie | March 15, 2013 - 1:58 pm | OpenSIM, Second Life
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I recently discovered a new and interesting tool from Autodesk called 123D.  Autodesk, at least in my mind, having an Engineering background, is most synonymous with AutoCAD.  Also, to a lesser extent a program called Autodesk inventor.  I’ve used both of these programs quite a bit, I’m actually pretty awesome at doing CAD work.

Autodesk makes  few other programs though, often centered around drawing or 3D work.  This tool, 123D, is really interesting though.  Basically, you take a whole mess of photos of something from a variety of angles, then feed them into 123D and it will crunch the photos together into a 3D model.

It’s basically 3D scanning.

I did a quick test run with it using Shockwave here who was sitting under my monitor.  I wanted something that was relatively static and small.  The result wasn’t quite as great as I’d hoped but it was still really neat and has a lot of potential.

It doesn’t look like much, but it’s a 3D shape.  You can spin it around and the surfaces sticking out you’d expect to be 3D are all 3D (head, legs, fist, etc).

I think a lot of my problem is that I needed to light the base figure better.  The different lightness and darkness seems to have confused it a bit.  The software also completely failed to give the model a backside, instead opting to include the white background as part of the model.

I used my phone to take the photos too, which may have had some effect, next try I’ll use my SLR.

The obvious potential here though is to make a 3D scan and drop the model into OpenSIM or Second Life.  I have not tried it yet to see how well it would work but 123D does let you export to a .obj file.  SL and OS do not support .obj natively but I already know I can convert a .obj file into a .dae file using Blender and it will work.  I’ve been doing it while experimenting with some ripped World of Warcraft content recently.  I’ve already jumped that hurdle.

I may try it with something simpler next time, like maybe a coffee mug.

World of Warcraft – 11 – The End…

  By RamenJunkie | February 22, 2013 - 6:00 pm | World of Warcraft
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You Can't Tell Here but I'm wearing a bunch of Transmogged PVP Gear... So I’m done.

Done with World of Warcraft.

Maybe I’ll come back, probably, but for the moment, I’m just done.  It’s just not fun anymore, that’s all there is to it.  I enjoyed it immensely but I just can’t find myself enjoying it.  I log on and it’s just a chore. 

I guess I just don’t enjoy “grinding”.  I was having a ton of fun when i was running around the world doing quests and getting some story, but then I made it to Level 90, and I did some things in Pandaria, and then it got dull, and now I’m done.  There are still quests to be done but it seems silly to do them again on my level 90.  I could start over but got what a pain that is, it took me months to get where I am now.  I could keep going, there are new and exciting patches coming and new content and loads of Panda stuff I have not yet done but i just don’t want to.

The “end game” just sucks.

I log in, I run around doing the same dozen or so daily Pandarian quests, then I go lose a bunch of PVP rounds while being screamed at for being a “noob” because I don’t spend 20 hours a day perfecting my characrer, and it just sucks.   I did a few raids with my guild but even that is awful.  The guild is nice people, but after dying against the same boss 30 times over the course of 3 hours, it’s time to give up and move on for a while.  That’s not fun, it’s tedious, and stupid.  I think that’s part of my dislike as well.  All of the end game is about grinding out better gear from dungeons and raids and PVP.  It’s all doing the same thing over and over to heard Honor of Valor points or to hope that one good item drops from a boss, then hope you win the roll from a group of folks.  These activities are all intense and difficult.  The early dungeons consist of 5 people steamrolling through waves of monsters.  The later stuff is 5-10 people pounding on “monster trash” for hours that, trash that is so strong it could wipe every dungeon you played before this.

It’s just boring.

I just don’t have the time or care for this.  Besides, this obsession is killing all of my other interests and it needs to stop.  It’s a good game, I just started to let it get too much of me and I just got tired of it.

Making Patterns

  By RamenJunkie | December 24, 2012 - 4:36 pm | Other Virtual Worlds
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2012-10-05_00001 After many years being known only as the creators of Second Life, Linden Lab has started expanding out into other territories of… well, games, I guess.  Whether or not second Life is a game has always been a case of debate.  Their two latest ventures, Patterns, and Creatorverse are both questionably not games as well.  Going to their webpage lists “Linden Lab, Makers of Creative Spaces”, which is probably an appropriate way to describe it.

When looking at Patterns, it’s pretty much impossible not to think Minecraft.  If you told me that Minecraft wasn’t at least a partial inspiration for this game, I’d call you a liar.  I have no proof of course, but the roots are clearly there.  It’s not a clone by any means, but the basic element of gather resources and build with them is unmistakably present. 

2012-10-05_00006 Having actually had the chance to play Patterns, the best initial impression is… there is certainly some work to be done.  the currently available version, is the “Genesis” version, aka, the Alpha/Beta release.  Possibly the main issue to touch on is the limited world size, though Linden Lab has commented that this is in the works.  There is also a lack of multiplayer support.  These are probably both key elements to winning over that massive Minecraft audience.

Probably the biggest issue, as well as the best feature differentiating it from Minecraft, is the geometric shapes.  Unlike Minecraft, everything is not limited to cube shapes.  This makes for the possibility of amazing creations to be made, well beyond Minecraft’s capability.  Except that the shapes make things hard to place.  A square won’t stick to a triangle, so building can get frustrating, especially if you’re trying to cross a gap and you can’t get the ends to line up for support because the shapes don’t match.  It can be a bit of a frustration for people who are into purely creative outlets.

2012-10-05_00009 Those hard to place bridge supports are needed though.  The other main advantage Patterns has over Minecraft is it’s physics.  Hell, it’s better than Second Life in this regard, though my speculation is that SL’s lack of real physics is there to help curb the potential griefing that would happen.  Anyway if you just start building a bridge out across a chasm, eventually, it will break off if left unsupported.  This can be irritating at first, as you try to build and not die, or build and not have your structure collapse on itself.  It can also be fun.  It’s pretty great to take one of the built in pyramid structures and yank the bottom out of it so it caves in on itself.

It’s a neat start to something that could be interesting.  I have not had a chance to play it as much as I’d like to, it doesn’t run great on my Laptop and World of Warcraft has been a distraction for a while now from other games.  I just hope that Linden Lab can iterate on it fast enough to keep it from falling into obscurity. 

Need for Speed World – Additional Notes…

  By RamenJunkie | November 7, 2012 - 6:25 am | Other Virtual Worlds
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nfsw014 So, I wanted to discuss NFS World a bit more.  Some of this is kind of a retread, but I want to focus a bit more on the major issue of this game.  Don’t mistake what I’m saying, I am not against the idea of Micro Transactions.  I’ve spent plenty on Second Life and Team Fortress 2.  In the Hundreds of dollars likely on each.  My issue is with the pricing model of Need for Speed World itself.  I have played this enough that I decided I needed some additional Speed Boost Points, aside from the “free” ones I got recently.  i set about to ensure I got a decent value for little money.

Here’s a spreadsheet comparing Speed Boost options.  I’ll update it if I find any other sources.  The real take away is, don’t buy directly from the Need For Speed World Website.  Despite the name, you can activate more than one Starter Pack per account.  All of the starter pack include free additional cars as well (a bit more on this in a bit).  There is some bonus cars available via the official source but the value is so much lower it’s really not worth bothering.  Keep in mind, for a decent car, you’re looking at anywhere from 3000-6000 Speed Boost cost in game, not including any upgrades, vanity plates, or the extra car slot you may or may not need.

I ended up using the Bronze pack, which got me three cars and 3500 Boost for ten dollars.

On a related note.  When I got the Origin starter pack, it too included several free cars, but they never seemed to show up.  Since I hadn’t paid for the thing in the first place, and I mostly just wanted the Boost Points to buy my Nissan Skyline super car, I didn’t really look much into it.  The Skyline is getting a little old though so I kind of want some of the free cars to try out.  I discovered that these cars aren’t just given to you, you have to “buy” them in the car dealer for $0.  This means browsing to the model and, often, picking the proper color pallet that matches the free option.  I’m ok with this, It just needs to be made more clear.  A Google search suggests that this is a common issue people have.

nfsw018 Which brings up why I wanted the Boost Points to start with.  Actually, I originally wanted a slick Crown Victoria cop car to cruise around in, but I ended up short because I instead bought a Treasure Hunt vehicle.  The easy way to get upgrade parts is to do the daily Treasure Hunt.  Drive around and collect 15 diamonds and get a free item.  The catch is, the rewards only get good if you do it for several days consecutively.  This isn’t real hard, I’m pretty systematic about running the streets and finding things, but it still takes 15 or 20 minutes to do, time I could be spending doing actual races.   The Treasure Hunt car makes the diamonds show up on the map.  i did my first run with this feature, and it took less than 5 minutes to collect them all up.  Much much better.

Which leads me to my final point, about the problems of this game and how it could be more popular.  Everything costs too much.  Period.  The Boost Points cost too much, the in game cars, both Speed Boost costs and in game costs are too high, and there are too many upgrades which are only real world money upgrades, ie “Pay to Win” crap.  What it boils down to is, they are just trying to get too much from too many angles.  If they focused their real profit margins on things like the Treasure Hunt cars, which make the daily runs much faster, and things like the extra Garage Slots, which aren’t too bad on price really.  The whole point of wanting to play the game is having more cars to show off, and running races.  There are only maybe a dozen or so different races in the entire game (maybe I need to level up and unlock some or something).  There also isn’t much incentive to collect cars when they are too damn expensive to buy and trick out.  Make the cars cheap enough to be an impulse buy, charge for garage slots so people will just say “oh hey, it’s only a couple bucks”, etc.  Basically, focus on the idea of MICRO transactions, not transactions that cost as much as an entire game from another outlet.  It’s just chasing off the potential audience.

ArcEmu, or Roll Your own WoW Server

  By RamenJunkie | November 1, 2012 - 3:11 am | World of Warcraft
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WoWScrnShot_103112_211036I went through the hoops recently of getting ArcEmu up and running.  This is a piece of software which allows you to host your own World of Warcraft Server.  Like Second Life and OpenSIM, and Minecraft, and pretty much anything else I tend to get into, I wanted to give it a shot to “do it myself”.

There is a pretty straight forward set by step tutorial provided on the ArcEmu website which is well written and works well.  A couple of notes that I may look into adding to the Wiki where I had some minor hang ups…

  • You have to run Visual Studio and CMake in Admin Mode or it can’t create the directories needed for the output.
  • The current free Visual Studio Express is 2012.  This may work if you know what you’re doing but CMake doesn’t seem to recognize it, so you’ll want to dig down on the Microsoft site for VS 2010, which, as of now, is still available.
  • DBC Extraction does not work on the current (Mists of Pandaria) WoW version.  I fixed this by doing a search for the version listed on the ArcEmu homepage (3.3.5a)
  • I used the Land of Elves world files, mostly because it was on the top of the list and had a spiffy banner.
  • My ultimate main issue came with realms.conf.  I kept getting “IP Not allowed”. from the default file, I set the IPs of Realm 1, 2, and 3, in order as “127.0.0.1:8129”, “<Machine IP>.8129″, and “localhost:8129”.  I believe this is what ultimately fixed the issue I was getting of “Server Connection from 192.168.1.XX:2030 DENIED, not an allowed ip”.

WoWScrnShot_103112_131342The real slowdown was all of the huge downloads I had to make to get this together.  First there was ArcEmu itself.  Then Visual Studio 2010.  Next I had to get the 3.3.5a WoW off of a Torrent which was 16 gigs all it’s own.  Then the Land of Elves world files needed downloaded.  There were also long delays extracting and building the collision files.

I have literally been working on this off and on for like a week.

One side note as well, you’ll want to keep that 3.3.5a WoW download if you get it.  It will become your new Game client.  You’ll have to edit the Data\enUSrealmlist.wtf file of this Client to point to your local machine’s LAN IP with no port (that’s how mine worked anyway).

Once it all works, it’s a simple matter to run Logon.exe then World.exe.

I recommend getting the ArcGM plug in though.  The initial spawn seems to be some custom in world GM island, and the Hearthstone says Wherever but it takes you back to GM island.  Also, having the GM panel lets you putz with free items and skills.

WoWScrnShot_103112_211152How’s the experience though? Its kind of dull actually.  Maybe I’m “Doing it Wrong” but the enemies don’t seem to react right, or at all, and it’s pretty lonely and empty.  Even if you’re not super social in the real WoW, it’s nice to see some people wandering around the world from time to time.

Its also pre Cataclysm, which in my case makes for a very confusing experience.  Many places look WAAAY different and locations of certain NPCs are different. 

I set out to have some fun slaughtering people at Stormwind but I couldn’t figure out how to God Mode my damage to the 100k range and the enemies didn’t fight back anyway.  Kind of disappointing.

This definitely isn’t a replacement for real World of Warcraft, but it was kind of a fun little exercise in futility.  Also, I can take the chance to wander around a pre Cataclysm world for a while, and check out how the world used to look.

World of Warcraft – 10 – Damnation

  By RamenJunkie | October 28, 2012 - 1:38 pm | World of Warcraft
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ScreenShot097 So, Death Knights.

Death Knights are a little odd in how they work.  Unlike every other class, you cannot create a Death Knight until level 55.  I’m not real sure why this is exactly, I guess it makes slightly more sense for a harbinger of doom to be an experienced powerful warrior, not some crummy level 1 nobody.  Also, according to the plot, Death Knights seem to be fallen or corrupted warriors, so maybe the idea is, you would “recreate” your character as a Death Knight.  As a Death Knight, you work for the Lich King Arthas.  This pleases me some because of all of the Warcraft Lore previous to playing WoW, Arthas is the only name I immediately remember.  I THINK I recall Sylvanas Windrunner, leader of the undead, but Arthas I remember for sure.  I get the impression he’s not exactly the main baddie of the world anymore.  That is some huge Dragon or something. 

Maybe.

I’m not real sure of the over arching narrative yet actually.  It doesn’t even really seem to be Horde vs Alliance.

I actually really like this model.  I really wish that you could just assign any new character a starting level below your highest character.  Maybe do it in levels of 5 so it’s easier to sort out what starting equipment is needed.  You get some spottiness with how to start their questing from there, except chances are, you’ve already done the lower quests anyway, so the player would just dump in and start picking up yellow !s.

Dark Knight is an interesting class to play.  You are a pretty bad ass Melee class, but you also get a host of magical skills to throw around as well.  It’s designed to be a combination class like this of course.  Probably the closest class would be a Paladin, except the Paladin spreads buffs and heals with magic while a Dark Knight spreads diseases and negative effects.  At least that the impression I’ve gotten.

WoWScrnShot_101512_084444Also, it’s kind of curious how things pan out for the starting zone, as you essentially start out against everyone, Alliance and Horde.  This would sort of make it difficult to travel the world for sure.  Finding quests could be tricky as well.  I actually almost thought maybe Death Knights simply didn’t progress beyond this little mini story line they get for their starting zone, except I’ve seen DKs wandering the world.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but you essentially fall out of favor with the Lich King and set out into the world.

There are some nice little touches attached to this though.  As I first entered Orgrimmer, NPCs were jeering me as I walked past.  The whole “Piss off, you killed people and we hate you still” mindset.  It’s neat.  I kind of wonder if the pseudo redemption of your character is ever expanded on more.  There are touches in the starting zone, I met with a non corrupted Tauren who urged me to head to Thunder Bluffs for example.

I’m still preferring my main character, but I plan to revisit the world through this Death Knight Tauren at some point.  Oh yes, on Taurens.  I’ve noticed that it’spretty much a requirement that Tauren names have to be a play on Cows, somehow, so I named my dark Tauren, Angus Black, which is both Cowish and Dark Knightish.