Saturday, April 19, 2008
I'm putting this here because Gossip Girl has a not insignificant presence in Second Life (see their sims here). I don't watch the show, but I must admit their new real-life ad campaign is very eye-catching.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
I've released a major update to Zingo, renaming it to Take it Easy.
I liked the name Zingo, but so did someone else. When I first made the game, someone else made a game and called it Zyngo, and it's lead to no small amount of confusion. So I've changed the name to Take it Easy, which is the name of the original game it's based off of.
At the same time, I've completely reworked all the scripting. The new game is much more efficient, in both script time and prim counts. The interface is less confusing, and I've split the game up into different editions. The Head-to-Head Edition is a table format, allowing two players to sit across from each other as they play. The Multiplayer Edition gives each player a HUD, so you can have as many people playing as you can fit in your sim!
Plus, I've added Puzzle Mode, which gives a completely different feel to the game. Instead of one at a time, players get all the tiles at once, and try to find the best arrangement within the time limit. I've had a lot of positive response to this in playtesting.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
I've released a bugfix for Frootcake, now at version 1.12. This fixes a money problem where the game would pay people even when in Free Play mode. Sorry about that. This doesn't affect you if you have the Personal, free-play-only license. If you have the Commercial license but you set the game to Free Play, you will want to get this update.
To upgrade your Frootcake, just delete your old game, and use your remote to deliver the latest version.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Traffic bots are a problem in Second Life that many people are talking about but nobody has really done anything about. One problem is it's hard to estimate exactly how big the problem is.
There are two big classes of bots. One, shown above, is a traffic bot. It's designed just to game the traffic statistics. You can put 30 or 40 of these 500m above your shop, and bam! you've got great traffic! Linden Lab now claims that traffic doesn't affect the new search rankings as much as it used to, so tactics like this aren't worth very much. But the traffic rankings still exist in the old search results, and they do have some effect in the new, so many people still resort to tricks like this.
Another bot is the camping bot. These exist to fill camping chairs. One person can run 30 bots on one machine, and camp in 30 locations at once, collecting 30 times as much money as a mere human. Again, camping is related to traffic, and for the same reasons above shouldn't be such a big deal -- but camping chairs still exist, and thus so do the bots.
User concurrency has been hovering around 65k these days, and that seems to be a hard limit. Any more users and the asset server collapses and transactions fail. So the real question is, how many of those users are bots, taking up resources the real people might otherwise have?
I have an idea for an experiment. Let's leave Second Life running, but close logins for an extended time -- say, twelve hours or so. Also, let's make it so that any time you try to teleport, you get logged out. After a while, all the real users will leave the grid, and the only accounts left will be avatars who just sit there, doing nothing at all. In other words, the bots.
Nobody would seriously suggest doing this experiment intentionally, but today it looks like Linden Lab has done it for me. Here's a chart of logins over the past 24 hours, courtesy of
Tatuero Nino:
It looks like there's about ten thousand bots on the grid, give or take a few.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The last Frootcake tournament was a blast, so the people at Sinful Sinners are doing it again, bigger and better this time!
There's over L$2000 in prizes this time, and the tournament lasts for one whole week. Same rules as last time: you can play as many times as you want. Each play earns you points on the tournament board (unless you come in last!). At the end of the week, the top three places will get prizes:
- First place, $1250
- Second place, $500
- Third place, $350
You can play any time during the week. Just get three people and head to
Sinful Sinners. If you need a third player, IM NonSmokerGirl Tulip who is running the tournament.
The tournament starts Monday March 24 6pm, and runs for one week.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Sinful Sinners is hosting a Frootcake tournament that will run for two days starting 6PM Monday March 10th.
The tournament will be run using the "Local Franchise" method on the scoreboard. At the start, the high score totals will be reset. Then, over the next 48 hours, anyone can play at any time on the Sinful Sinners Frootcake table, and each game will add to your score. You get points based on how well you play in each game. The more games you play (and win), the more points you get. At the end of the event, the top three players as listed on the board will win prizes.
- First Place $1000
- Second Place $500
- Third Place $250
So come on down to
Sinful Sinners and play a game or two.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
I've just released version 1.11 of En Garde!
This is a bugfix release. It fixes a problem with the new timer in the HUD, and a couple minor issues. It does require a new HUD to play, but that is included in the game.
Since the only thing that's changed is the game, the easiest way to upgrade is to use your remote. Wear your remote and say "/8 deliver game". The latest version of the game will be set to you. Just delete your old game and rez the new one. If you've set custom textures you will need to redo those on the new game.
Traffic bots are a problem in Second Life that many people are talking about but nobody has really done anything about. One problem is it's hard to estimate exactly how big the problem is.
Sinful Sinners is hosting a Frootcake tournament that will run for two days starting 6PM Monday March 10th.
