DIY: Digital trash

Lamprecht & Moderegger sign for digital dump, New Scientist

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Most of us have had to clean files off that overloaded hard drive eventually: at least this was true before the days of terabyte drives. But inventory in an MMORPG or a virtual world like Second Life is a different story. In-game inventory space disappears fast; in Second Life carrying around 14,000 items (at last count) can slow you down. And abandoned builds can be pretty unsightly.

There are archeologists that sift through digital trash to learn about the players, according to the New Scientist. It's a fascinating article, well worth the read. One observation that struck me is

Eventually, Lamprecht and Moderegger hit on the idea of getting the rubbish to decay... 

Suddenly the [digital] dump took on a new light. “It was hard to see things disappear; it was like living with daily loss,” says Lamprecht. Some objects were intricate, things people had put care into making. Many were no more than a few months old. “When is a digital object ready to die?” she asks. “It doesn’t look chipped, it doesn’t become spoiled, it doesn’t start to smell bad.”

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Dumpster Drive logo

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Taking the idea of digital trash dumps a step further, there's Dumpster Drive: Exchange Your Digital Trash with Strangers, which operates on the premise that one person's trash may be another person's treasure. Currently it's only available for Mac OSX 10.6+; you can learn more about the application and download it at the Dumpster Drive site. There are some thoughtful comments about it at PCWorld.

If you're really serious about cleaning up your machine, here are 5 tactics for dumping digital trash, proposed by a study at Johns Hopkins University. The study itself is in PDF format and can be found at the Cornell University Library e-print archive. As an aside, I'll bet Google and other portals like Flickr and Tumblr have a lot of digital trash to deal with.


-- Marge

DIY: Try a new game in an Improbable world

Worlds Adrift, Bossa Studios

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Currently, one of the major drawbacks in virtual worlds like Second Life, Landmark Game, and most MMOs is lag. If the program is trying to render too much in-world stuff or too many players are in one area at a time, a user experiences slower player input to game reaction times. Sometimes this is the result of the equipment the user is using, sometimes its caused by latency.

Some fellows at Cambridge University are developing a new type of engine that may change the nature of MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). This is how they describe their work:

Improbable is developing an operating environment that makes building simulated worlds possible. Worlds which can be run in real time, simulating the behaviours and interactions of millions of entities. Spaces with their own rules and properties that a multitude of people can simultaneously change, explore and visualise in as many different ways as developers can imagine.

Simulated worlds provide unique insight to those asking questions of complex systems. As well as enabling completely new experiences in gaming, simulated worlds can solve significant problems in areas as diverse as defence, energy, city efficiency, health, and finance.

Gamemaker Bossa Studios is working on a project based on this engine called Worlds Adrift. The folks at Bossa Studios want us to be "a part of the development and let us know what you think." You can sign up by entering your email address at the site. Here's one of their latest videos.

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There is a Worlds Adrift channel on YouTube. If you like your information filtered and expanded, keep an eye out for Rock, Paper, Shotgun's always interesting reports.

News of Improbable and Worlds Adrift was first caught by me at New World Notes.

-- Marge

DIY: build you own MMO world

No, I'm not talking about MineCraft; but am talking about the much-anticipated EverQuest Next.  Its features will include the Forgelight Engine, voxel (volumetric pixel or Volumetric Picture Element) rendering, and a free-to-play sandbox add-on called Landmark that enables you to build anything, explore, add components to the game of EverQuest Next, collect stuff, and buy and sell items in Player Studio.  

Currently Player Studio allows you to design and sell items for EverQuest, EverQuest II, Free Realms, and PlanetSide 2.  According to the web site:

Player Studio™ is a new program that invites (initially US-based) players to download sample geometry, learn how virtual items are constructed, and try designing items. You can try your hand at writing a creative name, item description, and rationale for how it fits into the ongoing narrative storyline.

...Selected items will be offered for sale in the SOE Marketplace alongside items created by staff artists, priced in SOEs Station Cash virtual currency. Revenue from the sale of these items will be shared back with the creative player.

To get an idea of what the excitement for EverQuest Next is all about, take a look at this video from Unit Lost:
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Longer videos, chronicling the release of EverQuest Next, are "EverQuest Next Worldwide Debut: Part 1" and "EverQuest Next Worldwide Debut: Part 2."  Landmark is scheduled for release this winter.  There is an EverQuest Next mobile app available now.
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Capture from Unit Lost video, character expressions

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After building in SecondLife for about 5 years, I can say that building in 3D worlds is fun, engrossing and sometimes challenging, if the tools are right.

--Marge