Norm emailed me a while back, after reading my latest blog posts (I'm pissed I lost the furry post... oh well!), and said that it looked like I was playing a lot of Second Life. The truth is, at the time, I wasn't playing that much. When I don't have some specific project to work on or something specific to do, I'm not all that interested in it. It's just that the stories from the game have been so fresh and on my mind that they needed to be shared.

A week or so ago, Iwan and Sara and Diana and I met up with Norm and Teri at their house for dinner and to play some games. We had dinner, but ended up having so much fun just hanging out that the games never made an appearance. Norm and Iwan and I talked a bit about Second Life, and Iwan, fresh from a Vegas trip, told me about a game he saw called "Chuck-A-Luck". In roulette, you place bets on numbers, or red/black, odd/even, etc, and see where the ball ends up. Chuck-A-Luck is similar, except three dice are rolled. You can bet specific numbers (1-6), and get paid based on how many times that number appears on the dice. Or, you can take the sum of the dice and bet if it will be "over 11" or "under 10", or in ranges 3-7 or 13-18.

I thought it would be a fun game to try to make in Second Life. So I did. I made the basic physical (well, "physical") framework of the game, and then wrote all the code for it. When it came time to do final artwork, I gave it a half-assed effort, and then asked around for help. Whenever I'm tasked to do something artistic, I kind of panic. Anyways, unable to recruit any immediate help, I gave it more of a try. I have Photoshop, but I downloaded a copy of The Gimp, which is a great free-ware graphics program, very similar to Photoshop. Within a few hours, I was able to make a pretty decent backdrop for my game.

I got it all uploaded, and it all worked great. But now that I have this game, I don't really know what to do with it. I don't own any land, and even if I bought some plot of land somewhere, there's no reason that anyone would ever go there. So, I searched for a few casinos, and tried to contact the owners to negotiate selling the game or renting floorspace, without too much success. One lady said she'd put it up, and I offered L$250 for a week, and she basically said "done" (meaning, I probably got screwed). But, my game is live and on the floor of a nearly empty casino. It hasn't really been played (except for a tester or two), but it's still pretty exciting.

I also put the game up for sale on a Second Life shopping website. Hopefully that will generate some more interest.

With that project done, I was left looking for something else to do. In spite of my recent flurry of posts about SL, I'm really not that into it for the same reason most others are. I don't care about chatting. I don't care to meet new people online. There's gambling (with game dollars, which are exchangeable for real dollars) on unregulated machines, which is about the dumbest thing I can think of (in spite of being an author of said unregulated machines). So I decided to look into custom clothing.

Flashback: When I played the original Grand Theft Auto III on the PC, I found that the clothing, face, and hair of your character was all stored in a flat graphic file, available to be edited. All you needed to do was replace the picture of his shirt with your shirt, his face with your face, etc. Diana had the idea that I take pictures of my "comfs" (a generic term of the comfy clothes we put on after coming home from work). We both thought the idea of being a gangster, running around doing crimes while wearing a SpongeBob T-shirt and doctors scrubs was pretty funny. And it was. I took a screenshot, but it's on an old hard drive that I can't find. I'm pissed.

So, I decided I'd try to import my SpongeBob shirt, my scrub pants, and my house-shoes into Second Life. I took pictures of 'em all, and got those onto the computer. From the SL website, you can download templates that show where you're supposed to put the graphic items for shirts, pants, shoes, etc, so I worked for a bit and got that all done. I uploaded my new textures, and tried making a new outfit, and it totally worked! Rockin!

Also, recently, I'd seen people running around in the game with wings sprouted on their backs, and I thought it would be fun to try to make some wings based off the Luna moth, so I did that a while back. I even scripted 'em to randomly change position while you're on the ground, or spread open when you're flying. Pretty neat.

So, last night, once I had all this up and working, I tried on my new outfit! The result is about the gayest (I cringe to use the term, but can't think of a better one) thing I've ever seen in my life, but whatever, it was fun work and I'm proud of it!

Enjoy...

"FAB-u-lous!!"

PS: With my new wings on, I decided to have some fun. I found a popular casino/club where people were dancing on a dancefloor with a big discoball. I teleported in and yelled "AHHH, a moth!" and flew in a circle around the discoball, over the heads of the dancers. Unfortunately, I didn't get much of a reaction, but I just told this story to a workboy and we were dying laughing.


Good times.