Scenes From The InWorldz Fifth Anniversary

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Sunday March 16th, InWorldz began one of it's biggest events this year, it's fifth anniversary celebration. A few dozen sims had been set up to be the location for some celebratory builds for this milestone in the virtual world's history, as well as some events. I went there to take a look at what the IW5 as it's come to be called had to offer.

  There was a shopping hunt for those wanting to search for quality freebies.

Several sims were all water for boating activities. And there were some dock areas, including this sailing ship area with one anyone could take for a ride.

One had to take some care, otherwise you might end up beached.

 Not far from this dock were some pirate caves.

 There were a number of caverns to explore.

I think there was also a treasure hunt game, but I passed it by and moved on.

At the Welcome Center, there was a box with a few freebies.

Nearby on a landing pad was a helicopter ride anyone could board and fly, with a notecard providing a few instructions.

One couldn't just release the controls and let the chopper hover. After this shot was taken, the craft began to fall back to earth, with a few more keyboard presses stopping the descent.

The official InWorldz Fifth Anniversary T-shirt, worn over my normal green one.

 On March 23rd, I came across a small party not too far from the Welcome Center, with Cataplexia Numbers spinning some tunes for those there. With a nautical theme, she was playing songs like "Airship Pirates," and "The Ship."

There was also a couple cannon and a boat rezzer, one that was damage-enabled. This was for a demo battle. When a boat's hitpoints reached zero, the thing went up into a cloud of smoke and sunk. "Let them know were over here having a ball blowing up ships!" one lady told me, "Hope you all don't try and blow up my pretty pink ship if I sail it. Heh heh!"

Among those there was Ilianor Illios, whom offered to show me her builds in the Fantasy area. She told me one had won the contest for best build there, "This is my work. It's a fairy wagon with the royal fairy family. I have added all techniques, tortured prims, sculpts, and mesh. ... In the contest, I liked all the builds. It has been a surprise to win."

The build next to it wouldn't show up on my viewer, the official InWorldz viewer for the Mac (I was using my older computer to travel to InWorldz), but another Ilianor took me to did, "this sun is double faced, on the other side is sunset and here sunrise.

Ilianor told me she had made many builds for InWorldz. Besides her build for the contest, she also had others for the adult sim and the Gallery. From Italy in real life, she had come to InWorldz from Second Life as part of a mostly American virtual community which moved all at once in 2009, "When they came to InWorldz, I moved too." She had a different name in the larger virtual world.

As it turns out, Ilianor is also a harp player. She will perform today March 31st in InWorldz from 1 to 2PM SL and IW time at "Gypsies of InWorldz."

The IW5 will be going on for a few more days, so there's still more to see. If you want to see more pictures, Daniel Voyager has a few more on his Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielvoyager/

Ilianor had more to show me, her store and her "City of Light." But that is another story.

Bixyl Shuftan

Meanwhile, Back in Rust

By Bixyl Shuftan

For the Sunweavers/Angels in Second Life, the adventures in the Rust game continue. Shortly after Jasmine made the base a couple weeks ago in the Player versus Player server we were going about when not in Lost Island (link), that server went offline. Lost Island also went offline briefly, so we checked out other places. One was the "ZZFun US PVE No Sleepers" server. Looking it over, there were a number of builds by players, more metal than I had seen.

One that stood out was a tremendously tall skyscraper, one that looked like it took many, many hours to get the metal ore for, forge, and build.

The second was an odd looking build held up by only a single set of stairs, looking like a big "smiley face."

I ended up talking to CWHughes, co-administrator of the server, after he happened to sign on while I was there. He  told me the server had been up for about two and a half months. He himself had created the smiley-face building and the skyscraper using his admin tools to skip making the metal. Both had doors unlocked for people to climb up and enter. And indeed people could, after asking him first, get a floor on the skyscraper if they wanted too. The top floors, however, were his alone to build in.

Getting up the tower took several minutes of stair climbing.

But once up, the view however was fantastic, with much of the island and a good deal of the road system visible.

At least what could rezz due to the distances involved. And this wasn't even Hughes' tallest build according to him. He told me he had made a 200 story tower before the server was wiped, and had to start over.

CW Hughes showed off a couple of his administrator tooks, such as a sparkling pipe, which he called his "admin hatchet."

He also had a bow that looked ordinary, but fired what he called "fire arrows." As Rust is still in "Alpha," they left a red outline after he fires.

If you're in the server, and find or hear CWHughes about, don't forget to say hello. He just might call down an airdrop just for you, or invite you and one or more others to take part in a contest.

Since then, Rust has had one more big update (link). There have been some visual improvements, such as the moon looking more detailed. But the big thing is "item durability." Tools and weapons degrade as they're used, and unless occasionally repaired become useless. They have to be fixed at a special "Repair bench" (image from the link). This has added to the challenge to the game, though can be disabled by server administrators. A couple friends grumbled weapons seem to degrade too fast in some places.

There's also been a number of Rust videos made of general funnery at the Alpha bugs and all, plus a man successfully defending his home from raiders (caution, one with naked men): (link).

Sadly to say, no new pictures from the Lost Island server. Our old friend Lomgren Smalls joined us on Rust (though is still taking a break from Second Life for personal reasons), and used the "remove" command available on the server (its only in some places) to make a fancy "reverse pyramid" with a one room ground floor, a nine room second floor, and a fifteen room third. Unfortunetly, the server got wiped before the thought came to me to take a picture. So we now have to rebuild.

That's it for now from Rust. Word is it's become one of the more popular games in open alpha development. No doubt there will be more to write on soon as the Angels see what they can do.

Bixyl Shuftan

What's New With the Angels in Minecraft

By Bixyl Shuftan

Besides the official Minecraft, there's a modified version known as "Feed the Beast," or FTB for short. Made not by Mojang, the company founded by Minecraft's creator, but by other players, FTB is different from "Vanilla" Minecraft as there's more kinds of minerals to dig and players are able to build more things, and do more things. The catch is FTB can "lag" a bit for players, and crash quite a bit, due to that severs can be quite taxing to the computers they're hosted on.

The "Angels" group in Second Life, friends of Nydia Tungsten, the majority whom reside in the Angel Estates, have a number of creative players. They had a taste of what they could do earlier on a FTB server hosted by Kit Repine. They could build new suits of armor, special boots that would keep you from being hurt in falls, energy guns that could take down hostile mobs, robot miners that could clear out huge sections of rock, "Portal" guns that allowed players to take shortcuts in getting around, being able to access new realms, and more. So when Nydia got a new computer about the time a new updated FTB was available, she created a server for it. She invited players over to "do their worst" with the most elaborate builds, and a number obliged, making huge machines that yours truly can barely figure out how to work, let alone build.

Unfortunately, Nydia's new computer failed. Not wanting to frustrate the Angels, Nydia moved the server to her older computer, but the server was frequently down due to crashes. Finally Kit offered to host Nydia's server on her computer, and it was transferred over.

 Players made huge, fancy, builds, such as a huge palace made by Valkyrie McGil.

There was also a giant "Tardis" constructed by Hojo. Note the big tree next to it, which was hollow, and could be made into a treehouse, which Jasmine did with another.

Yours truly while exploring near Hojo's base around found a tall, thin, natural feature beside a hill. I christened it "The Finger" and made that my base of operations, hollowing it out, and digging down to mine for ores and diamonds. I never did find any of the latter (nor closer pics of my base that I could have sworn I took). Jasmine would help in making a tunnel from it to just outside her hollowed giant tree.

FTB has a number of new mobs, such as wisps which can dart around and zap players. One player, Skylark (wearing a squid hat), came across a wisp spawner. But instead of destroying it, she grabbed it, and decided to cage it. 

Skylark made a place offshore, and putting the spawner down, began to encase it in glass. The spawner soon created new wisps, which took a toll on her. But eventually, she got it caged, and the wisps inside could only dart around harmlessly, unable to zap anyone.

Near Nydia and Brandi Streusel's base, a huge mining pit left by machines. Note the oil geyser behind it.

There were other features, such as "Mystcraft," which allowed players to travel to other worlds. Some could be hazardous, as their own laws of virtual nature could be quite different. One had burning sunlight that damaged players out in the open. We mused we finally knew what it was like to be a zombie.

Unfortunetly, the world would run into trouble that was beyond even Kit's computer and Nydia's skill. An early sign was when one of Skylark's pet squirrel's got loose, and when poked, it exploded and left a huge crater. The joke was it ate uranium from a reactor and turned into a "mini-nuke." But before the joke got old, a nuclear reactor build malfunctioned and blew. The result wasn't a big hole, but the whole minecraft world on the server had its code corrupted beyond repair. We would have to start over.

As it turned out, there was a new version of FTB out, or rather of the "Direwolf" which we used (FTB Launcher 1.3.2 / Minecraft 1.6.4 / Direwolf20 1.0.07). So we'd be getting new things to see, and play with. We were given about 48 hours of "creative mode" to aid in getting about and building what we wanted, then it was back to survival mode.

 

Near where I first appeared was a volcano, which made for a great reference point at night. The island in the sky seen to the upper left turned out to be made out of slime.

And not far from the volcano was a village. I went ahead and made it my base of operations, using creative mode to make a wall around it. Besides looking cool, it had the bennefit of helping keep out most of the mobs ... most. A few still spawn on the inside.

There were new mobs, such as blue mana creepers, and icy "Blizz" creatures that tossed snowballs. In creative mode, one could take on the appearance of mobs that the player clobbered at least one of. In the new FTB, focusing on an object or player up close would give you the name.

Jasmine and Kryxia built their own base some distance south of the volcano village. They would also build a fenced area of horses, donkeys, and other critters, and then a stable.

And to the north, this fenced in forest area with deer, squirrels, sheep, including the new rams, and other critters. I believe it's Skylark's base.

*Addition* It turned out it was Valkyrie's forest.

This new kind of tree's a bit big for cutting down for wood.

Not all wood has to be chopped down. Some trees have fallen and lie on the ground to be chopped up.

And so, the sun rises on a new world for the Angels of Second Life to build on. It's not their first, and most likely not the last. But they'll be making a few memories here when not in Second Life.

Bixyl Shuftan

Minecraft: Building Around Angels Villiage

Since the new Angels Village in Nydia's Minecraft servers was built, the place has taken shape, with walls going up and buildings inside the walls. Then the building began going outward, such as the SL Newser office building there. But the building didn't stop there.

Jasmine's a fan of the "My Little Pony" show, or a "pegasister" in pony fan slang. So she built this tribute, "Luna Sleeping."

How many of you have heard of "Hogzilla?" Well, he just showed up in Minecraft, or rather, this statue of him did.

Another build was this double tribute to the mob Minecrafters love to hate: The Creeper. There was this creeper statue, and a creeper temple built.

And if mobs weren't enough to scare someone at night, we started spinning yarns about what else might be out there, such as the Minecraft legend of Herobrine, the ghost miner who supposedly digs all those tunnels we find underground. Note the arched bridge and the beach picnic areas.

 The building wasn't just out from the village, but also down. Inspired by the Dwarven City in the "Lord of the Rings" Minecraft map, Valkyrie was inspired to build her own. And it was quite an impressive sight. Just ask first before digging in the mines next to the place. Dwarves aren't keen on strangers digging on their turf.

There was one other building outside the village build, a horse track, presumably in case we ever decide on a horse race. But I was waiting until daylight to take a picture, and had to go before sunrise.

 And a statuesque tribute to four of the players of Angels Village. From left to right: Jasmine (vixen with diamond minepick), Kryxia (wolfess with diamond sword), Skye (horse with diamond sword), and Phy (pony with golden carrot).

 Jasmine however wanted to build one of me. So she took a few screenshots, with my armor off, and got to work.

 Not a bad likeness ... of my 8 bit self.

So what would my statue carry? Well, others had picks and swords. So what else did I use a lot? My compass and map (ask a girl how often men will speak up and ask for directions). So Jasmine made one on the statue's hand.

The building continues around Angels' Village. There was a subway entrance made, with plans to connect it to somewhere. Then people started digging down and then out. Looks like if there's nothing in the distance to connect to, we'll dig and make something to connect it to when we surface.

That's all for now from Minecraft. Until next time, happy digging.

Bixyl Shuftan